In Canada, 2025 is the year of the transit fare hike. Fares have gone up in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Victoria, with Edmonton and Calgary soon to follow. Many cities are also cracking down on fare evaders despite Human Rights Watch warning that such crackdowns disproportionately target poor and racialized people.
Meanwhile transit service is being cut. In urban areas buses are often infrequent, late, overcrowded, or in disrepair, and bus stops lack seating, shelter, and signage. Service in rural areas is even worse — if it exists at all. Service between neighbouring communities is also generally nonexistent across Canada.
The net effect of higher fares, more policing, and poor service is that transit will continue to be used mostly by people who have no other choice. This is to the detriment of both people and planet. Excellent public transit is needed to build communities that are affordable, accessible, convenient, green, equitable and safe. And excellent transit is fare-free transit.
Fares make transit worse, not better
Two years ago, Orangeville, Ontario made transit free for all at the point of service; today, ridership has more than doubled. No fare evasion; no discriminatory enforcement; just freedom of movement.
Many other places have also abolished fares, including large cities and the entire country of Luxembourg. New York mayoral candidate Mamdani’s promise of fare-free transit has generated great enthusiasm. Riders love it. It makes bus drivers safer (most altercations are over fares). And it eliminates the enormous cost of administering and enforcing fares. It’s win-win-win.
And although fares typically fund less than half of transit operations in Canadian systems (usually far less), they weaken the economic foundations of these systems and present a major barrier to improvement and expansion of service. This was illustrated when ridership plummeted during the COVID lockdowns, leaving transit systems teetering on a “fiscal cliff.” Translink in Vancouver threatened to cut service by 50 percent!
Excellent transit requires dependable, forward-looking funding. In other words, it must be fully government funded. Taxes on corporations and the rich (the real perpetrators of climate change) should replace the fares that poor and working people currently pay.
System change for the communities we need
Excellent transit — free, frequent, convenient and non-polluting — would transform people’s lives in many ways. It would mean less reliance on cars, which would reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, make roads safer, and liberate the massive amount of space cars use to move and park. This would ease strain on transportation infrastructure, emergency services, and healthcare systems, saving lives and money. Electric transit would further increase the benefit of clean air and lower CO2 emissions. Cities would be far more livable and walkable, improving mental and physical health. Culture and community would revitalize as the working class — the lifeblood of cities — circulated freely, exercising and socializing and collaborating.
That’s why Socialist Alternative is helping to build the Victoria Transit Riders Union (VTRU), a grassroots organization in BC that collaborates with transit workers’ unions and fights under the slogan “fare-free and excellent transit for all!” The group advocates for free transit for all teens and seniors now, alongside a massive expansion of service.
VTRU also calls for this expansion to be designed and implemented by transit workers — in close consultation with the communities they serve — not politicians and bureaucrats, who are currently in charge despite lacking hands-on knowledge and experience. The latter can’t even provide bus drivers with realistic schedules and adequate bathroom access, and truly excellent transit must be excellent for transit workers, too!
But the rich and powerful don’t want transit that is built by and for working-class people (cars are much more profitable) and they certainly don’t want to do their fair share to fund it. Poor and working people must organize to fight for excellent transit, and for transforming cities and systems so that they are designed for human need. This fight against the rule of the rich is part of the socialist transformation of society. Join Socialist Alternative to help us win.
