🔭 PLATFORM VIEW: Mark Saunders’ free transit for seniors (on Mondays) plan

🔗 LINK: marksaundersfortoronto.ca/news/seniors-…

🔧 DOABLE? Sure.

💰 COSTED? Nope.

✨ OVERALL: ⭐️ (1 out of five)

It seems like every election at least one candidate comes out with a promise to make the TTC free for seniors.

It’s an idea that’s never made much sense. Toronto’s seniors, while definitely lovely and amazing people, have generally had poverty rates lower than other age demographics. Pre-pandemic, for example, about 10% of people 65+ were classified as low-income, compared to 24% of people aged 16-64 and (shamefully!) 29% of people aged 0-17. 70% of people aged 75+ owned their home, and just 16% were still paying off their mortgage.

And, of course, they already get a pretty sweet discount on TTC fares — seniors pay $2.25 a rate compared to $3.30 for adults.

So if you’re looking to help low-income people, a free-transit program targeting seniors isn’t really the way to do it.

A program available to people receiving Ontario Works or ODSP, or living in subsidized housing, or receiving a childcare subsidy, makes way more sense — and, hey, that program already exists and is called the “Fair Pass!”

Saunders’ proposal here is funny because of how bizarrely limited it is. He’s “offering free TTC to seniors 65+ every Monday from 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. to make it more affordable for them to get groceries, go to medical appointments, and get around the city.”

So these hypothetical seniors will be able to better get around the city, but only for a five-hour window in the middle of the day on Mondays. I’m sure they’ll have tremendous luck booking all their medical appointments during this window.

I expect constraining the program this much is a cost-saving measure, but there is no costing attached to the plan, so it’s hard to say for sure.

Saunders’ free-TTC-for-seniors-on-midday-Monday plan is also packaged with a few other promises.

He says he’ll offer “additional ‘Request Stop’ options for seniors during off-peak hours on local transit routes.” The current ‘Request Stop’ program is available to all passengers on all bus routes after 9 p.m., so I guess this would be about extending it to midday. I guess it’s worth looking at.

Saunders also wants free wifi in “select parks” which, sure, fine, but unless it comes with a real municipal investment in public internet access it’ll probably be akin to the TTC’s wifi offering — laden with ads and hard to actually use.

Finally, Saunders also has a library promise: “Opening all Toronto libraries on Sunday year-round to provide more community spaces for seniors and Torontonians to gather, learn, and access technology and services.” A good proposal! Pity there’s no funding source.

PLATFORM VIEW is a daily(ish) feature by City Hall Watcher on Substack Notes. Got a request for a candidate policy proposal I should review? Let me know.