Free Transit is in Town, For Now
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- Published on Thursday, 23 April 2020 02:16
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2069 ... April 23, 2020
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Free Transit is in Town, For Now
Stefan Kipfer
Even before the current pandemic, the idea of free transit had arrived on the mainstream political scene in Toronto as well as in other parts of Canada.
In 2018, Saron Gebresellassi included fare-free transit as a plank in her campaign for Toronto mayor. Since then, some Liberal politicians have raised the issue. In 2019, CUPE Local 2 (representing electrical workers at the Toronto Transit Commission) picked free transit as a demand around which to mobilize against Ontario Premier Doug Ford (CUPE 2, 2019). In early 2020, the Amalgamated Transit Union Canada, a union known for actively defending the revenue base of its industry, published an article on its website calling for gradual implementation of fare-free transit (Burt-D’Agnillo, 2020). Meanwhile, spontaneous turnstile jumping became more frequent even in Toronto, not a city known for spontaneous citizen action.
Why this new wave of popularity for the idea of free transit?
* Transit organizing. In Toronto, Free Transit Toronto had been advocating for fare freedom throughout... the 2010s (Rosenfeld, 2018). In the last two years, similar groups emerged elsewhere in Canada, for example, Free Transit Ottawa and Free Transit Edmonton. In the same period, there has been another wave of free transit initiatives around the world, either in the form of free transit policies (recently in Dunkirk, Luxembourg, and Kansas City, for example), or in the form of mass movements sparked by the cost of transit fares (in Chile in 2019). As a result, a world-wide constellation of free transit movements has become more visible than ever. In Canada, organizers now consider a nation-wide movement for free transit possible.
* Rider frustration. In Toronto, transit riders’ frustration reached a new level in 2019 and 2020. While service continued to deteriorate and crowding on buses, streetcars and subways kept intensifying, fares were increased yet again. Fare policing was ramped up, more fare inspectors were hired, and publicity campaigns against fare evasion were mounted. But many riders refused to be seen as latent criminals by the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) loud anti-evasion campaign. Crucially, people most targeted by transit police -- those racialized as non-white, including Black Torontonians -- were more than ever tired of risking their lives due to aggressive, racist fare enforcement.
* The climate crisis and political consciousness. The climate strikes in late 2019 mobilized new masses of young people. Many among them came to recognize the contradiction between racialized capitalism and the future of the planet. Some also realized that climate justice is impossible in a world dominated by fossil-fueled transportation. Finally, the idea of universally accessible, equitable, and generous public services is just plain common sense after a generation of failed ‘market-based’ experiments, including, in public transit, user-fee increases and public-private partnerships for fare collection systems and new projects.