‘It’s Irresponsible To Budget Based On A Hope’

This is an excerpt from Barrhaven East Councillor Wilson Lo’s newsletter:

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Why did I vote against it?

The 2025 transit draft operating and capital budgets passed in a 6-3 vote at the Nov. 25 transit commission meeting.

I was one of the three dissenting votes.

Technically, the transit commission votes to recommend that Ottawa City Council approve the draft budget in two weeks, but I’ll use “pass” and “approve” here for simplicity.

If passed by Council in its current form, the 2025 operating budget for OC Transpo increases to $856 million, up from $768 million this year, which includes an eight-per-cent increase to the transit levy.

Transit fares are also increasing by an average of five per cent, broken down as such:

Adult cash fare – $4.00/$4.05 (Presto/cash), up 5.3 per cent
Adult monthly pass – $135.00, up 4.9 per cent
Senior cash fare – $3.20, up 10.3 per cent
Senior monthly pass – $78.50, up 60.2 per cent
U-Pass – $240.52/semester, up 5.0 per cent

An earlier proposal to increase the senior monthly pass by 120.4 per cent to $108 was backtracked after significant public pressure. Though that proposal brings our senior’s pass closer to most other transit agencies, an increase of that scale at once is not reasonable.

Changes to fares for children and youths were approved. Free fares for children have been scaled back to up to 10 years old, while those aged 11 and 12 have a new $2.00 cash fare, and the youth pass was eliminated.

The transit draft budget, along with other draft budgets, will be discussed and amended before a final overall budget vote at council on Dec. 11. There might be further changes to the transit budget through motions by councillors at that meeting, meaning the details noted above may change.

My vote against the transit draft budget was based mostly on my unease about the $36-million gap and the uncertainty around the proposed U-Pass increase.

The $36-million gap has been called a “placeholder” by city staff and the mayor, money they hope will come from the upper levels of government.

While I have some faith that the placeholder would not have been included if there was no confidence any funding would come through, I’m mostly uneasy and feel it’s irresponsible to budget based on a hope.

Hopefully, that can change between now and the final vote in December, because if we budget for it and the funding doesn’t come through, we’ll have to find $36 million during the year somehow.

The increase to the U-Pass is above the 2.5 per cent agreed to between OC Transpo and participating post-secondary institutions (Algonquin, Carleton, Saint Paul, uOttawa).

Each institution must agree to a proposed increase above 2.5 per cent, and each has a unique way to decide on their agreement. For example, per one of the delegations at committee, uOttawa’s student union will put it to a referendum.

Additionally, though some progress with non-fare revenue (e.g. advertising, sponsorship, fare enforcement) has been made, we are still relying on an outdated funding model that no longer works.

As I’ve shared a few times throughout this year, the long-standing funding model of fares, taxes, and occasional top-ups worked for 125 years when Monday-to-Friday commuters were reliably present.

Despite changes in our commuting habits since 2022, which now are mostly permanent, there’s still a preference for status quo or one-time cash injections with no sustainability plan.

Think about this: when non-profits ask for corporate sponsorship, they are expected to create a sustainability plan. The city should be no different when it asks upper levels of government for funding.

Many residents know the story in Barrhaven (and any suburb, really). There was a time when downtown was just 45 minutes away by bus. The first winter of LRT is still a collective city-wide trauma, not helped by the deterioration in bus service.

We also continue to pay the price of poor decisions in the past, including our current problem of half the bus fleet being more than 15 years old (buses have a useful life around 12 years, up to 18 years with a mid-life refurbishment), because practically all of our articulated buses were procured in one order while delays in electric bus deliveries have pushed our oldest 40-foot buses to almost 20 years old.

Thankfully, OC Transpo has moved away from the practice of procuring large orders at once to a steadier state procurement model, where tranches of buses are ordered each year to ensure the maintenance cycle is sustainable. But that means true stability will be another few years away.

This newsletter excerpt is courtesy of the city-wide community group Your Applewood Acres (And Beyond) Neighbours

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