Today we reached out to City Councillors in advance of the August 14, 2024, Executive Committee meeting to share our concerns with Administration’s report that details some financial challenges facing our public transit system. Below is a copy of our correspondence.
Dear Councillors,
We are Edmonton Transit Riders, a local non-profit organization advocating for a safer, more accessible, and better public transit system in the Edmonton area. We are reaching out to share our concerns regarding the Financial Sustainability: Addressing Budget and Growth Challenges report coming to the Executive Committee meeting on Wednesday, August 14, 2024.
The report details areas where the City is faced with higher costs as a result of increased inflation, growth, as well as other factors. Several of these areas are relevant to public transportation within the City of Edmonton, including costs associated with parts, fuel, maintenance, labour, our aging fleet, and the existing fare revenue gap. We’re concerned that these budget pressures could be used as rationale to reduce ETS service levels by not providing adequate funding during the Fall Budget Adjustment.
We understand the difficulties the City is facing in addressing inflation, while also recognizing that Edmontonians are similarly feeling those cost of living pressures, therefore we want to emphasize the importance of the City providing efficient low-cost transportation options for its residents, particularly for youth, seniors, and low-income Edmontonians who often have fewer transportation options, and rely on ETS every day to get around our City. Should ETS face further service reductions from the already existing service hour gap, rider experience will suffer, and there will likely be a loss in the significant momentum that we have seen in our transit service over the past few years. We’ve seen over three quarters of a million more trips taken in June 2024 compared to June 2019 – we need to amplify this momentum, not squash it. Lower service levels mean longer wait times for buses and trains, fewer routes to where Edmontonians need to go, more crowded buses on our high ridership routes, and a higher chance of a vehicle breaking down leaving potentially dozens of riders stranded in the middle of their trips. These impacts reduce confidence in our system and push people to other modes of transportation, further increasing our fare revenue gap, and reversing the City’s progress on some of its most central goals detailed in the Big City Moves section of The City Plan such as:
- Achieving a total community-wide carbon budget of 135 megatonnes,
- Net per-person greenhouse gas emissions are zero,
- Welcoming 600,000 new residents into the redeveloping area,
- Converting 50% of trips to public transit and active transportation,
- Creating 15-minute districts that allow people to easily complete their daily needs, and
- Ensuring less than 35% of average household expenditures are spent on housing and transportation.
As we have emerged from the Covid ridership slump, this is an opportunity to welcome all of the new Edmontonians to our system and gain lifelong riders, and we can only do that with an efficient and well-resourced system that is reflective of our City’s dedication to providing high-quality core services to all its residents. Therefore we urge you to maintain ETS service levels by providing adequate funding during the Fall Budget Adjustment.
Sincerely,
Edmonton Transit Riders
Resources:
Action Plan for Addressing Structural Budget Variances