Premier John Horgan pumped the brakes on the City of Victoria’s suggestion that the province fund free public transit in Greater Victoria, saying that if Victoria wants it, they can pay for it.
“I believe that Victoria’s ideas are all well and good — if they want to raise the money in Victoria to pay for that, I’d be happy to take that and reduce transit fees,” Horgan said, while attending an event in Langford.
“I understand the principles behind the Victoria resolution, but I see a lot of resolutions out of Victoria that seem to be all driven at provincial policy and federal policy and not a lot of resolutions at the issues that affect taxpayers in Victoria.”
Victoria city councillors passed a motion Thursday calling on the regional transit commission to begin phasing out bus fares as a way to boost ridership and fight climate change.
Coun. Ben Isitt, who put forward the motion, said the lost revenue from fares could be replaced with money from provincial transfers, property taxes or the gas tax.
Saanich Coun. Susan Brice, who chairs the transit commission, said the commission has yet to take an official position.
“But I can tell you that the commission’s mission has been to improve service, extend the reach, more frequency, and I just don’t see how removing $43 million a year from our business operation would improve the service.
“And that’s our goal: To provide more frequency, more reliability, more reach into the community.”
Brice said ridership actually increased after the most recent increase in fares. “We certainly didn’t see any direct correlation between usage and what we thought were relatively small increases.”
Sooke Mayor Maja Tait, who sits on the transit commission, said eliminating fares is a “noble idea,” but she questioned how the system could afford needed improvements without the money from fares.
“Here in Sooke we have quite a good ridership, but we want to do more,” she said. “We need more buses, we need more drivers and we need more routes.
“If the fare box is eliminated, my concern is that we would not have the necessary expansion to our area that we need for our riders.”
Tait added that, unless the province agreed to cover part of the gap, the lost revenue would have to come from property taxes. “And as we’re all trying to keep taxes affordable — which is always an ongoing challenge — I cannot right now see how that would balance without the fares,” she said.
A cash fare for a ride on Greater Victoria public transit is $2.50. A monthly pass costs $85.
Horgan said the best way to encourage more people to use public transit is to keep costs as low as possible and improve the transit system in areas outside the region’s core so that commuters in the West Shore and Saanich Peninsula have an incentive to get out of their cars.
“At this point in time, what we need to do is encourage more people to use it by keeping the costs as low as possible,” he said.
“I don’t want to diminish the suggestions coming out of Victoria, but Victoria is a terminus point and a transit system tends to have to be built out around those areas that are moving in and out of the core — and that means Langford, Colwood, Sooke, Sidney, North Saanich, Central Saanich. Those are the areas where we need to focus our attention.
“I think free transit may not be the quickest way to fill up those buses. We need to make sure we’re getting people to where they need to be.”
