As voters in Toronto and the region go round the track on routes, ridership and capital costs, the related issues of transit operating dollars and fares aren’t getting much air time.

With the exception of John Tory’s TIF scheme and Olivia Chow’s land transfer tax for homes worth over $2 million, new taxes that would hit the pockets of the average voter to pay for the running of an expanded transit system aren’t part of the debate.

Yet, the scarcity of operating funds is as critical as the lack of trains, LRTs and buses, says professor Eric Miller, director of the University of Toronto’s Transportation Research Institute.

“What scares Metrolinx is not the cost of these things to build — those are big numbers — what really scares them is the 20- to 30-year operating costs along these lines,” he says.

Most of the millions and billions being touted by candidates are capital dollars — the cost of new tracks, trains and technology. John Tory puts the cost of his SmartTrack at $3 billion for the city. Doug Ford (open Doug Ford's policard) has estimated his 32-km subway plan at about $9 billion.

But that doesn’t include operating funds to pay for drivers, fuel and fare collection.

In the shorter term, Doug Ford and Chow have pledged $30 million and $15 million respectively for TTC bus service improvements.

How much does factoring in operating costs matter? In August, the TTC tabled nine modest measures to improve surface transit, projected to cost $16 million next year. By 2019, when there would be more vehicles, those operating costs would be $65.3 million.

Ford’s campaign says he agrees with some of those proposals and disagrees with others. Chow supports the TTC report. Tory criticized the TTC for releasing the recommendations without a plan to pay for them. Still, he’s promising an express bus for Liberty Village residents.

But whether it’s boosting existing routes or adding new transit lines, increased ridership only worsens the TTC’s revenue problem. That’s because it recovers only about two-thirds of its operating expenses from fare revenue. The rest is subsidized by the city — $428 million on this year’s $1.6 billion TTC operating budget.

At provincially owned GO Transit, fares cover about 80 per cent of operating costs, with the province subsidizing most of the balance.

After decades of resistance, Metrolinx, which runs GO, and the TTC are finally studying fare integration.

It’s a critical issue if electrified GO trains are going to stop more frequently in Toronto, as per John Tory’s SmartTrack plan. He’s promising Toronto riders will be able to take the train for the price of a TTC token.

U of T’s Miller says that doesn’t make any sense. GO fares are already distance-based, and that’s where Toronto should be heading.

“Anywhere else in the world, you pay by distance. You pay by distance by car because you’re burning gas for every kilometre you travel,” he said.

The TTC has resisted zoned or distance-based fares, claiming they put a heavier burden on the poorest, least-served riders in the northern corners of the city.

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But does that change if a Scarborough subway is built within five kilometres of vastly enhanced GO access?

Transit blogger and LRT advocate Steve Munro wonders whether the three-stop Scarborough subway that Tory and Ford are endorsing makes sense, given its close proximity to the GO line.

“Nowhere does Tory address the question of what a massive new TTC-fare rapid transit line would add to the operating deficit, or what side effects this could have, such as service cutbacks elsewhere in the network without increased subsidies,” writes Munro.

Miller says he’s also astonished that the debate about transit continues largely absent of discussions about the broader picture: the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change.

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