Bus fare increase could take a toll on riders

By Jean-Sébastien Marier

OC Transpo riders might soon face a fare increase and service cuts. (Jean-Sebastien Marier/offCentre)

The City of Ottawa needs to make cuts to balance its budget and OC Transpo riders may have to take a hike.

Passengers could see a fare increase of 7.5 per cent under a new budget to be tabled to city council next week. Friday, the city’s audit, budget and finance committee recommended changes to the transit committee’s 2010 budget draft.

The proposal contradicts an earlier transit committee decision to limit the fare increase for 2010 to 3.5 per cent.

Many transit users are unhappy with the news.

‘‘They are raising the bus fare and they continue doing it, but the service doesn’t change. The service gets worse,’’ said Ottawa resident Mandy Parnell.

Service frequency is also likely to suffer and service enhancements could be put on hold. Even the new winter service, which took effect last Saturday, might be short lived. Indeed, the audit, budget and finance committee recommends to city council to ‘‘maintain November 2009 service levels.’’

The projected fare increase could occur as early as March 2010 instead of July 1, the date originally proposed by the transit committee. Details regarding how bus and O-Train tickets, cash fare, and monthly passes would be respectively affected are unknown for the moment.

On Tuesday morning, Parnell and her husband Cristopher Sauve were waiting for the bus with their daughter at the corner of Somerset and Preston. Although they own a car, they are regular users of Ottawa’s transit system.

‘‘I own a vehicle, (but) I take the bus because the price of gas is just as much as the bus. I take the bus usually up to the bank, to the grocery store, so I don’t have to use the vehicle,’’ said Sauve, a former OC Transpo employee now working in construction.

Parnell is a stay-at-home mother, so public transit is useful when she needs to do errands with their young daughter. ‘‘Whenever I have to go out, I’m on the bus,’’ she said.

The proposed fare increase is unlikely to change the couple’s daily routine, but others are worried since they feel that fares are already too high.

‘‘I take the bus often, but it’s too expansive,’’ said Fowzia Ismiel, standing at a bus stop on Somerset Street West. She does not have a car, she explained, so transit is the only option she has to travel around the city.

Currently, city taxes account for 52 per cent of OC Transpo’s budget while fares bring in the extra 48 per cent, said a city spokesperson in a phone interview.

The proposed fare increase is part of a three-year plan to reach the council-mandated equal cost sharing between transit passengers and taxpayers. ‘‘What they (the audit, budget and finance committee) are trying to do is reach 50/50,’’ said the same spokesperson.

In addition to the fare increase and service cuts, members of the audit, budget and finance committee hope to tackle administrative fees and maintenance costs. The city’s transit budget, contemplates the deferral of funding for the post secondary student pass (U-Pass). The combined measures could save about $16.1 million to the city.

But nothing is set in stone yet. The City of Ottawa will conduct public consultations on the city’s budget in December and January. City council will debate the city’s financial plan and take its final decision starting Jan. 25, 2010.

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