(01-04-2023, 10:08 PM)plam Wrote:(01-02-2023, 09:41 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I mean...yes...in that my taxes (or at least, if I lived in the city) should pay for it.
Our government should be making these good decisions.
Should be but GRT gets given a budget amount and it's kind of a zero sum game within that amount... RC should fund it.
If GRT was operated as a transit commission, like the TTC is, then it would be as you describe. However, GRT is operated directly by the region, which comes with upsides and downsides.
As an upside, it's not really a zero sum game with the GRT budget because there is no separate GRT budget, just a regional budget. If ridership is lower than forecast that budget gap doesn't necessarily come out of the GRT budget. A promotion like free NYE fare costs the region money, but it doesn't have to come out of the GRT budget, or require coordination across two agencies (the transit commission and the municipal government).
As a downside, it's not really a zero sum game with the GRT budget because there is no separate GRT budget, just a regional budget. If ridership is higher than forecast, the budget surplus gets returned to the general regional pool, and likely not spent on transit-related things. It might even get spent on road expansion.
I've talked to senior regional staff about this situation, and they feel that it's better to keep GRT as a directly operated service for now so that route planning can be more deeply integrated with the rest of the planning department. Especially given ION construction/expansion (I last had these conversations pre-ION opening). But it does cause internal friction, as it means GRT planning and operations are somewhat separated from each other, and the feedback from one to the other isn't as good as it would be if they were under a single a transit commission, which had more autonomy to make service adjustments. My understanding is that the current structure has a single planning group, which has effectively two separate "contractors" operating their schedules, GRT bus operations and Keolis LRT operations.