A handful of people showed up to a rally at Marion Dewar Plaza at City Hall on Nov. 9 to call for Ottawa’s 2017 municipal budget to include funding for low-income transit passes. Kelsey Curtis, Centretown NewsThe City of Ottawa is promising to implement a new EquiPass for low-income transit users, which will cost $57 per month — half the standard adult fare.
The proposal, still subject to city council’s approval during this month’s budget deliberations, was announced during the tabling of the 2017 draft budget on Nov. 9.
About 31,000 people would be eligible for the discounted passes, according to a staff report released in October.
“This is the city’s largest one-time increase in financial support to residents living below the low-income cut off for public transit in the city’s history,” Mayor Jim Watson said in his speech.
Reduced revenues from the new passes would cost the city $2.2 million annually.
The city’s proposal was drafted in response to calls from community advocacy groups for more affordable transit passes. Just before the draft budget was tabled, a rally organized by the Healthy Transportation Coalition, the Centretown Community Health Centre and the City for All Women Initiative was held at Marion Dewar Plaza in front of City Hall.
Coalition spokesman Trevor Haché said he is pleased with the city’s plan to have more affordable transit passes.
“It’s certainly a positive first step,” he said. “It’s going to save money for low-income people. It’s going to make transit more affordable.”
Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney said she strongly supports the EquiPass proposal and spoke at the rally.
“We’re really happy that the mayor in early October committed to having a low-income transit pass,” she said. “But the details are also very important and so we want to be able to educate members of the public and the media and members at City Hall about the details of the pass.”
Tong Zhao-Ansari, community engagement coordinator at CAWI, said the 50-per-cent discount will be helpful to low-income transit users, but that the price is still steep for many people.
“We are very pleased to see the city council actually make a low-income pass,” she said. “It’s higher than we originally asked, but we see it as a really positive step.”
Community advocates said they had been pushing for a monthly pass that would have cost only $41.75.
Although Haché congratulated the city for making progress on the issue, he said he still has some concerns.
“We don’t think it’s the end of the journey towards transit affordability,” he said. “We’re very hopeful, as the mayor mentioned in his speech, that the province of Ontario can be convinced to come to the table with further funding to make the pass even more affordable.”
The City of Ottawa has applied for $3.3 million from the Ontario government to help fund these new bus passes, but the province has not yet responded to the request.
Advocacy groups say the additional funding would allow the city to offer low-income transit users the same 62-per-cent discount available under the Ontario Disability Support Program and the Para Transpo service.
The EquiPass will be implemented in April ahead of a planned 2.5-per-cent fair hike set to take effect in July. That will see the standard monthly adult pass go up to $113 a month.
Zhao-Ansari said she is concerned about the impact of the fare hike on those not eligible for an EquiPass.
“We do have some concerns because the regular adult pass is going to be way more than the price now,” she said.
Both Haché and Zhao-Ansari said they would also like to see discounted single fare options for those who will not qualify for the EquiPass.
Despite his concerns, Haché said the expected introduction of the EquiPass highlights that the community has been heard.
“The fact that it was essentially the first thing the mayor mentioned in terms of new initiatives in his budget speech is a reflection that the community… did a good job organizing and, in this case, the elected officials listened,” he said. “It’s a positive step in the right direction.”