If there are
some silver linings among the clouds hanging over the TTC right now,
they include the twin opportunities to focus on what makes a transit
system really work and how to pay for it. We may have a chance to
soberly discuss the city’s budget crisis, after the TTC stepped back
from last week’s dire announcements about closing the underused
Sheppard subway line as well certain bus routes.
There are some
real impacts on riders in the short-term, however. Long-overdue
crowding relief (in the form of extra buses) was supposed to begin
after Labour Day. That’s been postponed. Cutbacks to existing
service are definitely possible within six months, as is a fare
hike, but maybe we can squeeze in some reasonable debate despite the
current political brinkmanship.
After Mayor
David Miller and council allies including TTC chair Adam Giambrone
narrowly lost a vote to levy new fees last week, they announced a
rash of service cuts that had long been on contingency lists, but
weren’t a specific part of the pre-vote debate.
Perhaps the
Mayor was overconfident the taxes would be approved, or just didn’t
feel the need to bring out threats of drastic measures beforehand.
Now a great many people are upset and some are proposing their own
solutions for budget cutting. A lot of the ideas proposed
unfortunately sound good only on the surface, but without the TTC
having a way to convince the majority that it can prioritize
expenditures wisely, genuine cost-savings may get lost in the fuss.
The TTC
promises local meetings about possible bus cuts in the weeks before
the transit commission next convenes in mid-September. Are people
going to use these as opportunities to yell a lot, or will citizens
and councillors both talk as well as listen?
During this
unexpected consultation period, the campaign to control Queen’s Park
ought to be heating up nicely -- the provincial election takes place
October 10. Various competing forces will try to position Toronto’s
tangled finances in a way that deflects blame to others.
It will be
interesting to see how the major parties dance around the
complexities of raising local taxes vs. unpopular service cuts vs.
finding efficiencies in large organizations like the TTC.
The Liberals
and Conservatives want to win Toronto ridings, but dare not appear
to non-416 voters as pandering to the big city. The TTC funding
crunch developed under governments of all three major parties, and
after years of wearying crises it has inflamed passions all over
again.
If such a thing
is within our power, let’s try to make a few good long-term
solutions amidst all the blame-throwing and frustration.