[Doady]

Rising costs is not the sign of a dying downtown or a place that few people want to be in. Quite the opposite, actually.

A healthy downtown means having to pay a premium for the land there, and that means higher densities, which in turn means less surface parking. That's the entire point of a downtown. Buildings taller, buildings closer together, people closer together, increased face-to-face contact. If companies don't need that, that's why they can locate in some office park in Meadowvale instead of a skyscraper in the Financial District.

Do you really think it's the employees rather than the employers who choose whether they work from home or not? Come on.

We can talk about US cities not being Asian and European cities, but lack of fare revenue might be a large part of why transit ridership in many US cities is so low in the first place, even compared to Canadian cities. Something 10% or 20% lower fares might not seem like much, but the service lost as the result of that lost revenue will hurt the ridership, which will hurt revenue and diminish service even more. It's just a downward spiral.

Kansas City provided $97 million to transit operations in 2019, and fare revenue only added $10 million. Here in Mississauga, of the $195 million operating budget, $87 million came from the city, $18 million from the province, while passengers paid $90 million. Taking into account the exchange rate, that's 40% more money for transit operations with 20% less government support.

We can see also Winnipeg Transit getting $87 million from the city, $40 million from the province, $70 million from fares. Brampton Transit got $66 million from the city, $16 million from the province, $85 million from fares. The RTC in Quebec City got $119 million from municipalities, $27 million from the province, $75 million from fares. These are all systems that received less funding from government than Kansas City's system, but had larger operating budgets thanks to fare revenue. Around 40% or 50% fare recovery ratio is typical in Canada and that is probably what US systems should be aiming for as well if they want to have ridership like Canadian systems. 17% is just not enough, let alone 0%.