Toronto’s transit failings confirmed in second study

City retains a devoted ridership despite its failure to expand transit in comparison with U.S. cities, according to a Waterloo study.

thestar.com
Sept. 9, 2014
By Tess Kalinowski

On the heels of a Friday report looking at the plight of Toronto’s transit riders, a second study has documented the loyalty of the city’s commuters to a system that has failed to expand with the population.

It came as no surprise to TTC customers when a Pembina Institute study confirmed last week that the city’s subways have attracted the most devoted transit riders in the country. But Toronto, nevertheless, trails other Canadian cities when it comes to extending the transit system to serve a growing ridership.

Now a companion report from the Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative paints a broader picture, holding Toronto and other Canadian cities up against those in the U.S. and beyond.

Cities south of the border, aided by significant federal investments, have pumped up their networks in a bid to build transit ridership almost from scratch.

“In every case, the Canadian cities’ annual rides per capita exceed their American peers,” says the report, which puts Toronto on a footing with Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia in terms of size, population and economic activity.

Among the three, Dallas provides the most striking contrast. It built 106 kilometres of new rapid transit between 1996 and 2012, compared with our 18-kilometre expansion in the same period. But it had only 11 rides per capita in 2012, compared with 133 in Toronto.

Cities such as Dallas, Salt Lake and Denver - which have all doubled or nearly doubled their networks - “are trying to convince people to change their behaviour,” said University of Waterloo transportation professor Jeff Casello, co-author of Global Transit Investments and Ridership.

“Ultimately they’ll be successful. It will just take some time,” he said.

“I’m dismissive of the idea of a car culture,” said Casello. “Governments act in a certain way that promote the car. They create the car culture. These things don’t naturally emerge. If you look at the U.S., their fuel prices have been much lower than they are even in Canada.”

Philadelphia more closely mirrors Toronto, in that it didn’t expand its rapid transit at all in the study period. But it still attracted eight more rides per capita than Dallas, based on historical transit investments.

Philadelphia’s roads also resemble Toronto’s.

“The fastest growing part of Philadelphia is at the confluence of two major freeways outside of the city centre. That’s not dissimilar to what’s happening where the 401 and the 407 (highways) meet the 400.”

The Waterloo report shows that Canadian cities own slightly more transit on average - about 64 kilometres versus about 58 in the U.S. But American centres built 11 kilometres more than the Canadian cities between 1996 and 2012. Despite that, the Canadian cities showed a 28-ride per capita increase, compared with 7 rides in the U.S. (The Canadian average is only 12 when Montreal’s 51-ride drop is included, but it’s likely the Montreal number is distorted because Laval was incorporated into the city’s system during the study period, Casello said.)

Over the past 20 years, Madrid, Singapore and Los Angeles have each doubled the length of their transit systems.

Singapore has done that through its road pricing and vehicle taxes, and Madrid has built out its system geographically to such an extent the per-kilometre ridership has actually dropped substantially between 1996 and 2012.