Provincial politicians want to take over the subway system – this would be a disaster

Opinion by Vincent Puhakka

With election promises flying, little attention has been paid to a proposal that would radically reshape our public transit system: the PC and Liberal plan to take over the TTC subway lines. While it seems like a technicality, the plan has transit experts, riders, and workers alike worried about worsening quality and even privatization of the subway.

The subway upload is part of Doug Ford’s transit plan, having first appeared in the Peoples’ Guarantee platform. The same proposal was quietly announced by the Liberals in the 2018 Ontario budget. The rationale is that the provincial government can make dollars go further through its ability to amortize large expensive assets, which the City lacks.

Let’s assume for a moment that the plan is meant to help transit riders. The greater resources of the province sound like a good way to expand transit, especially since the PC’s promise that the city will still run day-to-day service on contract. But a closer look at cities who’ve broken up their transit systems makes it clear we’re being taken for a ride.

Successful public transportation operates as a network, with each route acting as a piece of a larger puzzle. The TTC subway is not a standalone system but operates in tandem with frequent bus and streetcar routes. They do not compete against one another; instead, each supports the other to create a functional system. Scholars of cities and transportation such as Paul Mees have cited the TTC’s network approach to transit planning as a model that the rest of the world would do well to follow.

In contrast, where public transport modes are disconnected, it can lead to disaster. A good example of this is the experience of the UK after the Thatcher era, in which public bus and rail services were privatized.

The city of Newcastle was in the midst of opening a rapid transit network when bus privatization took effect. During construction, the system was sold to the public as one part of an integrated system, in which buses would feed rapid transit stations and fares would be valid across all modes. Such a situation did briefly exist until privatization. But after that point, in Newcastle and other British cities outside of London, multiple bus companies competed against one another. The competition lead to duplication of bus service on many routes (including ones that parallel rapid transit) and reduction or elimination of service in other places, such as crosstown lines. In the absence of a centrally planned, integrated transit network, ridership has fallen in most of Britain’s cities as people turn to the private car in droves.

The PCs and Liberals are not claiming to go so far as to break apart the TTC network in this way, but the proposal would certainly make it easier to charge separate fares between bus and subway, an option that Metrolinx has already heavily hinted they favour and would be a first step in ruining the successfully integrated system the TTC has operated for decades.

Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals have jumped on the bandwagon, promising in the recent provincial budget that, if elected, they too would explore the process of taking over rapid transit from the city . In one sense, they have already started doing so through Metrolinx’s use of public private partnerships that will maintain the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line, instead of using the TTC.

Breaking up the TTC won’t fix the fundamental problem of transit underfunding. Daily delays, overcrowding, and rising fares are the consequence of squeezed budgets and the cancellation of a provincial transit subsidy under Mike Harris. Straphangers would sleep easier if politicians demonstrated real commitments to fund TTC operating costs and invest in rapid public transit expansion according to the needs of transit riders. From what we have seen so far, such nuanced and sensible ideas on the campaign trail might be too much to hope for.