Olivia Chow is promising a weekly TTC fare cap if re-elected. Her rivals say it misses the real issues

Olivia Chow proposes a 10-ride weekly TTC fare cap if re-elected, sparking debate over public transit. TTC fare-capping went into effect in September, with riders paying for no more than 47 rides per month. On Friday, mayoral candidate and current incumbent Olivia Chow promised to give riders an even steeper break – capping fares at 10 rides a week – if she is re-elected this fall.

Announcing one of the first big promises in her re-election campaign, Chow said that after a rider pays for 10 trips in one Monday to Sunday week, every subsequent TTC trip for that week is free. For example, for the average Torontonian who commutes to work on weekdays and pays a fare to and from work each day, that would mean free TTC trips all weekend long. In a press release, Chow added that the weekly cap would mean riders will begin saving sooner.

“If you work from home, get sick or go away for part of a month, you won’t lose the chance to save because you missed a monthly threshold. This will encourage more people to choose transit, helping reduce congestion,” she said. As mayor, Chow has already announced the intention to further cap TTC fares at 40 rides per month in 2027.

It has already been costed out in the 2027 budget with a price tag of $12.2 million. In the campaign announcement, Chow essentially promised the same 40 rides, but split up on a weekly basis rather than a monthly cap. She also promised to freeze TTC fares for a fourth year in a row.

Chow officially launched her re-election campaign on Wednesday and is among 53 candidates running for the City’s top job. The latest poll from analysts at Liaison Strategies suggests Chow has a double-digit lead over her main opponent – former Beaches-East York councillor Brad Bradford. Coming in a distant third is former MP for Ajax-Pickering Chris Alexander, who criticized Chow’s fare-capping announcement as “another admission of defeat” after her “strategy for the transit in the city has failed.” “It sounds in fact like an act of desperation to be promising, on the second day of her formal campaign, a freebie to reduce fares for people after freezing those fares for three years without having solutions for the real issues that are preventing people from coming back to the TTC,” he told reporters.

Chief among those issues, according to Alexander, is reliability and failure to run on time – which he says is the main reason it has been a challenge to bring ridership back up to pre-pandemic levels.