Transit is the ticket to Edmonton’s pandemic recovery.
With lower revenue from two years of slowed ridership, we need funding to prevent cuts to this essential service.
I want to tell the story of Qiping, a transit user of over 30 years. As a single mother with vision impairment, she knew the bus was her ticket to building a joyful life for her and her daughter. The number six bus was a gift that let Qiping get to her job as a food service worker, to her church, to appointments, and to live actively in her community. Now in her 70s, Qiping still takes the bus and continues to enjoy the autonomy that accessible, low-cost public transportation affords her. I love Qiping’s story because I know so many Edmontonians who share it.
We must protect transit services that so many Edmontonians rely on. But I am worried that without help from the provincial and federal governments, revenue shortfalls from lower transit ridership will have a lasting impact on those who depend on this service the most.
When I started driving for Edmonton Transit in the early 1990s, I saw first-hand how transit is essential to the vitality of our city and the dignity of citizens like Qiping. Transit is critical to keep our workforce moving. In 2021, people employed full-time or part-time accounted for 65% of transit riders. Transit has proven to be an essential service throughout the pandemic for front-line workers in healthcare, retail, service and construction sectors; students; parents getting kids to daycare and school; seniors getting their groceries and going to healthcare appointments. Nearly ⅓ of our riders are seniors or youth– two groups for whom driving is often not an option.
Even though transit use has dropped off across Canada since March 2019, riders are starting to come back. In 2021, our ridership reached 58% of what it was before the pandemic and continues to trend upward. Despite those encouraging numbers, we will still have to cope with a projected $85.4 million shortfall over the next two years. We cannot resort to cutting route frequency, operational hours, or pulling money from other City services to make up for lower ridership. I know how damaging that would be for citizens.
My City Council colleagues and I have weighed different options like increasing transit fare rates or raising property taxes to close the revenue gap. But we decided that squeezing the wallets of transit users, homeowners, and businesses during a pandemic is not the solution. Unlike the federal and provincial governments, municipalities cannot run a deficit. This means that revenue shortfalls have to be reconciled every year even during a pandemic.
Edmonton and many other cities have already passed 2022 municipal budgets making it urgent that other orders of government step up immediately to prevent unnecessary service reductions. That is why I am calling on the Government of Canada and Province of Alberta to commit funding in their upcoming budgets that will cover our revenue shortfalls to keep cities running.
This is not an Edmonton issue alone. I am grateful to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and my fellow Big City Mayors for collaborating to tackle this and other issues critical to our citizens’ health and quality of life. Cities are economic drivers that will jump-start Canada as we emerge from two frustrating and draining years. I believe a strong pandemic recovery starts with strong and reliable local public services.
