Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Mr. Jaworski on behalf of the Citizens for Better Public Transit in Winnipeg, with respect to Clause 6 of EPC December 6, 1998, in opposition to setting reduced fares at 80%
Mr. Jim Jaworski: Good Morning Mayor Murray, Councillors, people in the visitors gallery and employees of the media. It was not even nine months ago when I and other community groups had mad presentations her urgin Council to reinstate the reduced Cash fare for senior citizens and students. At the time I had presented myself as the webmaster of the Unofficial Winnipeg Transit Online website. Now I come to you 9 months later from the day that Council had split eight to eight on the reduced fare issue. I was shocked at the heartless decision on the part of some Councillors to not reinstate the reduced cash fare for seniors and students. So, now a new pro-transit group called Citizens for Better Public Transit in Winnipig which I'm the Chair of, was started a year ago and we've been through a civic election in the past few months and there are some new Councillors here. So let's try again.
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Mr. Speaker the reason why CBPTW was created, is that some of us felt that passengers of Winnipeg Transit were not informed enough on Transit's long term plans and others felt a desire for a group to come up with some ideas to help stop the decay in ridership levels caused by the constant fare increases and service cutbacks over the past decade. CBPTW is made up of approximately 60 individuals and community groups. Some of these came from visiting my UWTO website, others who are here presenting last March in favour of reinstating the reduced cash fares. People who want to keep Winnipeg Transit publicly owned and operated, and people who want to put more resources, both financial and tangible into public transit to assist it in the marketing battle against the private automobile culture.
On election night and again the next day, Mayor Murray had stated that he wanted to meet with various community groups over the next several weeks to discuss their issues and concerns. This had led me to conduct CBPTW's first ever survey and the results were amazing.
As I called people up in the contact database, time and time again the top priority was to reinstate the reduced cash fare for seniors and students. Let's do it again Councillors and let's reinstate the 60% level of $0.95 cash fare, and then let's move onto other important issues like the Bus Only lanes, more timed transfers, and like measures to speed people's commute which was the second most popular response to the survey.
The grants that Transit receives from the Province is currently $17 million, and the grants that the City is providing to Transit that is not coming from the farebox directly is I believe it's at $25 million. These two figures remain constant, so, this is why it stated in Transit's Report to Public Works dated November 24, 1998 that Transit must increase fares due to the wage settlement and health care plan of the ATU and the pay as you go plan to pay for new low floor buses.
I was also told that these low floor buses don't really cost much more than regular urban transit buses — approximately $300,000 each. Transit says that the ridership has remained at 40 million for this year. So, what happens if you increase the regular Transit fares to $1.55, you're destined to reduce ridership by approximately 1 million. Then you reinstate the cash fare but only to have as the Transit Report to Public Works states:
...for this option to generate revenues at least equal to those of Option 1, ridership in the reduced fares category would have to increase by 2%. If the increased ridership does not materialize to this extent, there is an approximate $100,000 revenue risk involved in this option using a best estimate of ridership increase.
If a reduced cash fare were reintroduced at 60% of the adult cash fare, $0.95, that the revenue loss to Option 1 is estimated to be $465,000. While 2% of that 40 million is 800,000 and you're neither here nor there in terms of trying to find ways of increasing ridership. You're only going to lose this 465,000 here if you set the fares at the 60% level of $0.95.
Surely the people here can come up with items like new or expanded roadways that you can delete from the Capital Works Budget.
In summary then, we recommend that you not pass EPC's motion to reinstate the reduced cash fare at the 80% level of $1.25 and instead urge you to go with what the community wants. Reinstate the reduced Cash fare back to the 60% level of $0.95 and old the regular adult fare at its current level of $1.50. We also support Councillor Gerbasi's motion which reads:
...that the Transit Department be directed to explore and report to the Standing Committee on Public Works by March 31, 1999, on options for increased ridership with the intent to reduce fares for the year 2000
Thank you.
Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Questions. Thank you very much Mr. Jaworski. Mayor Murray has a question.
Mayor Murray: Mr. Jaworski, I share many of your concerns and I appreciate you coming down today. You realize that we are trying to move to get back to a reduced cash fare in stages, and if we could do it, we could find the money and we haven't, we're open to suggestions. We appreciate positive suggestions. We're tring to move there and we're hoping to do that over two years.
The question I would like to ask you as you are aware I wrote a long term Transit Policy which when we've been in office for more than six or seven weeks we'll have some time to do that. Would your group be interested in playing a partnership role in developing a long term strategy to start to deal with what we recognize are some of the imperfections and shortfalls of where we're going right now?
Mr. Jaworski: Yes we would be interested in dialogue between Councillors and yourself and the Transit department in finding ways of increasing ridership and keeping fares at a reasonable level.
Mr. Speaker: Thank you Mayor Murray. Councillor Smith.
Councillor Smith: Mr. Jaworski. The question was asked by Councillor Golden about decreased ridership. We've had increases almost every year. What was the high point of Transit and what is it now in ridership? In other words, have you got some concrete ideas in how it's decreased over the years, because of fare increases?
Mr. Jaworski: If I get the question right, if the ridership levels are at 40 million, how do you increase ridership?
Mr. Speaker: No. He asked you what was the history, what was the high point in ridership and hwne was it and what is the tracking of that ridership with fares going up?
Mr. Jaworski: Well I did some studying a year ago looking through old newspaper clippings and I found that ever since the streetcars were eliminated in 1955, just two years later, from 1957 onwards there's been constant fare increases and reduced ridership. And for a time in the '70s and '80s there was Provincial funding. Provincial grants to Transit every year and this has been declining not only in Winnipeg but also throughout Canada.