I think the flavour of the article is a bit misleading. They talk about the fact that transit's share of the commuter market has not increased, which gives the impression that transit is suffering from a lack of success. However, the TTC has set record ridership levels for the last 3 years and is carrying more riders than it ever has in its history. The volumes are higher, and ridership has seen significant growth, but service levels have not been increasing to match. Most of the gain has actually occurred during the off-peak periods, so the market share numbers for the home-to-work commute don't necessarily tell the whole story. In fact, if transit's market share of peak period commuter travel were to increase, the TTC simply couldn't carry the resulting volume of riders.
The problem is that the TTC is the perfect example of what happens when you don't properly invest in your infrastructure. Politicians have been happy to let the ridership numbers grow, to see the city continue to grow, developments continue to be approved, cranes dotting the skyline, but they haven't wanted to spend money to properly maintain the existing system, let alone expand capacity. They are happy enough to give out property tax freezes and income tax rebates and credits rather than re-invest in the transit system, and we city residents happily accept this "found" money as our due. But then we look around and suddenly realise that the buses and subways are over-crowded, the service is unreliable and slow, the vehicles are old and decrepit, the fares are high, and the system is dirty and, by gosh, it must be the fault of those lazy, overpaid piggies they call transit employees. Now, not to say that there is no blame to lay there (we all have our horror stories to tell), but the system isn't in trouble because of what the employees are paid. The system is in trouble because it's been starved and virtually ignored for 20 years. It wasn't too long ago that bus drivers were being paid to do nothing because, with a fleet that was twice as old anything on the continent, there too often wasn't a working bus for them to drive their shift. You want a fancy new, electronic fare collection system? Well, perhaps the subway tunnel liners can be left to leak and deterioriate for a few more years, or the subway signals can be coaxed to last for another 8-10 years beyond their recommended end-life so that everyone can happily oohh and aahh over their new fare cards. At least Miller made a start on catching up a bit by replacing the bus, streetcar and subway fleets, and increasing some off-peak service. And even when there is money to expand, it's wasted on subway extensions to low-density fields while people are falling out of the windows in over-crowded buses, streetcars and subways. The Eglinton LRT is the only bright spot on the horizon, but even that has been shortened from it's original plan to be a true cross-town line (assuming it actually gets built this time around).
And now, here we are again with cut, cut, cut and everyone is screaming that it's all the union's fault or it's management or both. What's so frustrating is that no one in charge has been willing or able to sit the taxpayers of this city down and tell them the truth. If they want a first-class transit system, then they'd better brace themselves and pay up because that's what it's going to take to make up for 20 years of neglect. You aren't going to fix it by firing half the employees and cutting the pay of the rest. If the taxpayers would rather stick their heads in the sand and just continue to blame the transit employees, then we'd be better off just selling the thing to the highest bidder and be done with it. I don't know whether I'm more frustrated or depressed. Sorry for the rant.