Ottawa’s budget has nothing to solve OC Transpo’s crippling deficits | Opinion

Last year, the city included $36 million from the province and the feds in the budget. It never materialized. So what does this city do with this budget? It includes $47 million from the province as part of the promised upload of LRT, even though there is no signed agreement. Often, it looks as if we have no clue how to run public transit.

This year, OC Transpo is projecting a deficit of $46.6 million, and the city warns it will get much worse over time. To deal with the current deficit, the budget includes an eight per cent increase in the transit levy, which is about $74 more for the average urban home, and a 2.5 per cent fare increase.

Meanwhile, the city also hopes the anticipated $47 million from the province would wipe out this year’s transit deficit. But what if we don’t get it, like last year? The City has to swallow the costs.

Not to mention this hope of an injection of provincial money does nothing to fix the structural deficit Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has complained about so loudly. Sutcliffe warned last August that OC Transpo faces an unsustainable annual operating deficit of $140 million for the next three or four years, in large part because of falling ridership. Meanwhile, city officials have said that ridership is only expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2030. A 2023 financial update from the city projected that over the next 25 years, it expects $3.7 billion less in fares. Sutcliffe says the picture is so bleak that, without help from higher levels of government, “it won’t even make financial sense to open Phase 2 of light rail.” This is how dire the situation has become, and yet the budget contained little to show that the city is on top of this growing crisis.