Transit Commission passes smaller, but still significant, fare hike for seniors

Senior transit fares increasing significantly Transit Commission approved a 60 per cent increase to seniors' transit fares, half of what was first proposed. CTV's Austin Lee reports.

The City of Ottawa's Transit Commission has approved the 2025 draft transit budget and has voted in favour of a smaller, but still significant, fare hike for seniors.

The 2025 draft transit budget includes a five per cent overall are increase and an eight per cent hike to the citywide transit levy. Notably, the budget included a planned 120 per cent increase to the monthly pass for seniors, which was met with public backlash. Councillors presented two motions to reduce the fare hike for seniors, one to increase fares by 60 per cent instead of 120 per cent, and another to set the seniors' pass at the same price as the EquiPass, $58.25 per month, effectively an 18 per cent fare increase.

The motion by Coun. Tim Tierney to increase the seniors' pass to $78.50 per month from $49 (a 60 per cent increase), as opposed to $108 per month as first included in the draft budget, passed by a vote of 8-1, with Tierney and councillors David Hill, Jeff Leiper, Riley Brockington, Marty Carr, Wilson Lo, Cathy Curry and Glen Gower voting in favour. Coun. Shawn Menard was the lone "no" vote. Tierney's motion also maintains free transit for seniors on Wednesdays and directs staff to encourage low-income seniors to apply for the EquiPass. This would be paid for through an $820,000 reduction to the draft 2025 contribution to the Transit Capital reserve.

This means a motion put forward by Coun. Brockington on behalf of Coun. Jessica Bradley to make the price of the seniors' pass the same as the EquiPass was referred to City Council, where councillors could move, debate, and possibly adopt it. Similarly, a motion by Coun. Devine to leave youth discounts in place was also referred to the Dec. 11 council meeting. These two motions will be discussed at council because they involve further increases to the transit levy of 0.11 per cent in Bradley's case and 1.41 per cent in Devine's case.

The overall budget roadmap passed by a vote of 6-3, with councillors Hill, Tierney, Leiper, Carr, Curry and Gower voting in favour, and councillors Brockington, Menard and Lo voting against.

Dozens of people signed up to speak at the meeting Monday, mostly in opposition to increasing fares for seniors and the U-Pass for post-secondary students.

"We are in a delicate situation with OC Transpo. We're trying to recover our ridership since the pandemic, and raising fares just puts an enormous barrier in place," said Alex Cullen, former city councillor and transit commission chair.

"The best route to bring riders back? Keep the fares down and improve service. That was my pitch to council today. If you raise the transit levy, you don't lose riders, but you make sure there's a good service and you encourage people to come back on to the system."

Several seniors also voiced their concerns, not only about a potential fare hike, but also the possibility of doing away with free transit days for seniors on Wednesdays and Sundays.

"For my doctor's appointments, I take those on Wednesdays," said Wendy Laatunen. "Same thing with my banking. I'm still not too good online, so I'll go down on the free days. I'll go down on Wednesdays."

Under the 2025 draft budget the price of the U-Pass would also increase by five per cent, double the allowable 2.5 per cent increase the University of Ottawa Student Union (UOSU) says the city had agreed to.

A hike of more than 2.5 per cent would have to be approved by the participating universities, and that has some students speaking out.

"They are wasting city resources to move a motion to even go officially find an answer [from students]. That takes resources from city council, that takes resources for councillors going out to have official meetings with the student union," said Oscar Lavitt, a student at the University of Ottawa.

"We have an answer and the answer is no."

A motion by Coun. Menard to direct staff to enter into negotiations and consultations with the four affected post-secondary institutions' administration and students was approved unanimously by Transit Commission. Staff are directed to report back with results by the end of June 2025.

Lavitt argues the city should consider other sources of funding that wouldn't force post-secondary students to pay more.

"Nobody is really into the idea of paying more tuition because of that. Students are some of the most vulnerable people financially," he said.

"There are all sorts of other routes where this money could be found. Look at the people who are going to have their houses by Line 2 or Line 4, their property values is going to go up so why are they not being taxed more?"

The transit system is facing a projected $120 million deficit in 2025. In addition to increases to fares and the transit levy, the budget includes $36 million in "expected funding from senior levels of government," which has not been confirmed.

OC Transpo focused on improving service: Amilcar 

Transit Services general manager Renée Amilcar says she is focused on improving transit service, which she called the key to bringing riders back to the flagging system.

But OC Transpo is well below its punctuality targets for less frequent bus routes, data presented to the city's Transit Commission show.

A presentation Monday showed that an average of one in every four buses that runs at a frequency of every 16 minutes or greater was not on time in the last year. OC Transpo has a target of having 85 per cent of bus trips arriving on time.

Frequent routes, which arrive every 15 minutes or less, are more likely to be on time, but the 12-month average from October 2023 to October 2024 was 83 per cent, still below target.

In October 2024, one out of every five frequent buses and three out of every 10 less frequent buses was late.

The on-time performance for bus routes operating every 16+ minutes has typically been below the 85 per cent target for years. According to public data on OC Transpo's website, the 12-month average was 75.5 per cent in 2020, 76.1 per cent in 2021, and 72 per cent in 2022.

When asked whether raising fares would drive people away, Amilcar said reasonable fare increases are not shown to reduce ridership.

"We know for fact that increasing fares reasonably will not impact the ridership at all, so that's why we need to continue to focus on service reliability, better service, how we can increase the customer's experience, et cetera," she said.

The full city budget will be voted on at the Dec. 11 meeting of city council.