Jennifer Smith

The following letter was submitted in response to a letter from Councillor Rick Malboeuf in the February 22nd issue of the Champion.

---

To the Editor, Milton Champion -

I had honestly hoped that Councillor Malboeuf would have used the time since last month's budget meeting to educate himself on the economics of public transit, but apparently the efforts of staff and his fellow transit committee members to correct him have fallen on deaf ears.

To be clear, the numbers he quoted in his letter are the gross transit budget figures, as he well knows. After taking fares and the gas tax into account, the actual cost to taxpayers for our transit system is $1.5 million, not $2.5 million. And that number will continue to go down as ridership increases and our share of the gas tax goes up once the 2011 census figures are in.

The fact is, transit is one of those rare services that costs less the more people use it. Small increases in service levels - added routes, more frequent and more convenient service, etc. - result in ridership increases that far exceed the financial investment. The 50% increase in Milton Transit ridership that followed a 35% increase in service was not a fluke, nor was it purely seasonal. It was entirely typical of transit ridership patterns everywhere, and is showing every sign of continuing.

Conversely, small decreases in service and convenience generally result in drastic drops in ridership, making the whole system less efficient and more costly. If this is Mr. Malboeuf's intent, then he is definitely on the right track with his proposed quarter million dollar budget cut.

As far as other transit systems go, I agree that we should be comparing apples to apples. Of the examples he cited, Toronto is a huge metropolis; Georgetown is practically a village. Let's look at Peterborough instead, which has a comparable population to Milton at about 80,000 and a similar reliance on private cars for commuting.

Peterborough Transit has twelve bus routes (as compared to our six), runs seven days a week, and has an annual ridership of almost three million trips. That's nearly twenty times more riders than we have for about two and a half times the cost.

Of course, Peterborough has had a lot more time to develop their transit system. Comparatively speaking, Milton Transit is still in its infancy. Let's not strangle it in the cradle.
_________________________________

UPDATE: The letter was published in the Champion on Tuesday, March 1st. Well, most of it anyway - they edited a bit of the snark out.