Staff told council that freezing fares in 2024 would have a $200 million impact over 30 years. Gower said freezing fares has a compounded effect on the transit budget years later. 'Yes, property taxes should be contributing, but fares are a user fee that helps cover the cost of running transit and increasing fares and having fares allows us to continue to improve service year over year as ridership continues to improve.' 'We've already made a massive shift toward a much higher proportion of property taxes.

The transit service's target is to be funded 55 per cent by fare revenues and 45 per cent by the transit levy, but that ratio is closer to 31 per cent fares and 69 per cent taxes. Glen Gower, chair of the Transit Commission, pointing out that OC Transpo relies heavily on taxes already. However, the fare freeze faced more pushback this year than it did last year, with Coun. The success of those changes are still unknown and it's premature at this time to introduce a fare hike.' We've just undergone a route review and staff have worked very hard to complete that, but that has not yet been implemented. We have found the root cause to our LRT challenges and we're working on a permanent fix, but that has not yet been implemented.

'I would say that we're a year later and not much has changed,' Bradley said. Jeff Leiper, said a fare freeze would generate an estimated 300,000 additional trips next year. Jessica Bradley introduced a motion to keep fares frozen at that level in 2024, covered by a 1 per cent increase to the transit levy, which was budgeted to increase by 2.5 per cent.Īdding an extra 1 per cent would have increased tax bills by an additional $8, staff said.īradley's motion, seconded by Coun. Students on the U-Pass program will pay an additional $6 next year.įares were frozen at 2022 levels in the 2023 budget and Coun. The per-trip fare will rise 10 cents to $3.80 with a Presto card and $3.85 without. The cost of a monthly pass will rise $3.25 to $128.75. This means fares will be going up 2.5 per cent on Jan. The overall transit budget passed by a vote of 17 yeas to 8 nays. Ottawa city council has voted against freezing OC Transpo fares for a second year in a row.Ī motion to freeze transit fares was brought forward at Wednesday's 2024 budget meeting, but it was voted down by 15 councillors, compared to 10 who voted in favour.

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