Two years after the Ford government launched its signature fare integration program, the eventual opening of the Hurontario LRT is driving a fresh push to expand the program to bring more standard fares and schedules.
As part of omnibus legislation tabled Monday, the Ministry of Transportation will begin working out how to harmonize transit fares in a variety of Toronto-area municipalities, as well as bring more uniformity to schedules.
“We’ve seen the success of one fare, which has been the integration, from an affordability perspective. We’ve seen over 72 million transfers,” Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said on Monday.
“We (want to create) a structure, between municipal transit agencies that are collaborating, working together, whether it be on schedules, whether it be on fares.”
The original policy was launched in February 2024 with a promise to eliminate the barriers for commuters switching between transit systems in and around Toronto.
It scrapped second fares for anyone travelling on any of Toronto’s or the GTA-905’s various transit agencies, charging customers a single fare and reimbursing transit agencies for the funds they would have collected.
The next stage will see the government begin consultations across Toronto and the surrounding area on how to get fares in line with one another. Schedule alignment will also be considered.
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The government indicated to Global News that the new Hazel McCallion Line, set to run along Hurontario Street from Mississauga into Brampton, helped catalyze the next step.
The new light rail route will begin in Port Credit and eventually run all the way into downtown Brampton, crossing municipal boundaries served by two different transit systems.
Currently, Mississauga’s MiWay service charges people tapping a Presto card $3.50, while Brampton Transit costs $3.55. The cash fare in Mississauga is $4.50, compared to $4.75 in Brampton.
If the Hurontario Street LRT were currently operational, that reality would mean customers boarding it in Brampton could pay more than those in Mississauga — or the light rail route costing less than the bus in Brampton, if it only operated on MiWay’s fares.
Ahead of the route’s completion — the date of which is not currently public — the province asked Brampton and Mississauga to work to harmonize their fares so the line could serve both cities.
The two sides, however, couldn’t organically come to an agreement. That, the government suggested, prompted them to ramp up its work to create uniformity for fares across the Toronto area under its OneFare program.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re getting on in Markham or say Mississauga or Brampton, York Region — we (should) have a structure between municipal transit agencies that are collaborating, working together, whether it be on schedules, whether it be on fares,” Sarkaria added.
The omnibus legislation will allow Ontario to write as-yet undecided regulations to bring uniformity to transit fares — and potentially schedules — around Toronto. It will apply to all cities currently involved in fare integration, as well as Hamilton and Halton Region.
The potential next stage, allowing transit services to operate across municipal boundaries, could be the most challenging. A web of complicated union agreements, where operators earn different salaries in different jurisdictions, stands in the way.
The Toronto Transit Commission’s chief strategy and customer officer, Josh Colle, said at a recent Toronto Region Board of Trade event that work is underway for further integration, but barriers remain.
“The collective agreements are our barrier and one we are working through,” he explained. “I think the positive take on that is this is only going to work if we bring everyone along, including the people who actually operate the buses, and so that’s something we’re working on.”
The government is yet to give a timeline for when it could introduce regulations to enable the next step — or how much its target standard fare would be — but said work on consultation will begin quickly.
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