The federal government is poised to release their next-generation transit investment program, the Canada Public Transit Fund. It may surprise you to learn that not a single penny of this $30-billion program is allowed to go toward stopping transit service cuts. Since 2016, it has been the federal government’s policy to limit the public transit funding it provides to building new subway or light rail infrastructure or buying new buses. It cannot be used to make existing transit more reliable by increasing service hours and the frequency of trains or buses. This is despite studies showing that these measures are the most important drivers of key outcomes like ridership growth and emissions reductions.
It feels like I’m missing something, maybe because I’m not a politician or a transportation engineer. It’s very common that upper spheres of government will provide extra funding focused on capital expenditures like building new infrastructure but won’t commit to operational expenditures like maintenance and salaries.
I wonder if it’s some sort of political game of being able to claim funding for shiny new things, because expansion is flashier than maintenance. Or maybe there’s a real governance aspect to it, considering that OPEX should stay under control at the right level as to not overstep the scope of each sphere of government - transit agencies should not grow accustomed to funding that is supposed to be extra. IDK, I guess I’m not ready to have an opinion on this. I’ll just trust whatever the folks at Movement say.