Lavishing TLC on LTC would best serve city

Opinion, London Free Press, March 10 2009

By PAUL BERTON

Gasoline may look like a bargain at the moment, but we all know the price in the long run can go in only one direction: up. So too will the price of a car, parking, repairs, insurance and road-building, not to mention the cost of renourishing a planet choking in various ways on the exhaust from the ubiquitous automobile. How strange, then, that London does not do more to invest in public transit, and doubly strange considering London Transit is one of the best-run operations of its kind in the province. The LTC recently hiked fares by 8% and got a 5.6% increase in the city's transit allocation, but it still can't keep up with growing demand. "We can't continue to operate a big city transit system this way -- quickly, safely, conveniently," says general manager Larry Ducharme. Why? Because even with recent increases, the LTC still gets much less from the taxpayer than its counterparts in almost every other city in the province. To illustrate, taxpayers give London Transit 37% of its budget, compared with the what transit experts call "fifty-cent dollars" most other cities in Ontario provide. Meanwhile, transit riders shell out 58% of the LTC's operating costs, compared with as little as 45% to 48% in such areas as Hamilton, Ottawa and York. Not only is London Transit underfunded, there is considerable documentation to show it is one of the most (if not the most) efficiently run operations of its kind in the province, and is growing faster than most to boot. How much longer can all this last? Asking riders to pay much more than they already are is unsustainable, says Ducharme, and service will surely suffer at the rate it is growing. For the taxpayer, however, it's money well spent. The LTC wants to see the city increase its contributions by 7.1% next year, 9.9% in 2011 and 8.2% in 2012. It won't be an easy sell for politicians or the public, but it's important we get there, and quickly. The alternatives -- more traffic, wider roads, bigger parking lots, smoggier air -- are far more expensive in the long run.