By the numbers · Guelph Transit · 2019 to 2025
Same buses. Same riders. $8.8 million more a year.
In September I asked the City five written questions about what Guelph Transit costs and what we get for it. The answer came back in October. This is what the City's own numbers say, in plain English, with the source under every figure.
+53%
transit's cost to property taxes, 2019 to 2025
+5%
bus service hours over the same six years
+4%
riders (boardings) over the same six years
+21%
inflation over the same years (Statistics Canada)
If you read nothing else
- Your share went up 53%. Property taxes covered $16.6M of the bus system in 2019 and $25.4M in 2025. Prices rose 21% in the same years.
- You got almost the same bus. Service hours up 5%. Boardings up 4%. Riders per hour of service: 29.2 then, 29.0 now.
- One hour of bus went from $122.65 to $160.68. Nobody on Council has asked why, and staff haven't said.
- Students pay most of the fares. The U-Pass is now 63% of all transit revenue. Everyone else's fares fell 20% last year.
- The City can't report the one number its own plan told it to track. Riders per hour by route is “not readily available in a reportable format.”
This isn't a case against transit. Ward 5 has the highest transit demand in the city and the service has to keep pace with it. It's a case for knowing what we get for the money, because right now the City can't tell you, and the next ten-year plan is being written without that answer. The fix is cheap. It starts with a scorecard.
Published October 5, 2026· based on the City of Guelph's written answer to candidate questions, posted October 2026, plus City budget books and year-end reports for 2019 to 2025.
The bill: costs up 37%, revenue up 18%, taxpayers cover the rest
Every bus system in Canada runs on a mix of fares and taxes. The question is the mix. In 2019 fares and passes paid for 45 cents of every dollar Guelph Transit spent. In 2025 that was 38 cents. (City Candidate Portal answer, October 2026; the shares are our arithmetic on the City's cost and revenue lines)
What the buses cost, and what riders and partners pay
Guelph Transit conventional service, operating cost and total revenue, $ millions
- Operating cost
- Revenue (fares, U-Pass, ads, charters)
- The gap: paid from property taxes
| Year | Operating cost | Revenue | Gap paid by taxes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $29,969,080 | $13,371,022 | $16,598,058 |
| 2022 | $34,298,401 | $13,386,726 | $20,911,675 |
| 2023 | $35,965,878 | $14,910,148 | $21,055,730 |
| 2024 | $37,830,532 | $15,730,452 | $22,100,080 |
| 2025 | $41,187,562 | $15,761,490 | $25,426,072 |
Cost up 37% and revenue up 18% since 2019. Canada-wide inflation over the same years: 21%.
The City's own budget books tell the same story from the other direction. The Guelph Transit department's tax-supported budget, which also includes the smaller Mobility service for riders with disabilities, went from $18.8 million in 2019 to $28.4 million in 2025, up 51%. (2019 budget book, Table 58; 2025 year-end operating report, Attachment 1)
The part your property taxes cover
Operating cost minus all revenue, conventional service, $ millions
- Paid from property taxes
- If it had only grown with inflation (CPI)
| Year | Net cost to levy | Inflation-only path from 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $16,598,058 | $16,598,058 |
| 2022 | $20,911,675 | $18,318,886 |
| 2023 | $21,055,730 | $18,892,495 |
| 2024 | $22,100,080 | $19,466,105 |
| 2025 | $25,426,072 | $20,039,714 |
If transit's cost to taxpayers had simply kept pace with inflation since 2019, it would be about $20.0 million today. It's $25.4 million. That $5.4 million a year is the part that needs an explanation.
On your tax bill
The City publishes what each service costs the typical home. Transit was $288 of a $4,007 bill on the average home in 2022. It was $413 of a $5,103 bill on the median home in 2025. Up 43% in three years. (2022 and 2023 budget executive summary, “Average Property Tax Cost by Service”; City property tax Q&A, 2025 table)
Transit's share of all property taxes went from 7.65% to 8.10% over the six years. Small shift, big base: the total levy itself grew 44% in that time, from $244 million to $351 million, and transit grew faster than that. (City answer (the percentages); levy totals from the 2019 budget book, Table 11, and the 2025 budget page, Table 13)
What the extra money bought: 5% more service, 4% more riders
This is the chart I keep coming back to. Put cost, service hours and riders on the same footing, with 2019 as 100, and two of the three lines barely move.
Same buses, same riders, a lot more money
Operating cost, boardings and revenue service hours, indexed so 2019 = 100
- Operating cost
- Riders (boardings)
- Service hours
| Year | Cost | Riders | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| 2022 | 114 | 68 | 94 |
| 2023 | 120 | 96 | 106 |
| 2024 | 126 | 111 | 103 |
| 2025 | 137 | 104 | 105 |
Guelph ran 244,348 hours of bus service in 2019 and 256,328 in 2025. It carried 7.14 million boardings in 2019 and 7.44 million in 2025. Riders per hour of service, the number every transit planner watches, was 29.2 then and 29.0 now. Flat. (City answer; riders per hour is our division)
So the money went into the cost of each hour. The City gave me that figure directly.
What one hour of bus service costs
Operating cost per revenue service hour, the City's own figure
- Cost per service hour
- 2019 cost adjusted for inflation
| Year | Cost per hour | Service hours |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $122.65 | 244,348 |
| 2022 | $148.73 | 230,615 |
| 2023 | $138.94 | 258,860 |
| 2024 | $150.40 | 251,538 |
| 2025 | $160.68 | 256,328 |
An hour of bus service cost $122.65 in 2019 and $160.68 in 2025. Inflation alone would have taken it to about $148. The City's 2025 year-end report points at pieces of the answer: overtime ran 74% over budget across the City, transit included, and bus repairs ran $1 million over because of aging buses, pricier proprietary parts and outsourced maintenance. (2025 year-end operating report, pp. 7 and 9) But I searched 850 hours of council meeting transcripts from 2023 to 2026. No councillor ever asked why the cost per hour went up, and staff never explained it. (search the council record for yourself)
The plan Council approved in 2021
Council approved the Guelph Transit Future Ready Action Plan on November 15, 2021. It promised 110,938 new service hours, 26 more buses and 100 more operators over ten years, for a net cost to taxes of $13.08 million a year by 2034, with 2% a year inflation built in. (City plan page; plan PDF, pp. 11, 55 and 59)
Four years in, service hours are up 11,980 on 2019, the last normal year before the plan. Measured from 2022, the plan's first year, they're up 25,713, still under a quarter of the hours promised. The net cost to taxes is already up $8.8 million on 2019. The plan's own ridership target for 2025 was 7.69 million; the City carried 7.44 million. (plan PDF, Table 14 p. 55; City answer; the comparison is ours)
Staff have been straight with Council about the slowdown. In November 2023 they said the tabled budget had already stretched the ten-year plan to roughly thirteen years. In the 2024 and 2025 budget presentations they said route expansions had been moved to the plan's last years. The 2026 budget book says the plan “remains on track.” (Special Council budget meetings, November 29, 2023, October 30, 2024 and October 29, 2025, transcripts; 2026 budget update, p. 47) Fair enough. But the money kept going up anyway.
Who pays the fares: students carry the system
Of the $15.8M Guelph Transit took in last year, $10.0Mcame from the U-Pass, the pass University of Guelph students pay for through their student fees, and since September 2025 Conestoga students too. That's 63% of all transit revenue. Everyone else who taps a card or drops cash in the box paid $4.6M.
Who actually pays the fares
Transit revenue by source, $ millions
- U-Pass (university and college students)
- Farebox (everyone else)
- Charters, advertising, lease, card sales
| Year | U-Pass | Farebox | Other | Total | U-Pass share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $7,515,137 | $5,385,054 | $470,830 | $13,371,022 | 56% |
| 2022 | $7,985,322 | $4,807,665 | $593,740 | $13,386,726 | 60% |
| 2023 | $8,147,084 | $5,706,351 | $1,056,713 | $14,910,148 | 55% |
| 2024 | $8,879,666 | $5,820,654 | $1,030,132 | $15,730,452 | 56% |
| 2025 | $9,987,029 | $4,631,578 | $1,142,883 | $15,761,490 | 63% |
Three things to notice. The U-Pass line has grown every year, up a third since 2019, because enrolment grew. The City's year-end reports credit U of G enrolment for transit's budget surpluses in 2022, 2023 and 2024. (2022, 2023 and 2024 year-end operating reports) That is a real strength. It is also a dependency: a dip in enrolment is a tax problem the next year.
Second, the farebox has gone backwards. It brought in $5.39 million in 2019 and $4.63 million in 2025, down 14%, while fares went up. In 2025 alone it fell $1.19 million, or 20%, in a year the adult fare rose a nickel and boardings fell 6%. (City answer; City fare notice)
The City's documents explain some of that drop. Free passes for the two lowest income tiers of the Affordable Bus Pass were budgeted at $143,000. The youth and seniors free-ride pilots were budgeted at $174,000. Conestoga students stopped paying at the farebox in September when their college pass started. Add it up and well under half the drop is accounted for. The rest isn't explained anywhere I could find, and the 2025 year-end report says transit revenue beat budget “due to increased ridership” in the same year the City's own table shows boardings down 490,000. (Mayor's proposed 2025 budget update, pp. 2–4; 2025 year-end report, pp. 5 and 10; Conestoga U-Pass per staff, Council, November 26, 2025)
Third, the free-ride programs didn't do what they were meant to. Staff reported to Council in September 2025 that youth ridership “has not demonstrated an increase” after seven months (up 2%, with a dip in the spring), and that senior ridership over a full week was flat even though Thursday boardings rose. The programs were made permanent on January 1, 2026 at $162,000 a year. There was no council vote: the item sat in the Mayor's budget and nobody moved to take it out. (Youth Ride Free pilot report 2025-448; Seniors One Day Ride Free pilot report; staff response to Mayoral direction, October 16, 2025, p. 5)
I don't think free rides for kids and seniors are a bad idea. I think a $162,000 decision deserves a ridership target and a date to check it. This one got neither.
Why this lands hardest in Ward 5
Ward 5 has the highest transit demand in the city: students, seniors, families, the regulars on the route from downtown to Stone Road Mall. Frequency and reliability on Gordon, Stone and College have to keep pace with 7,000 student beds. (Jon's priorities, priorities 03 and 10)
That's also where the money comes from. The students who ride those routes pay 63% of every fare dollar through the U-Pass. If the 99 bunches on Gordon or the evening bus doesn't show, it's a Ward 5 problem first. And when the City says it can't report riders per hour by route, the routes it can't report on include every one that runs through Ward 5.
What the City can't tell you yet
The financial table above was the answer to my first question. The other four got shorter answers. Here they are, in full.
I asked
Ridership and productivity by route and time of day, 2023 to 2025, and what service changes staff made using the plan's targets.
The City answered
Compiling the information requested requires a significant amount of manual review and is not readily available in a reportable format.
I asked
What the City learned from on-demand transit since 2021: trips, cost per trip, bookings it couldn't fill, rider feedback.
The City answered
No numbers. The City said on-demand began during COVID on low-ridership routes, has been moved back to regular routes as ridership recovered, still runs early and late on Sundays, and that conventional service gives more capacity and predictability as ridership grows.
I asked
What it would take to run buses every 15 minutes on the main corridors, all day, seven days a week. Cost, buses, operators, and whether staff have modelled it.
The City answered
Compiling the information requested requires a significant amount of manual review and is not readily available.
I asked
Which other cities staff looked at for the new network plan, and what they learned.
The City answered
No city named. Staff “regularly exchange knowledge” with other agencies and Guelph is “unique in its size.”
Here's why the first one matters. The 2021 plan set a clear rule: on a route carrying 30 or more passengers per hour at peak, add buses; at 10 or fewer, cut back. It said ridership per route “will have daily and weekly reports created,” that the numbers come off the buses' automatic passenger counters and fare boxes, and that a “larger annual service review” would follow. (Future Ready Action Plan, Table 11 p. 44, p. 46 and p. 73) Five years later, the City says that same measure “is not readily available in a reportable format.” Either the reports exist and nobody will pull them, or they don't exist. Both are fixable.
It shows up on the council floor too. When Council added the Route 98 Speedvale expansion to the 2026 budget last November, $642,235 for two months and $1.39 million a year after that, a councillor asked what share of that route taxpayers would be covering. Staff: “We don't calculate a subsidization rate,” and later, “It's one revenue bucket and we aren't able to break it out.” The motion carried 7 to 6. (the vote, on the council record; Special Council budget meeting, November 26, 2025, transcript)
The next network plan is being written right now. Staff told the Accessibility Advisory Committee in April that the Transit Network Design Plan goes to Council in spring 2027 and feeds the next four-year budget that fall. In July they told the same committee that survey respondents picked hourly fixed routes over on-demand “glaringly,” and that “there's something broken in our on demand.” Asked about 15-minute service, transit planning staff said in February it “would be very nice,” but they didn't know if it was possible across the whole city. (Transit Network Design Plan page; Accessibility Advisory Committee, April 21 and July 21, 2026; Transportation Advisory Committee, February 19, 2026, transcripts) That's an honest answer. It's also the answer you get when nobody has run the numbers.
The riders' own advocates are asking for the same thing
The Transit Action Alliance of Guelph is the volunteer group that speaks for bus riders at City Hall. They lobbied for the Route 98 expansion. They are not a cost-cutting crowd. And their 2026 material for candidates lands in the same place this page does. Their words, not City data:
“Free transit on a broken system is just a free ticket to frustration.”
“Before adding new service hours, audit low-performing routes or off-peak runs to re-deploy existing buses and drivers to high-demand areas.”
“The appropriate response involves operational accountability, publishing performance dashboards, and protecting consistent daily service schedules.”
“Capital without service hours creates a $185M high-tech warehouse for idle buses.”
TAAG candidate briefing deck, “Beyond the Bus,” September 2026, on the new transit facility
Their deck also flags what they call the student dependency trap: by their count, post-secondary students were about half of all boardings in 2025, and the system's revenue leans on student fees rather than the wider public. That's their arithmetic, and it matches what the City's revenue table shows. (TAAG briefing deck, slide 13; TAAG election resources)
Where I'd push further than they do: a dashboard is only worth having if Council votes on it, with a date. Frequency before free fares, and a scorecard before the next plan.
What I'd do about it
Respect for your tax dollar isn't a slogan. It's knowing what you got for the money. Three things a Ward 5 councillor can actually move, and when.
A transit scorecard, every quarter, on guelph.ca.
Cost per service hour, net cost per rider, the share riders pay, and riders per hour by route and time of day. The 2021 plan already promised the route numbers. I will move it as a motion in the first budget cycle, with a report-back date, so staff get the mandate and the time to build it.
Explain the $160 hour before the next plan is approved.
Before Council votes on the Transit Network Design Plan in 2027, Finance and Transit table a plain breakdown of why an hour of bus went from $122.65 to $160.68: wages, overtime, fuel, parts, contracted maintenance. Then the plan carries a cost-per-hour target it has to hit, the way it already carries a ridership target.
No fare change without a ridership test and a date.
Every fare program, free or paid, comes with a target, a cost, and a day Council looks at the result before it becomes permanent. Staff's own reports showed the 2025 pilots were flat. The process should have caught that before January 1.
What a councillor can't do: set fares alone, or rewrite a budget the Mayor tables. Under the strong-mayor rules the Mayor writes the budget and Council amends it by majority vote, which is exactly how Route 98 got in last year, 7 to 6. A scorecard motion needs seven votes. The point of publishing this is to make those seven votes easier to find.
Two things I'm not saying. I'm not promising a zero tax increase; anyone who does doesn't understand the budget. I'm not proposing to cut the buses. Guelph needs more frequent service on its busiest corridors, and Ward 5 has the highest transit demand in the city. I want the City to be able to show, route by route, that the next $8.8 million buys it.
The short version, again
Transit's cost to property taxes went from $16.6 million to $25.4 million between 2019 and 2025. Service hours rose 5%, riders 4%, inflation 21%. The cost of an hour of bus went up 31% and no one has explained why. Students now pay 63% of all transit revenue. The free-ride programs were made permanent after staff reported they hadn't moved ridership. And the City says it can't report the one number its own plan told it to track.
None of that is a scandal. It's what happens when a $41 million service runs without a scorecard. Fixing that costs almost nothing. Any business would do it in its first week.
About these numbers
The spine of this page is one City document: the written answer to my five transit questions, posted on the City's Candidate Portal in October 2026 under the title “Guelph Transit Financial, Ridership, and Service Performance Overview.” The portal needs a candidate login, so the full text is reproduced below. Every other figure comes from a City budget book, a City year-end report, the Future Ready Action Plan, a City news release, or the council record. No figure on this page comes from news coverage.
The City's table covers conventional transit only. Mobility service, the door-to-door buses for riders with disabilities, is included in the department budget figures and in the “share of taxes” percentages but not in the cost, revenue, hours or ridership lines. The City did not provide 2020 or 2021, the pandemic years, so the charts leave them blank.
Where the page says “our arithmetic,” it means a subtraction, division or percentage done on the City's published figures: net cost (cost minus revenue), cost per rider, riders per hour, the U-Pass share, and growth rates. The City's own cost-per-hour line reproduces exactly when you divide its cost by its hours, all five years. The City's “percentage of taxes supporting transit” line reproduces for 2022, 2024 and 2025 as the department net budget divided by the total levy; 2019 and 2023 are within about half a point and the City hasn't published its method.
One number isn't the City's: inflation. It is Statistics Canada's all-items Consumer Price Index for Canada, annual averages, 136.0 in 2019 and 164.2 in 2025, from the agency's annual review published January 19, 2026.
The provincial gas tax, about $3 million a year, is not in the City's revenue table because Guelph books it in the capital budget to buy buses, not in operating revenue. So the “net cost” here is the operating subsidy from property taxes; the full public cost of transit is higher once bus purchases and the new $184.6 million Transit and Fleet Services Facility are counted. (2026 budget update, pp. 56 and 67; 2026 budget confirmation)
Council transcript quotes come from the searchable record on this site, built from the City's own meeting videos. The transcripts are machine-made and have no speaker labels, so a speaker is named only where the chair named them. Search the council record.
The City's full financial table, as provided
| Year | Operating cost | Revenue | From taxes | Service hours | Boardings | Cost / hour | Net cost / rider |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $29,969,080 | $13,371,022 | $16,598,058 | 244,348 | 7,139,870 | $122.65 | $2.32 |
| 2022 | $34,298,401 | $13,386,726 | $20,911,675 | 230,615 | 4,849,905 | $148.73 | $4.31 |
| 2023 | $35,965,878 | $14,910,148 | $21,055,730 | 258,860 | 6,866,205 | $138.94 | $3.07 |
| 2024 | $37,830,532 | $15,730,452 | $22,100,080 | 251,538 | 7,933,850 | $150.40 | $2.79 |
| 2025 | $41,187,562 | $15,761,490 | $25,426,072 | 256,328 | 7,444,064 | $160.68 | $3.42 |
Operating cost, revenue, service hours, boardings and cost per hour are the City's figures. “From taxes” and “net cost per rider” are our arithmetic. Revenue detail by year: 2019 farebox $5,385,054, U-Pass $7,515,137, charters $83,717, advertising $362,110, lease $25,003. 2022 farebox $4,807,665, U-Pass $7,985,322, charters $74,698, advertising $461,636, lease $23,797, card and coupon sales $33,609. 2023 farebox $5,706,351, U-Pass $8,147,084, charters $546,468, advertising $441,331, lease $14,600, card and coupon sales $54,314. 2024 farebox $5,820,654, U-Pass $8,879,666, charters $503,740, advertising $435,255, lease $44,026, card and coupon sales $47,111. 2025 farebox $4,631,578, U-Pass $9,987,029, charters $587,164, advertising $484,081, lease $35,784, card and coupon sales $35,854. Percentage of taxes supporting transit (conventional and mobility, based on budget): 7.65% (2019), 7.94% (2022), 7.53% (2023), 8.62% (2024), 8.10% (2025).
Sources
- City of Guelph, Candidate Portal, Guelph Transit Financial, Ridership, and Service Performance Overview (October 2026; candidate login required).
- City of Guelph, Guelph Transit Future Ready Action Plan (approved November 15, 2021) and the City's plan page.
- City of Guelph, year-end operating budget monitoring reports: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
- City of Guelph, 2019 Approved Tax Supported Operating Budget; 2022 and 2023 budget executive summary; 2024–2027 multi-year budget; 2025 budget; 2026 budget; Printable 2026 budget update.
- City of Guelph, Mayor's proposed 2025 budget update; staff response to 2026 Mayoral direction (October 16, 2025); 2026 budget confirmation news release (November 26, 2025).
- City of Guelph staff information reports, September 19, 2025: Youth Ride Free Pilot Program (2025-448) and Seniors One Day Ride Free Pilot Program.
- City of Guelph, property tax questions page (2025 cost by service); 2026 changes for Guelph Transit; Transit Network Design Plan engagement page.
- Council and committee meetings, from the council record on this site: Special Council budget meetings of November 29, 2023, November 26, 2025 (Route 98 vote) and others; Transportation Advisory Committee, February 19, 2026; Accessibility Advisory Committee, April 21 and July 21, 2026.
- Statistics Canada, Consumer Price Index: Annual review, 2025 (January 19, 2026).
- Transit Action Alliance of Guelph (quoted as their view, not as City data): Beyond the Free Ride (September 16, 2026); 2026 election resources with the candidate briefing deck and candidate Q&A (released October 4, 2026).
Quick answers
- How much does Guelph Transit cost taxpayers?
- In 2025, conventional Guelph Transit cost $41.2 million to run and brought in $15.8 million from fares, the U-Pass, charters and advertising. The $25.4 million gap was covered by property taxes. In 2019 that gap was $16.6 million. (Source: City of Guelph, Candidate Portal answer, October 2026.)
- How much of my Guelph property tax bill goes to transit?
- The City says transit took 8.10% of property taxes in 2025, or $413 on the median $410,000 home. In 2022 the City put it at $288. (Sources: City of Guelph property tax Q&A page; 2022 and 2023 budget executive summary.)
- Is Guelph Transit ridership going up?
- Boardings were 7.14 million in 2019, 7.93 million in 2024 and 7.44 million in 2025, a 6% drop in the latest year. The Future Ready Action Plan had targeted 7.69 million for 2025. (Sources: City Candidate Portal answer; Future Ready Action Plan, Table 14.)
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