Transit is an Essential Service: but we need help to pay for it

Last week I spoke bluntly about the financial hardships the City is facing. I’ve been stressing the difficult financial position the City of Edmonton is in due to COVID-19 since the very beginning of this pandemic. The message hasn’t changed – but I’m glad to see that folks understand, tangibly, what is at stake if our provincial and federal partners do not do their part and help municipalities.

I mentioned transit, off-hand, last week because it’s such a visible municipal service, but I could have easily mentioned several other essential services the city provides that are also at risk. Essential services we all rely on, like transit, fire and police services, garbage collection, and many more.

I’m not trying to be overly alarmist – but I am pushing an early panic button and trying to make tangible what is at stake. For the last few months fellow Mayors from across the country, and myself, have been sounding the alarm re: our financial difficulties. Perhaps we haven’t been blunt enough: our cities are at risk. We need help.

Provincial governments need to be part of this conversation. Mayors across the Edmonton Metro Region made this clear last week when we wrote a joint letter to the provincial government asking the Government of Alberta to immediately join our efforts to seek substantive discussions with the federal government to take action to alleviate the financial difficulties Alberta’s municipalities are facing. For the residents and businesses in our region who continue to rely on municipal services, inaction is simply not an option.

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I was pleased to hear that the Minister of Municipal Affairs (who is from Edmonton and is very familiar with our region) state that his government is committed to working with municipalities to address our challenges and that the provincial government is open to working with the Feds to determine the financial needs of our cities and towns. We’ll be following up with the Minister on this issue and hope our collective calls for action are heard and addressed.

 A quick and complete recovery for our province largely depends on the ability of municipalities to efficiently and effectively recover. We ask that all levels of government work alongside us as we face the challenges ahead. Together we will be more successful.

Yesterday I updated the media on the City’s response to COVID–19 and also answered some of your pressing questions regarding the City’s financial position and transit. I’ve clipped some of the answers for you here:

What does the data say regarding the financial difficulties the City is facing when it comes to transit? How much is transit costing us during this pandemic?

We need more data on the longer-term financial costs. That is why I’ve asked City administration to crunch the long term numbers for us (beyond just this year) and when they release those numbers we will get a big picture view of how long it will take to recuperate our costs. Right now the numbers we have show that:

• Out to June we’ll be about $30 million short on transit funds.
• Out to September it shows we’re short over $50 million in transit funds.

But we need a longer timeline analyzed because it could very well take 2 or 3 or even 5 years before we see transit ridership levels recover to what they were before COVID-19. What is clear is that even if we do reinstate fares, because ridership levels are down and we’ll need to put more buses on the road to maintain physical distancing guidelines, the cost could easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for transit. We expect to receive these financial numbers within the coming week. 

Why not just resume the collection of transit fares? Wouldn’t that solve the City’s financial problem? A lot of other cities aren’t offering free transit – why are we?

I think it’s important to put our financial difficulties into perspective. Riderships is down significantly – around 60% to 80% on a given day. Even if we do start collecting fares, it wouldn’t make-up for the amount we’re losing because not enough folks are riding transit. As we continue to ease restrictions, we’ll need MORE busses on the road to adhere to physical distancing measures: more buses, but the same amount of riders still equals a financial deficit, even if we collect fares.  

Collecting fares safely is also a concern. City Council decided to make transit free because it would limit the exposure of the virus to riders and our ETS staff. We don’t yet have a smartcard tap system that allows for contactless payment. It is also important to note that even cities that continued to charge for transit are seeing significant financial losses. Calgary, for example, is still experiencing a transit revenue shortfall of $10-$15 million.

If ridership is down, then why not just reduce transit service altogether and save money that way?

We’ve heard loud and clear from Edmontonians that they, like me, see transit as an essential service and that we should not be cutting back on transit – we, in fact, should be enhancing it for people who depend on it, like those with mobility challenges and those who need it to get to their employment – many of whom work in essential services industries. 

I do not want to be in a situation where we’re cutting back on public transit. Cities that cut down on transit during this critical time, will struggle socially and economically. We need a robust transit service to recover from this pandemic. The truth is that we’re not going to be in a state of a pandemic for the next 100 years, but our transit system, that we are continuing to build, will be here in the next hundred years, and future Edmontonians will depend on it to get them to where they need to be. For that reason, and many more, I continue to be a strong public transit advocate. 

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