Happy New Year, and More Exact Change, Please

It wouldn’t be wise, especially given how easily The Fishwrap’s city beat reporter got Franked a couple of weeks ago, to suggest that the reaction to this morning’s story about Calgary Transit’s fare hikes for 2010 stems entirely from the shut-ins and sociopaths who so enjoy frothing at the mouth in online media comment boxes.

In the broader context, though, the optics of increasing transit fares in the face of a tentative economic recovery are not good. Cash fares are poised to rise $0.25 to $2.75, tickets in ten-pack booklets are slated to rise by a dime to $2.40, and monthly passes are expected to cost $2.25 more a piece at $85.25. When the prices of C-Train tickets, property taxes, power bills, and for that matter bread and butter are all going up, and pay packets are not, Calgarians are naturally going to feel squeezed, threatened, and taken for granted. Also, the pressure on Calgary City Council to deliver a balanced municipal budget for 2010 later this month with as modest an increase in mill rates as possible under the circumstances suggests that service hours on already-underutilised feeder bus routes will be the first item on the chopping block; the effects of the ensuing vicious circle I will leave to my Gentle Readers to determine. One readily appreciates the sense suburban transit patrons would thus experience of being kicked where the hair is short.

Let’s try to put things into perspective, however, and show a little pity for the good burghers of Toronto. (Please. Try. Just a little.)

The Toronto Transit Commission, an entity with its own reasons for giving people cause to complain, approved its own round of fare increases for 2010 a couple of days ago. Red Rocketeers will pay $0.25 more for cash fares at $3.00, $0.25 more for a charmingly quaint metal token at $2.50, and a sobering $12.00 more for a monthly Metropass at $121.00. Now while the TTC imposes a more substantial burden on its patrons to keep the lights on and the trains, at least most of the time, running — farebox revenues cover about 68 percent of TTC operating costs, compared to about 55 percent on a good day for Calgary Transit — the scale of the fare increases Hogtowners are facing very much calls the value proposition of The Better Way™ into question. It also casts some light on the deal Cowtowners get for public transit, or at least for the C-Train and for higher-demand trunk routes, based on what we’re begrudgingly willing to pay at the farebox.

Here are the two systems’ 2010 fare increases head to head:

Calgary Transit:
Cash Fare: $2.50 in 2009, $2.75 in 2010; increase of 10.00%
Ticket Fare: $2.30 in 2009, $2.40 in 2010; increase of 4.35%
Pass Fare: $83.00 in 2009, $85.25 in 2010; increase of 2.71%
Pass/Ticket Multiple: 36.09 in 2009, 35.52 in 2010; decrease of 1.58%
Pass/Cash Multiple: 33.20 in 2009, 31.00 in 2010; decrease of 6.63%

Toronto Transit Commission:
Cash Fare: $2.75 in 2009, $3.00 in 2010; increase of 9.09%
Token Fare: $2.25 in 2009, $2.50 in 2010; increase of 11.11%
Pass Fare: $109.00 in 2009, $121.00 in 2010; increase of 11.01%
Pass/Token Multiple: 48.44 in 2009, 48.40 in 2010; decrease of 0.08%
Pass/Cash Multiple: 39.64 in 2009, 40.63 in 2010; increase of 1.74%

One point we need to compare here between Calgary and Toronto is the annual increase in price of each fare medium. The TTC wins the showdown on cash fares, rising 9.09% in contrast to the 10.00% increase Calgary Transit will see. Where tickets, tokens, and monthly passes are concerned, though, Calgarians are getting a break that their counterparts in Toronto are not. The price of a Calgary Transit ticket in a ten-unit booklet is set to rise 4.35%, while a TTC token, usually sold in units of four, will increase by 11.11%. The price increase of a Calgary Transit pass works out to 2.71%, which is in stark contrast to the 11.01% jump in the price of a TTC Metropass. These numbers imply a much stronger incentive for Calgary Transit passengers to buy ticket books or monthly passes instead of paying cash at the farebox than Red Rocketeers would have.

The other figures worth mentioning are the multiples, which quantify how many fares one would have to pay at the box to cover the cost of a monthly pass. For the TTC, the Pass/Token Multiple stays almost the same, sliding an infinitesimal amount in 2010 from 48.44 to 48.40, meaning that one would have to buy just over four dozen TTC tokens at the bulk rate of $2.50 to cover the $121.00 cost of a 2010 Metropass; perversely, the Pass/Cash Multiple rises slightly in 2010 from 39.64 to 40.63, meaning that even with the increase in cash fares to $3.00, one has to pay one more cash fare in 2010 than in 2009 to cover the price of a Metropass in Toronto. On Calgary Transit, meanwhile, the Pass/Ticket Multiple drops slightly in 2010 from 36.09 to 35.52, and the Pass/Cash Multiple dips significantly in 2010 from 33.20 to 31.00, so that a monthly Calgary Transit pass saves about half a ticket or two cash fares more in 2010 than it does in 2009. What these numbers mean to my Gentle Readers is that Calgary Transit is nudging its passengers in favour of ticket books and monthly passes by way of making the best of the bad situation hiking cash fares by a quarter represents, whereas the Toronto Transit Commission is sharing out the fare-hike misery more or less equally.

Do these figures indicate the superiority of Calgary Transit over the TTC? Not by a long shot, as anyone trying to get across town from deepest, darkest Douglasdale on evenings and weekends would attest. There’s a lot of hard work to be done over the next several weeks, months, and years to do transit right in this town, but for what Calgarians are paying at the farebox for our C-Train, trunk route, and feeder bus service, we could be doing much worse.