Concerned riders and advocates from Ottawa Transit Riders, a public transit advocacy group, met in Barrhaven on Sept. 13 to share their concerns with reliability, accessibility and potential fare increases for OC Transpo services.
In a Sept. 11 statement on Ottawa’s 2025 budget, Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe announced that transit fares could increase as much as 75 per cent — to $6.65 per ride — in response to a $120-million funding shortfall. City council proposed either hiked transit levies or service cuts to address the looming problem.
In a petition for his “Fairness for Ottawa” campaign, Sutcliffe argued that the provincial and federal governments do not “recognize the scope of the crisis in our city” and should contribute more funding. However, some transit advocates at the Barrhaven meeting said there is more work to be done at the municipal level.
“We’re appalled that they’re considering fare increases,” said Kari Glynes Elliott, an Ottawa Transit Rider board member. “We think it’s a cruel thing, and with declining service [it’s] absurd.”
Increasing the transit levy on property taxes is a more equitable solution to balancing the budget, Glynes Elliott said.
She argued that promises of services not requiring tax increases, made by the mayor and a number of city councillors in the 2022 municipal election campaign, was a “fantasy.”
“That is like setting your household budget with the expectation that you’re going to win the lottery,” Glynes Elliott said.
“The choice is, do you support wealthy homeowners who don’t want to pay any more in tax, or do you make much lower-income residents, who maybe don’t have a choice, pay ridiculous transit fares for reduced service?”
Nick Grover, an executive member of advocacy group Free Transit Ottawa, also said the city should raise the transit levy instead of fares. Free Transit Ottawa calls for the abolition of fares entirely, and to that end, Grover suggested the city should “divert money from the road-widening budget to fund good, reliable transit service.”
“The notion that fare increases are necessary to save transit is very misguided,” Grover said.
However, Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo said that to address the funding issue, “there has to be some sort of balance that’s struck between what we charge property tax payers and transit users.”
Lo said he would support a “small fare increase,” because he views it as “irresponsible” at this point in time to not do so.
But the way transit funding has been carried out needs to be updated, he said.
Payments for fees and services, which includes fare payments, will make up the majority of OC Transpo’s revenue for 2024. Transit ridership has declined in the past decade, resulting in consistently lower revenue from fare payments and other services.
“This model of funding has worked for the last century or so, but it’s obviously not working now,” Lo said.
“Once we stabilize [OC Transpo] we can start slowly building up, making it something that’s even better.”
Featured image by Murray Oliver.
