TORONTO – Mayor John Tory is proposing to let kids under the age of 13 ride the TTC for free.
It was the headline message of his Monday news conference meant to tout impending improvements to the city’s transit service should his proposed budget get council approval. Tory told reporters that zeroing the TTC’s child fare “will provide real financial relief for families who use the TTC to get their kids to school, to daycare, to sports.”
But for transit-riding parents, Brandie Weikle of SavvyMom.ca says the real savings will only be noticed by those who use the TTC on a frequent basis because adults will be paying more for their fares. Metropasses for example, are expected to increase in price by roughly $8.
“To offset that,” Weikle points out, “they’d have to be taking their child on around 19 one-way children’s trips.”
There are other scenarios where the raised fares impact the total savings possible from the free kids’ fares. The Toronto District School Board is an example of that.
The TDSB provides students who meet certain criteria with TTC tickets. The TDSB estimates they would save about $200,000 on tickets for students grade 7 and younger but higher fares for older students would now cost them $160,000.
“So we are saving approximately ($40,000),” says spokesperson Ryan Bird. “But since the TDSB essentially pays more for transportation than we receive from the province, it’ll just go really to offset that amount.”
Then there’s the issue of recognizing what a child who is 12 years old and another who might be a year older. Bob Kinnear, President of the TTC’s union says he’s got some issues he would’ve liked to voice before this went public.
“Our operators have raised some concerns about the fact that they believe that more and more students may try to present themselves as children and under the age of 12,” says Kinnear. “We’re a little bit concerned that it may escalate the number of confrontations out there.”
That said, Kinnear says his main concern for the TTC is revenue. He doesn’t plan to make the kids’ fare a main issue in the impending budget debates. Instead he wants to focus on convincing council to lobby higher governments for funding.
If the budget is approved as proposed and the TTC’s child fare is eliminated, Toronto would be following big cities like London, England which lets kids under the age of 13 to ride for free.
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