A fare reduction for senior citizens will be one of the items up for debate as the TTC board meets at city hall this afternoon.

Deputy Mayor Vincent Crisanti has tabled a motion that would allow seniors to ride the TTC for $1 during off-peak hours, which represents a 50 per cent reduction from the current $2 cash fare charged to those 65-year-old and up.

The proposed fare reduction comes two months after the TTC began allowing children 12 and under to ride the TTC for free in a move that is expected to cost about $7 million annually.

Discussing the proposal for a reduced senior fare on Tuesday, Mayor John Tory said it is something his administration looked at in preparing the budget but ultimately backed away from because of the high cost.

“We believed it was not only in the interest of seniors and their pocketbooks to be able to provide some relief but we also wanted to encourage them to be mobile, to be out in the community, to travel downtown and to go to the theatre or shopping but I’ll be honest with you it was substantially more expensive to do something that was meaningful for the seniors population than it was for kids and the kids riding free had the added advantage of doing something for families,” Tory said. “We just didn’t land on the right thing that we could do that was both practical and affordable, much as we had the discussion.”

In a news release issued Wednesday morning, the transit advocacy group TTCriders said that it supports the reduced fare but urged the TTC to extend the discount to low income riders making less than $22,000 per year as well.

“People living on tiny Ontario Disability and Ontario Works payments simply cannot afford to meet their basic needs, like paying for food, medicine, and housing. It’s not right to ask them to spend food money on transit,” TTCriders board chair Brenda Thompson said.

In addition to the reduced fare for seniors, board members are expected to consider the results of a new customer survey that shows that pride in the TTC is dropping.

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