TORONTO – A day after Mayor John Tory announced a proposed tax increase of 0.5 per cent and TTC chair Josh Colle is standing behind the hike.
The proposed tax will help secure funding for key housing and transit projects as part of the City Building Fund.
The TTC has $2.8 billion worth of unfunded capital projects that include accessibility renovations to subway stations.
READ MORE: TTC board votes to hike cash fares by 25 cents, tokens by 10 cents
“When you are confronted with almost $3 billion completely unfunded capital projects … we’ve got to address it. We can’t let this backlog go. We’ve got to address it,” Colle said.
“We are not talking expansion at all … it’s actually making our stations accessible and doing all those renovations which we have no funding for,” Colle said.
The TTC voted in December to increase cash fares by 25 cents and tokes by 10 cents.
Colle said the City Build Fund will help share the burden among Toronto residents and transit users.
“What I’ve had to hear for certainly a year is transit riders come up to me and saying I can’t afford my fares to go up,” Colle said.
“I have to answer to them too. I recognize that everyone has to share some of the burden. We’ve tried our best – we’ve frozen Metro passes, we’ve done a lot to keep fares at a minimum – but recognizing that rider who is paying more and more with less reliable of a system saying you’ve got to raise money from other sources too.”
In Tory’s address on Wednesday, he said the projected growth of half a million people in the city during the next 25 years further necessitated a fund dedicated directly to expansion of transit and housing.
READ MORE: Tory proposes 0.5% tax hike for transit and housing projects
The levy itself would last for five years and would amount to a contribution from the average home of about $13 per year, adding that it was “less than a trip to the movies,” and would make available “tens of millions of dollars” to invest in critical infrastructure.
The TTC currently gathers revenue from fares and city subsidy through property tax.
“What this is about is –for the first time ever – creating a fund, a mechanism by which we can go to Ottawa and say ‘hey here are our needs’,” Colle said.
“It’s not going to go into the black hole of revenue, it’s actually going to be spent on the projects we are talking about… we have skin in the game and we are doing our part, now step up to the plate.”
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