"We fall behind by standing still": Transit riders warn provincial transit cuts set up fiscal cliff

February 17th, Victoria BC

Transit advocates are warning that proposed BC Transit funding cuts tee up a disastrous scenario for transit services across the province.

Budget 2026, released Feb 17th, freezes all transit funding, necessitating service cuts across the province.

"We fall behind by standing still," says Sam Holland, Chair of Better Transit YYJ, a group that advocates for more and better transit in the Capital Region. "Every year, we need at least a small amount of additional hours to make up for increasing traffic. Without that funding, transit gets slower, less reliable, and less frequent, and we lose riders."

In Victoria, slower buses caused the transit commission to ask the province for a 15,000 hour service increase just to maintain service levels. Because of the funding freeze, BC Transit will need to cut service instead.

In Budget 2025, transit was promised an additional 158,000 service hours for 2026 and 55,000 hours in 2027. Budget 2026 cuts these promises down to a single expansion of 127,000 in 2026, with no expansion in any following year. Because BC Transit is required to plan for service using projections from the previous year’s service plan and budget, BC Transit will need to implement a cut of 30,000 service hours in the next year.

When transit gets worse, people choose other ways of travelling, lowering fare revenue. This sets up what is often referred to as a "death spiral", where less revenue causes service cuts, which lower fare revenue further, leading to more service cuts. 

"In regions dependent on fare revenue, including Victoria, we are looking at serious fiscal cliffs as we lose riders," says Holland. "These cuts set up a situation where each local transit commission will have to make a decision in the coming years— property tax hikes, or cuts to service."

The cuts come at a delicate time for transit in Victoria. The Capital Region’s annual service plan shows that in 2024 and 2025, more than 5% of all trips were overcrowded, and several of the busiest routes have overcrowding in excess of 15%. BC Transit's targets an overcrowding rate of under 1%.

"Victoria already has worse overcrowding than even Vancouver." says Holland. "Traffic is getting steadily worse. When buses and roads are full, the response should be investing in more and better transit. Thousands of riders depend on transit service to get around, and not everyone has the ability to ride a bike or drive a car to work, school or to get groceries. At the very least, the province needs to give regions the funding tools to pay for transit themselves."

Overcrowding is also an issue on several BC Transit routes outside of Victoria, most notoriously on the Fraser Valley Express, which connects Fraser Valley communities to Metro Vancouver.



Under the BC Transit Act, regions outside of Vancouver are not permitted to make up for lost provincial funding, as the province funds a fixed share of transit costs. The same goes for service expansion, with all service expansion requests being approved or denied by the Ministry for Transportation and Transit.

Media Contact:
Sam Holland

Chair, Better Transit YYJ

hello@bettertransityyj.ca
250.508.7703 (please leave a message)