We’ll take this opportunity to point out that this is much higher than most parking and speeding tickets, and unlike those, most affects the people who can least afford it.

So Brad wants to improve transit in Scarborough by removing existing bus lanes along Kingston and Morningside in favour of an unfunded LRT on Kingston and Morningside that may happen in 10-20? Let’s be honest and just say you don’t support transit.

With the Toronto Water rate adjustment I thought maybe Bradford's team had at least noticed something valid and were just shooting too much from the hip and over promising. This is just... complete nonsense.

The RapidTO lanes on Kingston and Morningside are part of a continuous transit-priority corridor serving one of the busiest bus corridors in the city. Travel time and reliability has dramatically improved since these lanes were put in. Can we stop politicizing things that we know are working well?

What?? Bradford is an urban planner. He was on the TTC Board when the Eglinton East lanes were put in, and even moved a motion supporting continued implementation and reporting on transit priority measures. He should know better.

‘But, they say, “that doesn’t mean that transit is perfect. There’s still a lot of issues with the TTC,” and riders have identified several priorities. Those include improvements to service and reliability, including dealing with slow zones on subway lines’

‘Transit’s gotten meaningfully better,” Puranauth says. They also point to a couple more recent wins with “dedicated bus lanes on Dufferin, and there’s been the introduction of fare capping,” which means that after 47 rides per month, every additional ride is free.’

We've released the results of our candidate transit policy survey! We asked all mayoral & city council candidates about their commitments to improving transit. Of the three leading mayoral candidates, only Olivia Chow completed our survey; Chris Alexander made a platform commitment to hike fares.

the scarborough busway should inspire the city to look into longer, more permanent busways on available right-of-ways that can produce rapid transit speeds at cheaper cost and timelines. the one with greatest potential, i think, is finch east. this would transform east-west travel in scarborough.

And we can’t wait to ride it! Building this busway was a key ask from TTCriders in the mayoral byelection in 2023. It’s amazing that Scarborough is getting better transit, and hopefully this inspires other rapid bus corridors in the future.

There’s even more that can be done, and fixing the broken funding model is a top priority of ours. Public transit is not a business with a profit motive. It is a public service that people rely on to live their lives. Making transit more expensive (during an affordability crisis!) is a non-starter.

2. City-based revenue tools like the commercial parking levy, a rideshare congestion fee or development charges.

1. Operating funding from the provincial and federal governments. Ontario used to provide 50% of transit operations province-wide. This was cut by Mike Harris in the 90s and systems have been struggling ever since. Canada is an outlier in how little the federal gov gives to transit operations.

As you fill out the Toronto Star Vote Compass, please remember that there are many ways to pay for transit that isn’t reliant on fare increases. Presenting this as a binary between better service and higher fares is disrespectful to transit advocates who work tirelessly to push for alternatives.