Statement by Nate Wallace, Clean Transportation Program Manager
Ottawa | Traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People – Today, Environmental Defence released a poll conducted by Innovative Research of a representative sample of more than 2,000 voters in the Greater Toronto Area on their attitudes towards public transit policy. Public transit systems across Canada continue to face financial challenges due to a broken funding model. If these financial challenges aren’t addressed, this may lead to public transit service cuts and fare hikes, resulting in lowering ridership further and creating a vicious cycle.
Highlights
- Two out of three voters want to see the broken public transit funding model fixed, with all levels of government helping transit systems stabilize their finances, even if it means increasing taxes. Only 13 per cent agreed with the idea that public transit services should be cut in line with reduced ridership. These results are consistent across voters for all political parties.
- Three in five of those surveyed (59 per cent) believe that the federal government has a role to play in increased public transit operations funding to improve transit service frequency, reliability and affordability. Currently, the federal government is the only order of government which does not provide funding for improving day to day transit service.
- A clear majority (55 per cent) of GTA voters agreed that Canada should set a goal of doubling public transit ridership across Canada by 2035, similar to Canada’s target to increase electric vehicle sales to 100 per cent by 2035. A 2024 report by Environmental Defence and Équiterre, supported by modeling from Dunsky Climate + Energy advisors, found that this is possible to achieve with increased operations funding, and would reduce carbon emissions by 65 million tonnes.
“Voters want to see all levels of government working together to fix the broken public transit funding model and stop service cuts. They want to see the federal government involved in operations funding so their bus can show up on time and get them where they need to go,” said Nate Wallace, Clean Transportation program manager at Environmental Defence. “They want to see ambition on expanding public transit to reduce carbon emissions. No matter what political party they support, GTA voters have a strong consensus on the issue of public transit funding. Now it’s time for political parties trying to appeal to voters in swing ridings to embrace this consensus too.”
Background
