Ontario Liberals promise $1 transit fees with province-wide ‘buck-a-ride’ plan

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TORONTO — The Ontario Liberals promised Monday to cut transit fares across the province to $1 per trip, if elected.

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The election pledge would cost $1.1 billion next year and could take 400,000 cars off the road each day, the party said. The plan would be in effect until January 2024 and would include making $40 monthly transit passes.

Leader Steven Del Duca said the move would be a way to address an affordability crisis as well as low transit ridership seen as a result of the pandemic.

“As fewer people take public transportation and life begins to return to normal, more people are returning to cars and that is causing congestion on our roads,” he said. “Worse, it’s making our environment worse.”

Liberals are calling their plan “buck-a-ride,” a reference to a popular part of Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford’s 2018 platform to offer “buck-a-beer.”

Del Duca touted the transit announcement Monday and criticized some of Ford’s investments in highways, particularly the Highway 413 project around the Greater Toronto Area. Conservatives say it will save commuters up to 30 minutes, but Del Duca and other critics say that won’t happen and the project will only contribute to sprawl.

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Progressive Conservatives are promising a host of other highway projects, including widening Highway 401 east of Toronto and making improvements to Queen Elizabeth Way in the Niagara region. Del Duca said he will invest in highways “where it makes sense.”

“I know that in many parts of Ontario, expanding and rehabilitating our highway system is critically important to the movement of goods and to our commuters and, frankly, to the safety of the traveling public,” he said.

Del Duca was asked if he would make good on the promise by reinstating license plate renewal fees – the Progressive Conservative government recently scrapped them and the move is expected to cost $1bn in foregone revenue.

“Families in Ontario are struggling, so we’re not looking to make life difficult for them,” he said.

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The $1 transit fares would apply to all transit systems in Ontario, including GO Transit, municipal transit services, and Ontario Northland service. The party said it would save a commuter taking the GO train from Whitby to Toronto more than $300 a month, for example.

The Liberals promise to replace lost revenue from transit systems, as well as invest an additional $375 million in annual transit operating funds to support more routes, extended hours of service, accessibility and connections between cities.

They also commit to making public transportation free for veterans.

The New Democrats said voters can’t trust Liberals to make transit affordable because when Del Duca was transport minister in the previous Liberal government, transit “just got worse and worse.”

Leader Andrea Horwath said an NDP government would pay half the operating costs of transit systems, giving municipalities more room to cut fares.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on May 2, 2022.