Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

Take a single senior, for example: the cutoff is $18,900, any senior that worked at all (even for a year or two) won’t qualify for transit: OAS and GIS maximums (low income seniors) is already $18,500, this is the least amount of money you can get. If you receive $90 in CPP, some of GIS will be taken away, and likely leave you with an income around $19,000/year.  What I saying is, the only seniors that might qualify are those that came to Canada and don’t qualify for much or any OAS, GIS and CPP. If you were born and raised in Canada, you won’t get this transit discount.

The region needs to look at how they can get young riders to use the transit, and cheap transit is one way. If you’re a student, and even taking a yellow bus, give them a ride for $1.50 or less, so when they are done with school, they are more inclined to us a bus, rather than buy a car. Get them hooked at a young age.

Yes, basically the program gives a 50% discount to seniors who are living on OAS+GIS only (or equivalent), and none to ones who have substantial other income. Currently all seniors get a 16.7% discount on the monthly passes. While the cutoff is too low it's still far better than the current reduced fare system. A graduated approach to the discounts would be better but I think to make this work the region would need to get the income data from CRA as a manual system gets way too complex. Maybe they are working on this? Or maybe CRA won't do it as a matter of policy? Don't know.

Current student pass is $75, or around $0.90/ride assuming you ONLY use it for getting to school and back. The future discounted pass is about $0.55/ride, and the undiscounted still not much over a dollar. If you're looking at a few-times-a-month usage scenario, the discounted fare (with the card) is $1.49, which meets your criteria.

Overall, moving to this system is the right direction. Hopefully, with experience, it can be expanded and improved in the future.

I'm curious, do any of the discount apply to tickets? Transit passes are great for those who ride frequently, but discounted tickets would also be a good option for many other travel patterns.

[danbrotherston]

Two things here...one, you are making assumptions about the wealth of university students, assumptions which are not justified in all cases.

Second, the UPass is not a government subsidy, it is a student subsidy. Students who don't ride transit (perhaps because they are wealthy and can afford a car) subsidize students who cannot afford a car. Students are subsidized by other students.

It's a program that the STUDENTS voted on, and Conestoga also had the opportunity to vote on. Mind you, they eventually did support it, but not in time not to get fucked over by our shitty provincial government.

And for travelwise, I agree those people are unlikely to need a transit subsidy, I am curious though, I am unsure how that program is funded, if workplaces are funding it, then that's perfectly fine, a workplace can (and should) choose to subsidize transit for their employees.

As for means testing, I have no real problem with it. I'd rather we live in a society with a guaranteed basic income, but that isn't the reality we have right now, and given that our government is unwilling to fund transit like they fund roads, and there are limited dollars to spend and a reasonable means testing makes those dollars go farther, those who need them get them, and those who don't help fund our transit service.

But I'm not sure why you are seeming to take this personally. I see nothing wrong with getting upset about injustices in the world that don't affect you, it's the definition of empathy. I just don't happen to think this is a particularly significant one.

That being said, as I said, I agree, the limits are far too low.

I did not know that about University, but I don’t know the details. I only knew about Conestoga having a much higher rate.

As for TravelWise, I’m not sure if it is subsidized by the employer. That said, being the amount of government workers that can use this service (the cities, the region, the libraries, for example), that subsidy is going to be paid by taxpayers either way.

As for means testing, the approach is all wrong, and very old school and ass backwards. For example, the GST credit and Trillium are all means tested. However, as a taxpayer, you’re not having to do any work for that extra cash, if you qualify. It’s automatic. The household income testing for the GRT, is wrong because you need to collect tax information from all members of the family, you need to highlight take-home pay for all members, and you need to ensure them that you’re living well below the poverty level. This is what makes it wrong.

Take a single senior, for example: the cutoff is $18,900, any senior that worked at all (even for a year or two) won’t qualify for transit: OAS and GIS maximums (low income seniors) is already $18,500, this is the least amount of money you can get. If you receive $90 in CPP, some of GIS will be taken away, and likely leave you with an income around $19,000/year.  What I saying is, the only seniors that might qualify are those that came to Canada and don’t qualify for much or any OAS, GIS and CPP. If you were born and raised in Canada, you won’t get this transit discount.

The region needs to look at how they can get young riders to use the transit, and cheap transit is one way. If you’re a student, and even taking a yellow bus, give them a ride for $1.50 or less, so when they are done with school, they are more inclined to us a bus, rather than buy a car. Get them hooked at a young age.

Yeah, getting people onto transit early makes sense as well. But there's also a risk of it appearing to be the stop gap you use until you can get a car.

Regardless, I'm totally in agreement that the proposed system is pretty poor.  The biggest problem remains the fact that driving is massively subsidized...you are unlikely to be able to beat the driving subsidy just by making transit cheaper. If we mandated that parking cost money for example, the travelwise subsidy would be less important.

[ijmorlan]

It's one more step than today. And one more step than with property taxes. If today's scheme isn't illegal, I don't see why this should be.

I suspect the real problem here is the challenge with the access to income data: without it, it's really hard to do graduated discounts effectively.

While it's far from perfect, this is still much better than the current scheme, at least in my bopinion.

If they can verify a person’s income is under $X they can use the annual income in a calculation that determines the discount in a more appropriate and fair way.

I understand that there are people, not well off, who face a 100% marginal tax rate when all income supports programs are taken into account. In other words, if they earn another dollar it will be taxed at 100%. This is even worse than that: earn one more dollar, lose the entire transit discount.

I know it’s slightly easier to run this program this way, but bureaucratic convenience just doesn’t make it acceptable.

[tomh009]

I'm curious, do any of the discount apply to tickets? Transit passes are great for those who ride frequently, but discounted tickets would also be a good option for many other travel patterns.

Monthly passes and stored value are discounted, but not cash fares (which are more expensive to start with) or machine-purchased tickets. I expect this is because they cannot do the income verification at those points of purchase.

[Bob_McBob]

I strongly support transit subsidies for low-income residents, but the new program is just an insult. According to the original staff report, around 43,000 residents would be eligible for ATP, but only 8,600 are expected to use it. Right off the bat that's a terrible uptake considering car ownership must be significantly lower in this income bracket, and it makes me think a lot of people can't even afford the subsidized rate.

Another thing ATP highlights is just how utterly pathetic the previous TRIP program for low-income residents was. The vast majority of expected ATP users were not enrolled in TRIP because the region made it so difficult. There were only 1,350 people using the program, with a waitlist of 2,150. So we've gone from a completely dysfunctional low-income transit program almost nobody could access to tossing the barest hint of breadcrumbs at poor people and cutting them off the moment they reach an incredibly low income threshold. Not only that, but staff were so concerned uptake might be higher than expected they recommended a staged rollout over multiple years so they could monitor it and adjust the program if necessary. So they literally don't even want most eligible residents to use ATP.

I note the region conducted a large study involving UW and various local groups like Lutherwood to evaluate the effect of this type of subsidy. The key recommendations appear to have largely been ignored in favour of minimizing the budget impact.

• Offer subsidized transit products that are reduced by an average of 48%. 
  
• Make multiple types of reduced-fare transit passes available to people living with low-income, including a product that costs as little as $20.
  
• Consider making lower-cost off-peak transit passes available to the general public.
  
• Develop a capacity for experimentation in the interests of acquiring knowledge and proactively shaping the future.
  
• Continue to work with local community support organizations in a common effort to make affordable transit a reality.
  

The amount the region is committing to this subsidy is literally 0.55% of the net operating budget for all transit services. This line in the staff report says it all: "One of the goals of the review was to ensure no increase to the net levy."

[Bob_McBob]

I suspect the real problem here is the challenge with the access to income data: without it, it's really hard to do graduated discounts effectively.

Why is access to income data a challenge? Anyone applying for ATP who isn't receiving OW/ODSP is required to submit extensive verification of their household income on an annual basis, including CRA assessments, bank statements, and pay stubs.

[tomh009]

I suspect the real problem here is the challenge with the access to income data: without it, it's really hard to do graduated discounts effectively.

Why is access to income data a challenge? Anyone applying for ATP who isn't receiving OW/ODSP is required to submit extensive verification of their household income on an annual basis, including CRA assessments, bank statements, and pay stubs.

Yes, you can ask people to bring in paperwork and have someone go through it and validate it. It will take time, for both the passenger and the staff, and it's no fun for the passenger and it costs money for the region.

Ideally, the GRT staff would scan in an ID card or enter a SIN, and the GRT system would make a request to the CRA system for the family income, and then determine the discount level. The staff member would never see any personal documents or income information, the system would just indicate that this person qualifies for a 40% discount, for example -- and that would automatically be tied to the person's pass or EasyGo card.

[Coke6pk]

Why is access to income data a challenge? Anyone applying for ATP who isn't receiving OW/ODSP is required to submit extensive verification of their household income on an annual basis, including CRA assessments, bank statements, and pay stubs.

Yes, you can ask people to bring in paperwork and have someone go through it and validate it. It will take time, for both the passenger and the staff, and it's no fun for the passenger and it costs money for the region.

Ideally, the GRT staff would scan in an ID card or enter a SIN, and the GRT system would make a request to the CRA system for the family income, and then determine the discount level. The staff member would never see any personal documents or income information, the system would just indicate that this person qualifies for a 40% discount, for example -- and that would automatically be tied to the person's pass or EasyGo card.

First off, accessing the CRA system will never happen.  As an person with high knowledge of federal government computer systems, while client facing systems may appear modern, the backbone of the systems are antiquated.  That gov't employee you are dealing with at a counter is likely to have a DOS based program running on the other side.

Additionally, giving an outside group not involved in tax preparation access to that info would never pass the privacy test the gov't has set up.

Coke

[tomh009]

I did say "ideally"

[ac3r]

Some banks still use ancient operating systems like OS/2, so I can't imagine what sort of servers the government has running in musty old datacentres.

[tomh009]

Some banks still use ancient operating systems like OS/2, so I can't imagine what sort of servers the government has running in musty old datacentres.

There would likely be a lot of z/OS on IBM mainframe hardware. But that doesn't prevent modern connectivity as such.

[jeffster]

Yeah, getting people onto transit early makes sense as well. But there's also a risk of it appearing to be the stop gap you use until you can get a car.

Regardless, I'm totally in agreement that the proposed system is pretty poor.  The biggest problem remains the fact that driving is massively subsidized...you are unlikely to be able to beat the driving subsidy just by making transit cheaper. If we mandated that parking cost money for example, the travelwise subsidy would be less important.

It can be a stop-gap for people, but if it makes them comfortable for using it, they'll use it again. I used Kitchener Transit all through high school (that just aged me), then again for my first FT job, when I worked for the Feds, and the bus dropped me off right in front of my house. Then again when the wife and I shared a car. She'd drop me off at work, go to her work after I was done, then pick her up later on (we had a 4 hour separation of work hours, and I couldn't take the bus as it doesn't run before 6 am).

If you start cutting people off of transit due to costs (no how petty the leaders think it is), people start looking at the pro-vs-cons of costs vs convenience, then you lose that ridership.

I can't help to think that our "leaders" are pre-occupied with costs of the GRT, and they have changed some routes, reducing services, like Sunday service, earlier and later service, and cutting route length. 5 years ago, I could have taken the bus to work, and back home, every day, all within a couple hundred meters of my house (actually, more like 20 meters..but). Now at best, I can walk almost a KM, and with my shifts, I can only use the bus for 6 out of 20 shifts.

I'm not going to lie. I love having a car, I love the convenience, how fast it is to get where you need to go, etc. Apart from my family, especially my daughter who cannot use the bus services due to PTSD (bad shit happened on the transit), I couldn't use the bus anyway, if I wanted to. And they keep making changes, and as far as I can see, these are not improvements, it's either cost saving measures, or increased rates, in this case.

[jeffster]

Why is access to income data a challenge? Anyone applying for ATP who isn't receiving OW/ODSP is required to submit extensive verification of their household income on an annual basis, including CRA assessments, bank statements, and pay stubs.

Yes, you can ask people to bring in paperwork and have someone go through it and validate it. It will take time, for both the passenger and the staff, and it's no fun for the passenger and it costs money for the region.

Ideally, the GRT staff would scan in an ID card or enter a SIN, and the GRT system would make a request to the CRA system for the family income, and then determine the discount level. The staff member would never see any personal documents or income information, the system would just indicate that this person qualifies for a 40% discount, for example -- and that would automatically be tied to the person's pass or EasyGo card.

Here is the catch: The region is looking for "household income". Revenue Canada can only give "Family Income".

Here is the difference: Suppose I have an 19 year old finishing out high school or simply look for his first real job, but still not earning much (saying under $10,000), and I am taking care of an aging parent (this is more factual in my case). The CRA see's 3 families here, me, my son, my mother. We all get separate benefits (if we qualify) based on our NOA and living arrangements (who's paying property taxes, for example).

Region is looking for household income, that is, combined income of 3 different families, in this case.

Another example: suppose a single mother taking care of a young child (say 7 years old), and two teenagers. She works PT earning $25/hour (so a decent job) for 24 hours a week. That's $31,200. Both her teens have summer jobs, with reduced hours during school year, each earning $4,500/year. That takes the household income up to $40,700, and doesn't qualify them for reduced ticket prices, since they are rich.

Again, with the above case, the CRA doesn't hold the kids income against her as 'family income'. Her benefits, like the GST, Trillium, and CCB, is based on her income only. Yet, the region would count the kids income as household income.

It's petty and disgusting. And it leaves family with zero dignity. And by that, I mean families that actually qualify, have to bring all this proof of poverty to the region. In this day and age, you'd expect better.

I really hope someone from the region is reading this, like Redman, because you guys are creepy as hell. Bunch of dingbats running the system over there.

Oh, folks, btw, if you work for the region and you're on the Sunshine List, guess what! You GET A DISCOUNT! Yep, this is what this region has become. What a disgrace. Man...I am so livid.

[tomh009]

I can't help to think that our "leaders" are pre-occupied with costs of the GRT, and they have changed some routes, reducing services, like Sunday service, earlier and later service, and cutting route length.

In general, municipal and regional governments are preoccupied with keeping property tax increases as small as possible. As a result, you can't increase spending much in any given area, unless you are going to cut somewhere else.

The way to solve this would be to rework the funding of municipal governments, but I don't see this as being very likely, at least not in the near to medium term.

[tomh009]

Here is the catch: The region is looking for "household income". Revenue Canada can only give "Family Income".

(...)

Another example: suppose a single mother taking care of a young child (say 7 years old), and two teenagers. She works PT earning $25/hour (so a decent job) for 24 hours a week. That's $31,200. Both her teens have summer jobs, with reduced hours during school year, each earning $4,500/year. That takes the household income up to $40,700, and doesn't qualify them for reduced ticket prices, since they are rich.

Again, with the above case, the CRA doesn't hold the kids income against her as 'family income'. Her benefits, like the GST, Trillium, and CCB, is based on her income only. Yet, the region would count the kids income as household income.

It's petty and disgusting. And it leaves family with zero dignity. And by that, I mean families that actually qualify, have to bring all this proof of poverty to the region. In this day and age, you'd expect better.

I don't think anyone is saying that $40K is rich. But it's above the cutoff, and if this is intended to support low-income families, there needs to be a cutoff somewhere. Same scenario would potentially apply whether the cutoff was $30K, $40K or $50K. And family/household income still does make more sense as a criterion than individual income. (They could have used the CRA definition but then the cutoff point might have needed to be lower in order to keep the expected costs same.)

Now, arguably a graduated reduction in discount would have been better, but that's a different argument.

In terms of dignity, an automated check would surely be better than having to show the GRT staff your pay stubs. At least in my opinion.