Windsor Star

GAS TAX PAYOFF

Transit Windsor receiving $4M

- BRIAN CROSS bcross@postmedia.com twitter.com/winstarcro­ss

Windsor is getting almost $4 million in provincial money to help run its $30-million transit system. Rider fares pay for roughly half of Transit Windsor’s costs, with the City of Windsor and its taxpayers paying the remaining $15 million.

The gas tax money from the province is usually used to offset the cost to the city, the transit service’s executive director Pat Delmore said Tuesday.

“It’s a pretty substantia­l chunk of money,” he said of the grant, which amounts to $3.9 million, $100,000 more than what Transit Windsor received last year. “We rely on it every year, we know it’s coming.” The gas tax program distribute­s $364 million among 107 Ontario municipali­ties with transit services including LaSalle, which is part of the Transit Windsor system ($52,271), Tecumseh ($191,016) and Leamington ($208,322). It’s based on two cents taken from the sale of every litre of gas and is apportione­d based on ridership (70 per cent of the formula) and population (30 per cent). The previous Liberal government had pledged it would raise the gas tax funding to 2.5 cents per litre for the 2019-20 year, three cents in 2020-21 and four cents in 2021-22, when the total gas tax take would be $642 million. But that appears to be on hold as Doug Ford’s Progressiv­e Conservati­ve government reviews its programs. “We still don’t know if that’s happening,” Delmore said. “They’re not saying yes, they’re not saying no.”

The funding announced Tuesday is based on statistics from 2017, when Transit Windsor ridership began rising thanks to the fall start of transit service to LaSalle and the early success of the UPass program that provides all University of Windsor undergradu­ates with a bus pass. As a result, ridership increased three per cent in 2017. Next year’s gas tax grant will be substantia­lly more because of a double-digit ridership increase in 2018, according to Delmore. Passenger numbers rose thanks to the rising ridership in LaSalle, an expansion of the UPass program and the new presence of thousands of internatio­nal students at St. Clair College who use the bus daily. While Delmore couldn’t provide specific ridership numbers yet for 2018, he said an increase of more than 10 per cent is “pretty substantia­l,” considerin­g many transit services across Canada are plateauing with two-per-cent increases. How to spend the $4 million will be up to city councillor­s at budget time. But municipali­ties are required to spend their gas tax grants on their transit systems, either for capital improvemen­ts or operating expenditur­es. Delmore noted that LaSalle should see a substantia­l improvemen­t in its funding next year when ridership from the first full year of service to the town will be taken into account. Toronto, with the province’s largest transit system, the TTC, will be getting almost $185 million. Other recipients include: Ottawa ($37.1 million), Mississaug­a ($18.7 million), Brampton ($13.2 million), Hamilton ($11.4 million), Waterloo Region ($10.7 million), London ($10.3 million), Durham Region ($8.9 million), Guelph ($3.1 million), Kingston ($3 million), Oakville ($2.7 million), Sudbury ($2.6 million), Burlington ($2.3 million) and Barrie ($2.3 million). “We are investing in public transit to make it a more convenient travel option and to attract more riders,” Minister of Transporta­tion Jeff Yurek said in a news release. “More public transit will cut through gridlock and get people moving.”

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Patrick Delmore

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