York Region Transit riders can expect a fare increase in the new year.
Effective January 1, 2014, the adult fare will rise to $4.00 for single admission and $33.00 for 10 tickets.The increase comes after an evaluation of the transit service’s revenue, maintenance of vehicles, and the market, says Ann Marie Carroll, operations manager for the YRT.
“Our real costs to provide transit to riders is about $7 per rider,” says Carroll. “And a lot of our costs are associated with things that are not necessarily in our control, like the cost of fuel.”
Carroll says the YRT service also has to take into consideration the geographical area for which they provide service. “We’re more than double the size of an area like the city of Toronto, Brampton, or Mississauga,” she says. “So there are larger capital costs for us to provide enough buses to cover the nine municipalities within York region.”
Although the fare increase has yet to take effect, YRT rider Jesse Feld has already begun a petition on Change.org, which has collected 418 signatures so far.
Feld started the petition to express his displeasure with the continuous fare increases. He says what the transit service is doing is simply not right.
“This [fare increase] puts a much heavier burden on students, lower income people, and those who are trying to lower their environmental footprint,” says Feld.
Feld also believes the YRT is raising the price of fares over a miscalculation of their geographical area — he says Durham Region is denser than York Region, yet has managed to keep the fare low.
In response to whether the YRT will see another fare increase in the future, Carroll says that it is something the YRT will have to assess.
“It’s hard to say […] typically we don’t want to do it, we never want to increase the fare, but if we look at it and see that it is a necessity, then it’s something we have to consider,” says Carroll.
This fare increase marks the third time the fare has gone up in the last five years.
Victoria Alarcon
Assistant News Editor
