Rob Ford is promising to improve TTC service if he’s re-elected mayor, acknowledging his subway-building plan is years away from helping people get around Toronto more efficiently.

“We need to build a better subway system but these major projects take time,” Ford told a news conference Tuesday at his Etobicoke campaign headquarters.

“We must begin as soon as possible to improve and expand TTC service now. Today, I’m committed to fund service improvements in my next term.”

Ford said he supports most of the measures identified by the TTC in a new report, such as reducing wait times and crowding, establishing a city-wide network of 10-minute-or-better bus and streetcar services and expanding express bus routes.

The report is on the TTC board’s agenda Tuesday.

Ford pledged to pay for these service improvements, not by hiking fares or property taxes, but by re-allocating $30 million from the $100 million he has previously identified in savings from the city’s permanent $11.1 billion base budget.

“I know where the money can be found,” Ford said.

“Things like eliminating the bottomless council general expense budget and improving the management to staff ratio in top heavy divisions, some as extreme as four-to-one,” he said.

Last January, council rejected most of the cost-cutting measures identified by the mayor, such as getting rid of the splash pad at the CNE and scrapping the annual tree planting program, which could have saved $7 million.

Ford gave a “minor example” of where he would trim costs, such as introducing “shared procurement” practices. Toronto Community Housing and the city use a lot of batteries so “they got together and the price came down dramatically, just on one item.”

Ford does not support the TTC proposal to expand backdoor boarding on its streetcars, despite agreeing passengers getting on and off the vehicles is causing the greatest delays on the roads.

The “honor system” would require hiring more security people to monitor scofflaws, he said. While Ford rarely uses public transit, he said he often sees, from inside his SUV, people jumping on the back of the streetcar for free.

“Ninety per cent, I would say, are honest people that will pay their fare. Unfortunately that 10 per cent are not, that 10 per cent is costing us millions.”