A TTC fare increase in the new year looks inevitable. But TTC board chair Josh Colle plans to argue for a price freeze on the $141.50 cost of a regular adult Metropass.

The popular, monthly all-you-can-ride fare is becoming too expensive. Increasing it affects some of the TTC's poorest and most loyal riders, he said.

"At a certain point, do we hit a tipping point where it's not an attractive price point for a user?" said Colle, who plans to move the Metropass freeze at a TTC budget committee meeting on Monday.

That committee will be looking at a new fare structure in light of next year's operating budget and the roll-out of the Presto electronic fare card across the TTC by the end of 2016.

Colle has already signaled that he expects the $3 cash fare, which has been static since 2010, when it was hiked by a quarter, to go up again next year.

Increasing the cash fare could persuade riders to use a Presto card, he said.

This year, the TTC increased the token price by a dime, and the Metropass rose from $133.75 to $141.50. For a long time, city and transit officials believed poor riders were affected more by cash fare increases. But TTC research has shown that’s not the case.

"There is never someone who says, 'The cash fare is too high,' or 'The tokens are too high.' One hundred per cent of the time it's people of low incomes who are saying, 'The Metropass cost is squeezing me out,’" said Colle.

"At a certain point you have to reward the customer who keeps coming back," he said.

The cost of a regular adult pass has risen $20, from $121 a month five years ago. About half of TTC riders use a Metropass, with about 317,000 regular adult Metropasses being sold on average each month.

The price is calculated according to a base number of trips per month multiplied by the cost of a token. The current base is 50.5 trips per month. The average Metropass user takes 70 trips per month.

The TTC is asking the city for a $573-million subsidy next year, about $90 million more than this year, on a $1.8-billion proposed operating budget. In part, that will help pay for a service boost this year, including free rides for children 12 and younger, more frequent bus service and the restoration of service that was cut in 2012.

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With an anticipated shortfall of over $90 million and no operating funds expected from the province, a fare increase in 2016 is probably unavoidable, Colle admitted.

TTC riders are the least-subsidized transit users in North America.

While the province remains deaf to requests for TTC operating funds, Colle said he's encouraged that the federal government now plans to provide some funding for maintaining the transit system.