Low income residents are getting a discount on the cost of riding the TTC but a monthly metropass will still carry a price tag of more than $100 a month.
Starting tomorrow approximately 150,000 city residents who receive assistance through Ontario Works (OW) or the Ontario Disability Support Program will be eligible for a one-third discount on individual TTC fares and monthly passes.
The discount, which will only be available to Presto card holders, will bring the cost of a single adult fare down to $2.00 and the cost of a monthly pass down to $115.
“Introducing a program like this which gives a discount to a group of people who have previously been ignored has been tried a number of times since amalgamation and we are sitting here today actually introducing and rolling out a program for those people,” Mayor John Tory said during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. “I am just delighted at the fact that we have moved forward to actually begin doing this and to provide a one-third discount, which is not insignificant.”
The Fair Pass Program was first approved by city council during the debate over the 2016 budget.
It is being rolled out in three phases. The first phase, which starts tomorrow, will make the discount available to Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program recipients while the second phase will make the discount available to residents receiving housing supports or child-care fee subsidies. The third and final phase, scheduled to be rolled out in 2020, will then extend the discount to all residents with an income that is no more than 15 per cent above the poverty line.
A staff report has previously suggested that the program will cost $4.6 million in its first year and $48.2 million by the time it is fully phased in three years later.
“It is important that everyone in Toronto has access to public transit,” Tory said. “It is transit that connects people with opportunity and this infinitive will connect more Torontonians with opportunity more affordably.”
In order to apply for the Fair Pass Program, residents will have to fill out an application and submit it to one of Toronto’s 15 employment and social services offices.
