Are you talking cost recovery or ridership recovery?
Per-rider operating subsidy.
It falls to roughly 10 dollars per rider on the highest traffic days UPX is now experiencing. Still high, but Sheppard has seen worse in many earlier years. Room to improve, as unlike Sheppard, demand has not yet plateaued.
Simplified round math for readers, trunctated to easy numbers:
80 dollar operating cost per rider for 2500 daily riders (pre-farecut)
20 dollars operating cost per rider for 10000 daily riders (their current best days): 1/4 cost for 4x
Then subtract 10 dollar average fare payment, you get 10 dollar subsidy.
Soon, the 8200/day will be 10000/day average, as the graph momentum suggest plateau will occur above 10,000 riders a day.
Agreed -- Not good enough for 2025, but I can live with that for 2017 "on the journey" of fixing UPX economics. 2017 will be the first full year that matters going forward, more GO management operating structure (fewer UPX executives), the ridership increase, and the low fares.
A very valuable ridership lesson for Metrolinx, which must be applied during their Fare Integration Study.