Public transit is at the nexus of solving Canada’s most pressing challenges. It is a solution to the rising cost of living. It helps reduce carbon emissions. It is the most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion. It is the lifeblood of economic growth in our towns and cities. It enables building the kind of dense, sustainable and cost-efficient housing supply we need to tackle the housing crisis.
However, we have a big problem. Public transit systems across the country are in a financial crisis. If this historic challenge isn’t overcome, we risk a future that is costlier, more polluting, and where gridlock holds people and goods back from their full potential.
In Metro Vancouver, TransLink is warning that if their looming budget crunch isn’t overcome, they will have to cut Skytrain service by a third and cut bus service in half — making more than 145 bus routes disappear and resulting in more than half a million people losing service within walking distance of their homes.
In Ottawa, service cuts are already being felt across the bus network and O-Train frequencies are being cut in half.
In Montreal, the regional transport authority is warning they may be forced to shutter three entire commuter rail lines.
Communities across the country face the threat of a “public transit downward spiral,” where cuts to service only drive further losses in ridership and revenues. This creates a vicious cycle that only serves to increase carbon emissions, hurt the most vulnerable in our society and discourage the transit-oriented development projects we need to solve the housing crisis.
At the root of the problem is a broken funding model. Canadian municipalities are legislated into a fiscal straightjacket. They can’t run deficits, and they don’t have revenue tools that cities in other countries do, like access to income, sales or payroll taxes. This has created public transit systems disproportionately reliant on the fares paid by riders to fund their day-to-day operating budgets.
This precarious funding model was completely shattered by the pandemic’s effect on transit ridership, a situation that has only been exacerbated since by rising inflationary costs. Meanwhile, temporary operating funding support from federal and provincial governments has been cancelled.
It is in this context that Environmental Defence is hosting the Transit for Tomorrow Summit in Ottawa on October 28. We’re bringing together civil society such as environmental and transit rider groups, along with municipalities, government officials, members of the business community and the transit industry to discuss how we can collectively chart a path forward and build a new deal for public transit. The survival and growth of public transit service is essential to achieving results on the priorities that all Canadians share.
Our summit is bringing people together at a crucial moment.
The federal government is poised to release their next-generation transit investment program, the Canada Public Transit Fund. It may surprise you to learn that not a single penny of this $30-billion program is allowed to go toward stopping transit service cuts. Since 2016, it has been the federal government’s policy to limit the public transit funding it provides to building new subway or light rail infrastructure or buying new buses. It cannot be used to make existing transit more reliable by increasing service hours and the frequency of trains or buses. This is despite studies showing that these measures are the most important drivers of key outcomes like ridership growth and emissions reductions.
While important projects, including Toronto’s Ontario Line and Vancouver's Broadway Subway Extension, are getting built, the service reliability of existing infrastructure is worsening. According to the most recent statistics, transit service levels are actually down seven per cent on average across the country, and there are fewer buses in service now than there were a decade ago.
Canada has a chance to turn this around. There doesn’t have to be a trade-off between better infrastructure and better service. We can build the transformative transit projects that future generations will enjoy while also improving the service current transit riders experience right now. Our most recent report demonstrated just how important doing both is, with the right investments having the capability of reducing carbon emissions by 65 million tonnes.
To unlock the power of public transit to reduce carbon emissions, we need federal leadership to bring provinces and municipalities together to broker a new transit funding model fit for today’s challenges. As we approach a potential early federal election, Environmental Defence and our allies will be asking every political party to put forward an ambitious agenda for public transit that aims to provide this kind of leadership and charts a path toward doubling transit ridership by 2035.
Nate Wallace is program manager, clean transportation at Environmental Defence.
Comments
This is just an opinion, but where have we seen downgrading of public transportation until the only option seemed to be privatization? Yep, the UK; where where underfunding led to corporate profit raking in the dough from privatized rail services. You might think it can't happen to transit in Ottawa and Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton, and in the growing surbubs north and east of Toronto; the unthinkable has happened in the UK and the entire rail service is now a complete mess that can't deliver its mandated service.
Interesting. My experience with TfL has been superb. The Oyster card is affordable and covers six zones in a metro region of 10 million people. Most travel by Tube occurs in the innermost two zones and is completely affordable because it's "subsidized" by shoe leather. This is the great advantage of a walkable city overlain with a deeply integrated and extensive fast and frequent transit network.
People who live in towns farther out but work in the city can expect to pay more for private rail service. Visitors to the metro are usually pay the highest fare in the outermost zone covered by the Oyster card when arriving at Heathrow, yet it remains affordable considering that the advantages of the subsidized Oyster card really play out when you travel to the farthest edge on the opposite side of the region with relative ease.
Ditto the Paris Metro. These cities are light years ahead of Canadian cities on realizing the great social benefits of fast, frequent and extensive transit networks.
“Public transit is at the nexus of solving Canada’s most pressing challenges. It is a solution to the rising cost of living. It helps reduce carbon emissions. It is the most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion. It is the lifeblood of economic growth in our towns and cities. It enables building the kind of dense, sustainable and cost-efficient housing supply we need to tackle the housing crisis.”
It's hard to tell if the author is trying to get buy-in from readers or if they believe in the implications of what they’re saying. To wit, is Environmental Defence really still on side of forever economic growth?
First, I’d argue that the “most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion” is the design of our built environment. This can be measured in terms of how often we need to travel, the distance we must travel, how long it takes, the travel options available and the opportunity cost of the journey (i.e. is there something else we’d rather be doing?). Think of the hullabaloo (more the basic idea of being situated close to the things one needs on daily life rather than ridiculous conspiracy theories) regarding 15 Minute Cities, for example.
Traffic congestion typically relates to private motor vehicles. But, without straining our imagination too much, it can also refer to congestion on, say, a peak-hour ride on SkyTrain from Port Moody to downtown Vancouver, or a B-line bus from Commercial heading west.
Why are so many people having to commute so far? Why is there such concentration of jobs that results in a higher than necessary aggregate commuter-kilometres traveled every morning and afternoon?
I’d suggest that Vancouver’s affordability crisis has little to do with transit availability. I wonder if, in fact, it might exacerbate it. Bare with me. Would a Port Moody condo be worth as much if it took 2 hours to commute, one-way, to downtown Vancouver?
With respect to Ottawa and the LRT, I’ll first make the observation that – according to the referenced CBC item -- it was not the entire schedule that saw frequencies cut, but off-peak hours. Still not acceptable, but let’s be clear. The bigger problem with the LRT, IMO, is that it takes bends at a snail’s pace, one presumes that’s due to poor design and/or engineering, evidence of which started rolling in before it even entered service. How much longer is each end-to-end journey as a result, with resulting increased operational costs (forever – see my comments below regarding feds taking responsibility for municipal/ provincial ineptitude) for a given service level?
In any city, transit can be made more or less viable by the (sub)urban design (think of the spaghetti street layouts of a typical suburb). And contrary to what I interpret to be the intent of the author, IMO, transportation and a settlement must grow together. There are limits to how much one can build out one without the other. The key, I believe, is building-in the opportunity for evolution (e.g. retro-fitting active transportation lanes into existing transportation routes).
“Since 2016, it has been the federal government’s policy to limit the public transit funding it provides to building new subway or light rail infrastructure or buying new buses.”
If there is to be federal funding, it ought to be for capital costs alone. Why can’t regional and provincial taxpayers fully fund operational costs? Are their cities not financially viable? Does the transit buck really stop on some desk in Ottawa when it is the decisions of provinces – e.g. allowing their developer patrons to build ridiculously unsustainable “communities” -- that ultimately determine how much transit will cost? Sorry, but that’s just silly to expect the feds to accept such an unbounded liability for which they played no real part in creating.
Following from my reasoning above, I adamantly disagree with the following:
“To unlock the power of public transit to reduce carbon emissions, we need federal leadership to bring provinces and municipalities together to broker a new transit funding model fit for today’s challenges.”
If there is any leadership due from Ottawa, it should be in the form of “See this money that I’m dangling in front of you? If you want any of it, then here is the book of (damned solid!) design rules for a sustainable built environment that you will commit your province to.”
PS. If you're not ready or willing to 'bare with me', perhaps you would nonetheless 'bear with me'. :)
Great commentary, Ken. Too often society is forced to bare the ramifications of sardine commuting. That's the bear naked truth.
The answer, of course, is to pear building up a fast, frequent transit network with more efficacious urbanism, namely compact neighbourhoods with most necessities of life within walking or short transit distances.
I saw what you did there, Alex. But bearly. :)
Public transit and better land use planning are arguably far, far more important components to realize climate and efficient urbanism goals than a seemingly singular obsession with bike lanes.
It depends on a variety of factors, so characterizing an interest in bike lanes as a "singular obsession" is unfair, i think. Land use planning doesn't provide an immediate payoff (though greenflelds should be either left "green" or upon construction should be sufficiently dense and designed to make transit viable), though it is essential in the longer term. Even opening up R1 neighbourhoods won't immediately result in mass densification sufficient to alter transit routes and capacity (unless we're talking about Vancouver where the planners' default solution to every question seems to be hi-rises). Bike lanes/ routes can be immediately effective, depending on how they fit into the cycling infrastructure of a city.
In Ottawa, a disused railway bridge to Gatineau was refurbished and opened earlier this (last?) year to all non-motor vehicle users. It is very well used by cyclists and those à pieds. If it didn't have good connections to other walking and cycling infrastructure, it would be a white elephant.
E-bikes are opening up the two-wheel option for many people who don't have the physical capacity to pedal unassisted or, for those that do, they can travel farther. That is a growing population of users and they need safe routes to get around. In Gatineau Park, across from Ottawa, the roadways are closed to vehicle traffic the majority of hours in a week, over the year, save for a few weeks in Spring and Fall when they have increased access. All active transportation users can use the parkways. They are very busy with cyclists and others.
In the rural outskirts of Ottawa, more roads are being fitted with decent paved shoulders that allow cyclists to travel more safely, and farther afield.
It's not just one bike lane, it's a network that can be much more cost-effective and have greater utility than even transit. And it helps people stay healthier to boot.
Winter, of course, is a different matter. But then, winters will soon be but a memory, in any event. ;)
Thoughts?
Disclosure: I'm an avid road cyclist, in-town and out.
Too often bike lanes are seen as the only or most important component in urban public transportation. In other schools of thought, it's become an obsession. The evidence portrays worldwide car dependency had peaked well before 2020, according to transportation planners who did the long, difficult math (e.g. Newman Kenworthy, 2015). That result came about not from new bike lanes but immediately following two decades of building out mass transit in Asia and Europe, knowing that some Asian + European nations also have high bike ridership.
In 2017 I helped conduct a public meeting on the complete redesign of a two km stretch of a major truck and commuter route, right down to the underground utilities, a major new linear park and millions in public art.
The most angry and vocal group was the local bike commuter organization who wanted total dominance of the park without having to share it with non-bikers, including seniors and kids. Paving nearly the entire width of a narrow park for a dedicated bike commuter road primarily for young adult bike speeders was just not on. I asked the most angry proponent if she would prefer a dedicated, exclusive bike commuter road over a shared 4 m wide park path for everyone, and it took her several minutes to understand the difference, and finally said "yes." I then said that they need to lobby council to take out one of four travel lanes of the very busy road for that single use, just like they did in other cities. At that point she and her fellow one-sided bike enthusiasts turned and walked out of the public meeting.
The only other individuals as angry there were the typical one or two "waste of taxpayers money" folks who seek to cut all public expenditures to everything. When I pointed out the reconfigured road -- which included three new signalized pedestrian crossings, a need that arose because of one death when a pedestrian was previously struck -- is in fact a taxpayer funded asset they got even angrier as though some public expenditures such as on roads should be increased automatically with no accountability. One really lit into me when I suggested private cars have consumed far more than their fair share of public resources.
You know, public consultation is rarely boring. ;-)