Stuck in Toronto traffic? It’s as bad as you think it is -- and likely to get worse

Traffic congestion in the city is nearing 2019 levels, even with fewer cars on the road. It’s not hard to see why.

Thestar.com
Oct. 3, 2022
Lex Harvey

It’s 5:13 p.m. in downtown Toronto. I’m sitting in a car, idling on Wellington Street, just east of Simcoe. The light flashes green, then red again. I haven’t moved. Green again. Still no movement. Red.

A cacophony of car horns, shouting, drilling and clanging form the soundtrack for Toronto’s rush hour.

Green, then red. Another missed opportunity. The other side of Simcoe Street is now in view. Green again. Red.

Then, on the fifth light, a glimmer of hope. I’m first in line. Simcoe Street is free to cross -- but will I be able to clear the intersection? The pedestrian crossing signal counts down to 3, then 2, then finally! Traffic advances, making just enough space for me to pass through.

As the Star’s transportation reporter, I write about the ways in which people move around this city. I’ve been hearing from readers and colleagues about how bad Toronto’s traffic is right now.

So on Wednesday, I did something no sane Torontonian would do.

I got stuck in traffic. Intentionally.

That day, I spent a total of four hours driving around during morning and evening rush hour. I waited in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Gardiner Expressway, squeezed my way down Front Street (where just one of four lanes has been open since March), was diverted off my route several times and even honked once (which, if you know me, is a pretty big deal).

After years of reprieve, the return of concerts, sports events, in-office work and other aspects of city life -- compounded by an onslaught of downtown construction and lagging public transit uptake -- has reinvigorated Toronto’s gridlock.

And with even more construction on the horizon and the gradual return of office workers to the downtown core, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

Torontonians are now spending as much time stuck in morning traffic as they were before the pandemic, according to data from the city.

During the week of Sept. 12, the average trip in Toronto during morning rush hour (8 to 9 a.m.) took 61 per cent longer than it would have taken during “free-flow” conditions. In other words, if a trip would have taken 30 minutes without traffic, it instead took about 48 minutes. That’s the same as the average for the year before the pandemic.

In evening rush hour (5 to 6 p.m.), the average trip took 63 per cent longer, compared to 76 per cent before the pandemic.

But these 2019-style traffic jams are happening even with fewer cars on the road. In the same week in September, car volume at a selection of downtown intersections was just 80 per cent of what it was pre-pandemic.

And that’s while Toronto’s office towers remain relatively sleepy. Just 29 per cent of downtown employees were back in the office as of Sept. 1, according to the Strategic Regional Research Alliance’s occupancy index.

Driving around downtown, it’s easy to see what’s causing the chaos. A smattering of orange pylons, “Construction Ahead” signs and diversions have brought traffic to a standstill and made streets harder to navigate.

On the city’s map showing which Toronto roads are restricted because of construction, it’s hard to make out any roads at all, with a sea of red, yellow and orange dots blocking the core. It’s rare to drive down a street that isn’t at least partly closed. Pandemic-era boons to city life, like CaféTO and more protected bike lanes, have also reduced the amount of space for drivers.

Pandemic-era boons to city life, like CafeTO and more protected bike lanes, have also reduced the amount of space for drivers.

“There is a tremendous amount of construction going on within the city,” said Roger Browne, the city’s director of traffic management.

In fact, there are “well over” 200 cranes in the sky at any given time, making Toronto “the busiest city in North America yet again in terms of construction,” he said. And while construction is the sign of a “thriving city,” Browne said, it’s no question it causes pain for commuters, especially when developers need the right of way on roads.

The number of cranes in downtown Toronto show a vibrant core, but that construction also causes lane restrictions that slow traffic.

Looming large over the wreckage that is much of Toronto’s downtown core right now is the upcoming construction of the Ontario Line. In a report last year, the city warned the building of the 15.6-kilometre rapid transit line will lead to “long-term temporary road closures” through the close of the decade, adding as much as 30 minutes to a drive across Toronto’s downtown.

At the same time, the city is planning to repair chunks of the Gardiner Expressway, replace the King Street streetcar tracks, and upgrade and replace sewers and water mains on a host of downtown roads.

On Wednesday evening around Queen and Bay streets, a police officer had to usher pedestrians across the street safely because the sidewalk was closed. It was a small preview of the headache to come when Queen between Victoria and Bay is completely closed to east-west car traffic between May 2023 and November 2027 while they build the Ontario Line.

To mitigate the effects of construction, Browne said the city is planning to implement more construction hubs, which involve getting all the key players in high-construction areas together to figure out how to make the roads as safe and efficient as possible.

Construction on Toronto streets is one of the main reasons for traffic jams.

Another major reason for Toronto’s traffic woes is that people are trading in public transit for other modes of travel.

“We’ve had people shift from GO (Transit) and the subway to the car,” said Jonathan English, transportation director at the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

Before the pandemic, English said, Toronto’s roads and public transit system were both running above capacity. Now, even as Torontonians have flocked back to other aspects of downtown life, they’ve been slow to jump back on transit, adding pressure to already overburdened roads.

TTC ridership is still just 65 to 70 per cent of pre-pandemic levels during the week, and up to 75 to 80 per cent on weekends, the transit agency said. Meanwhile, GO Transit is still only seeing half the weekday riders it did before COVID, though weekend ridership has more than recovered with the return of sports and concerts, according to Metrolinx’s September report.

Because of how many more people public transit can move than cars, even a fraction of riders changing course can cause congestion, English said. In 2019, more than half a billion people rode the TTC. That’s more than 35 times the number of cars that drive each year on the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway combined.

The risk of catching COVID-19 in crowded spaces could be keeping people off trains, though the TTC and Metrolinx have installed new safety measures like upgraded filters to keep riders safer. But just as powerful are the habits that were formed during the pandemic that are now hard to break.

“Toronto has a very high proportion of people that ride transit -- higher than almost anywhere in North America -- who could afford to drive,” English said. Now, many of those who can drive are choosing to.

Reliability is also a concern for many Torontonians, he said, after dropping revenue and staff shortages during the pandemic forced the TTC and GO to make service cuts.

Roads are there for you in a way that Toronto’s transit just isn’t -- especially when trains only come half as often as they used to. “A transit route is only useful if there’s actually a trip when you want to travel,” English said. “Even the slightest tweak … can drive people away,” he said.

The irony is, Toronto’s traffic has been so bad lately that it’s thrown transit for a loop. On several recent weekends, Union Station-bound GO Transit buses have had to be diverted to suburban train stops due to downtown congestion.

Not only is Toronto’s congestion inconvenient, but it also comes at an enormous cost: to the economy, to public health and to the planet. The GTA loses about $6 billion each year in productivity because of traffic -- a number that’s expected to climb to $15 billion in the next decade as the city grows, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade. The smoke that billows from car exhaust pipes hurts our health, causing an estimated 1,300 premature deaths per year, according to the city.

The transportation sector is the second-largest source of Toronto’s greenhouse gas emissions, representing 36 per cent of the city’s total emissions in 2019, with most coming from personal vehicles. Gridlock wastes fuel and encourages idling.

Solving Toronto’s traffic can’t be done overnight. But one candidate for city council is proposing an idea that’s helped unclog roads in major cities like London and Singapore. Rocco Achampong, who is running to represent Ward 10 (Spadina--Fort York), said the city should charge non-residents who wish to enter his ward a congestion fee (anyone who works in the ward would also be exempt).

While it’s unclear how such a selective policy would be enforced -- not to mention how it would ever get past council -- there’s data to show charging urban drivers reduces traffic.

Drivers entering central London during daytime hours have had to pay a congestion charge since 2003 -- these days a hefty 15 pounds, or about $23, if you don’t live in the area. In 2006, Transport for London reported the charge had decreased traffic by 15 per cent and slashed congestion by double that. Recently, the idea of congestion pricing has gained momentum as cities scramble to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and both New York and Vancouver are considering it.

The closest Toronto has come to a congestion fee was a proposed toll back in 2017 by Mayor John Tory on drivers entering the city on the Gardiner or the DVP. The idea was nixed by then premier Kathleen Wynne, who said it wasn’t fair to charge suburban drivers because the transit infrastructure to get downtown wasn’t good enough.

That’s still the case, English said. “Congestion charges are only a good idea if there’s a really good transit alternative with excess capacity, because otherwise they’re just a regressive tax,” he said.

In London, which already has one of the best public transit systems in the world, 300 buses were added to the streets the day the congestion tax came into effect, and the revenue from the tax is injected back into the public transit system. After the Ontario Line is built, it could be a different story for Toronto, English said.

What to do, then, about the jams?

Space constraints prevent us from building more roads, which are a less efficient and sustainable way of moving people anyhow. The solution then, experts say, must be fewer cars on the roads.

The long-term solution to Toronto's traffic woes is to get people out of their cars and into an alternative form of transportation.

In the long term, that means building subways. But in the short term, the city could build on its existing infrastructure to create more efficient public transit, English said.

For example, he said the city could run the trains on the rail lines that emanate from Union Station more frequently like subways, so they could serve more than just the commuters entering and exiting downtown at rush hour. Integrating the TTC and GO Transit fares, and making transit more affordable overall, could also incentivize people to leave their car at home, English added.

Building more protected bike lanes and designating more bus-only lanes can also help Toronto reduce traffic, said Shoshanna Saxe, University of Toronto professor and Canada Research Chair in sustainable infrastructure.

“The more people who use (cars), the less well they work for everybody. That is not true in the same way for bicycles and for high-quality bus lanes. The more people who use them, the safer and more successful they become for everybody.”

In fact, there are more cyclists downtown than before -- nearly 80 per cent more in the week of Sept. 12 than the average for the year before the pandemic, according to city data.

While stuck in traffic Wednesday, I frequently gazed longingly at cyclists whizzing through the gridlock.

Transit priority is a key part of Toronto’s plan to tackle congestion, said Browne, the city’s traffic management director. Beyond adding more dedicated bus lanes, he said the city is planning to give buses and streetcars in 100 locations across the city “transit signal priority,” which allows the vehicles to extend green lights when they are nearby.

Ultimately, the key to solving Toronto’s traffic problem is making other modes as desirable as possible, said Saxe.

“I think we should be working as hard as we can and as creatively as we can to make this a city where you don’t have to use your car to get around, where the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to get places is to walk, bike or take public transit.”

If my rush-hour experience means anything, the headache of Toronto’s traffic may be what finally pushes people to give up their cars.