Today, Rob Ford announced that TTC staff have...

Today, Rob Ford announced that TTC staff have recommended a 10-cent fare increase, effective February. First of all, I believe that this is smoke-and-mirrors to create an issue that is emotionally charged and will receive the bulk share of media coverage in order to hide the fact that he will be substantially raising other user fees, despite his mantra of “no tax increases”. I’m predicting that come the end of January, there will be a splashy news conference, titled “Respect for Taxpaying TTC Riders”, where Ford will proudly hail that he had slayed the fare increase.

What is more worrying, however, is that TTC is planning on cutting back service on many routes. While it is true that many of these routes carry ridership below TTC’s financial standards, these services have been provided to achieve a basic service standard: bus routes will run when the subway is running. The map above (with a somewhat dated route structure, I need a more updated TTC route MapInfo file!) highlights all the routes that will be seeing service span reductions - that is, service will be cut outside of peak periods, mainly in the early and late evenings. The removal of such service is disconcerting - Toronto is becoming an increasingly 24-hour city, with a large proportion of taxpaying shift workers that depend on transit in odd hours. Removing service in these periods impact them the most: a worker may no longer have a way to work. How’s that for a major service cut, Mayor Ford?