A transit advocacy group has begun collecting rider complaints following the release of a proposed TTC budget that they say will do nothing to “fix overcrowding, unaffordable fares and a lack of service.”

Members of TTCriders gathered outside Bathurst Station on Wednesday to collect written complaints from commuters. The group plans to affix the complaints to a giant cutout of bus and present them to Mayor John Tory on Nov. 28 when the TTC's budget committee is expected to vote on the budget.

The advocacy campaign has been dubbed “Woes on the Bus.”

“We are going to bring riders complaints to city hall because we need John Tory to keep his promise to fix transit,” Shelagh Pizey-Allen of TTCriders told CP24. “We need more money for the TTC and we need lower fares and better service.”

The TTC is asking the city for $37.6 million in additional funding in order to maintain service levels in 2018 and avoid having to increase fares for a seventh year in a row.

Speaking with CP24 outside Bathurst Station, Pizey-Allen said that while a fare freeze is important it will do nothing to address the fact that the “TTC is still unaffordable for lots of people in Toronto.”

She said that she also had hoped that there would be more in the budget to address “extreme sardine-like overcrowding” on the TTC.

“We need more funding,” she said. “There are 50 routes on the TTC that are regularly overcrowded.”

If council approves the TTC’s budget request, the subsidy that it receives will rise to $727.1 million.

In a statement on Wednesday, the mayor’s office pointed out that the TTC was granted a subsidy increase of $95 million in 2017 and also received subsidy increases in 2015 and 2016 ($90 million and $50 million).

“Over the last three years, Mayor Tory has led city council in increasing funding for the TTC,” the statement said. “Under the leadership of TTC Chair Josh Colle and CEO Andy Byford, TTC service has been expanded and bus routes have been restored.”

The statement from the mayor’s office goes on to add that the TTC’s budget still has to be considered by TTC commissioners and the city’s budget committee.

The TTC has said that it needs the additional funding in 2018 in part to help offset the cost of operating the Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension ($25.3 million) once it opens in December as well the continued implementation of PRESTO ($8.2 million).