Toronto's Subway Ridership Success

[Cory]

This is in no way intended to start a competition or city vs city debate but I am genuinely interested in what is Toronto doing differently regarding it's interaction with its subway system compared to a city like Chicago.

Toronto currently has half the lines and half the mileage of Chicago's L, but pre-covid had double the ridership of Chicago. What is Toronto doing differently that makes driving the more intimidating option when compared to a comparable city like Chicago?

[Wigs]

Toronto is a more expensive city to live in for the average person. Higher cost of living = less people have cars = higher transit ridership

Canadians generally view public transit differently, particularly in our major cities. It's not seen as "poor person's transportation".
It's seen as getting from point A to point B efficiently and economically. Also parking in downtown Toronto can be expensive.

I'm sure others will go more into detail.

[Doady]

Chicago bus ridership in 2019
CTA bus: 237 million
Pace bus: 33 million
Total Chicago bus: 270 million (unlinked trips)

Toronto bus and streetcar ridership in 2019
TTC bus: 400 million boardings
TTC streetcar: 166 million
MiWay (Mississauga Transit) bus: 55 million
Brampton Transit bus: approx. 40 million
York Region Transit bus: 29 million
GO Transit bus: 17 million
Oakville Transit bus: 4 million
Total Toronto bus and streetcar: 711 million (unlinked trips)

So why does Toronto have twice the subway ridership? Perhaps why does Toronto have three times the bus and streetcar ridership might be the better question.

Chicago rail system suffers from the same problem as many others across the US: lack of buses and bus riders feeding into those stations to help fill those trains. You can see Dallas with the largest modern light rail system in US and Canada, but Dallas has worse overall transit ridership and mode share than Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. The few new rail systems that have become successful such as Portland and Seattle and San Francisco each have strong bus networks and very high bus ridership to support those new rail lines. A place like Las Vegas with high bus ridership might be next in line to build rail. After all, rail is for solving the problem of high ridership, not the problem of low ridership.

That's what people need to realize, that rapid transit is not for increasing speed and convenience, but rather for maintaining the same speed in the face of increasing ridership and overcrowding. Rapid transit is about increased capacity. An empty bus operating in a new subdivision is just as fast as the Yonge subway train. Empty buses not a problem here, but rather the problem is the too high ridership on these buses, the lack of capacity of these buses, and that is when the speed of the buses becomes a problem. Toronto is building rail because the suburban buses are getting too crowded, even with 3 minute frequencies. The buses have been getting slower and slower as result, and so limited stops and all-door boarding measures were added to more and more bus corridors, but still not enough.

Speaking from my experience, even way out in Mississauga, the buses along Hurontario Street (19/19A/19B/103/502) got limited stop service (formerly routes 102 and 202, but replaced by 103, plus 502 from Brampton Transit) for 3 minute frequencies combined but it's still not enough so they had start replacing it with LRT. Buses along Dundas Street are coming every 4-5 minutes (9-10 minutes each for regular 1/1C Dundas and limited stop 101/101A Dundas Express) mostly with 60-foot articulated buses so I wouldn't be surprised for rail conversion there one day too.

You want to fill trains? How can you fill 450 foot long trains like those of TTC subway if you can't even fill regular 40 foot buses? Think about that. Fill more of the buses, bring more and more them to and from the train stations, then the trains will become much more useful and they will become much more full as well. Every line needs connections to many other lines, they cannot exist in isolation. After all isolation goes against what transit is about. To have lack of connections and so many gaps in the system only makes the system more difficult to use. To talk about Toronto's subway in isolation is a good example of the problem. Like the CTA L, the TTC subway only represents a minor portion of transit ridership in Toronto, not even 50%. The L and TTC subway aren't like Metra and GO Trains that rely so heavily on park-and-ride. You want to bring L ridership to 470 million like TTC subway, then you need to work on bringing CTA and Pace bus ridership to 710 million like TTC bus, MiWay, Brampton Transit, etc. And intimidating people probably won't be the way to get there. You need to have a complete transit system, and Chicago just doesn't have that, despite having a heavy rail system that is more than twice as large as Toronto's. Chicago needs to fill in the gaps.

And Toronto isn't doing anything much different from other Canadian cities either. You can see ridership not so different in Montreal. Considering the population, Winnipeg has better transit ridership than Chicago as well with around 70 million boardings annually and 13% transit commute mode share. Is Winnipeg such an expensive city to live in? No, it's just about filling in those gaps in the transit network.

[Cory]

I was also ignorant of Toronto's dense streetcar network that looks to do a good job of funneling people into the Subway. Chicago's lines all have the same goal of getting downtown which I'm sure can get old when you need to get on another line to get to another part of town, unless you live in the loop of course.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Toronto is a more expensive city to live in for the average person. Higher cost of living = less people have cars = higher transit ridership

I find when dealing with stats, it's best to use the actual numbers. From what I can find, the cities have roughly the same car ownership rates. This site has Chicago having 26.5% of households car free in 2015 while this site claims Toronto's car-free number is 28% of household.

[Nite]

The key to Toronto high transit usage that other cities some follow, is a great bus service with high frequencies at all parts of the city at all times. Rarely would you have to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus anywhere in Toronto.

Cities that focus all their transit attention to rail and neglect buses will never have a good transit system because Buses will always reach more parts of the city so high frequencies are key.

• Video Link

[Yuri]

Aside those things people mentioned above, Chicago urban footprint is much larger than Toronto. Those far away, low density suburbs certainly don't help to boost ridership in the city.

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Aside those things people mentioned above, Chicago urban footprint is much larger than Toronto. Those far away, low density suburbs certainly don't help to boost ridership in the city.

The area of Chicago and Toronto are nearly the same with nearly the same population of 3 million in the city and 10 million in the urban area

Chicago: 607 sq km
Toronto: 630 sq Km

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Nite

The area of Chicago and Toronto are nearly the same with nearly the same population of 3 million in the city and 10 million in the urban area

Chicago: 607 sq km
Toronto: 630 sq Km

Chicago urban area is about 2.5 larger than Toronto's. Los Angeles and Toronto urban areas are the densest in North America.

Population wise, they're closer though. The US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada haven't released the UA numbers, but Chicago probably reached 9 million andToronto (including Hamilton and Oshawa UAs) 7 million.

[pdxtex]

I read a survey about wfh in NYC and 70 percent of respondents said crime on the subway was their number one deterrent in returning to work. So your answer is psychos. Similar concerns in Portland. Crazy shit has been happening alot recently.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

I read a survey about wfh in NYC and 70 percent of respondents said crime on the subway was their number one deterrent in returning to work. So your answer is psychos.

Crime on NYC transit is near record lows.

Pretty sure less people are taking transit bc less people are working in offices everywhere. Also, tourism won't fully recover for a few years. These general trends aren't NYC-specific, but everywhere in the developed world.

As for the thread topic, all things equal, Canada is much more transit-oriented than the U.S. More centralized, lower incomes, greater congestion, less sprawl, fewer highways, more immigration, none of the historical racial baggage. It isn't shocking that Toronto has higher transit usage, despite a somewhat less extensive/robust system.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I find when dealing with stats, it's best to use the actual numbers. From what I can find, the cities have roughly the same car ownership rates. This site has Chicago having 26.5% of households car free in 2015 while this site claims Toronto's car-free number is 28% of household.

If those stats are accurate and apples-apples, it would show that Toronto has a much lower vehicle ownership rate.

The modern city of Toronto is mostly postwar suburban sprawl, added to the city proper a few decades ago. Chicago city proper is more analogous to the old city of Toronto. So if Toronto has equivalent vehicle ownership today, it's a much less car-oriented city.

[hipster duck]

In terms of things that a transit agency or transit planners can actually change, the biggest reasons are:

1. The extent of Toronto's 10-minute-or-better frequent bus and streetcar network, and the fact that all but one surface transit route connects to the subway. This has been discussed to death on this forum;

2. The design of almost all subway stations as intermodal transit terminals with bus transfers within the fare-paid zone, rather than getting people to exit the station and board the bus on the sidewalk;

3. In the 1950s and 1960s the TTC mostly built subways underneath existing commercial streets while the CTA built el lines in the medians of freeways that ripped through communities. Toronto built one extension in the median of a highway and, relatively speaking, it's kind of an underperformer;

4. The headway of the subway itself, which is <5 minutes even during evenings and weekends;

- A relatively minor contributor, but one that actually puts Toronto's situation in a bit of a negative light:

5. Most of Toronto's bus routes terminate at a subway station, even when the road continues past the subway, so people are forced to transfer at the subway station to another bus to continue their trip on the same road.

Here's an example. If the bus ran past Yonge, you would only have to make 1 transfer rather than 2.

This increases subway ridership, even if the user is no better off.

[Crawford]

One could also argue that Toronto rail, while more limited, is much more efficient and integrated into the city's fabric. Toronto Union Station is basically the dead-center heart of the city, and is integrated with major subway hub, financial district, and underground city. while Chicago's rail stations are on the downtown fringe, and not even integrated with rapid transit.

Chicago's showplace district, North Michigan Ave., has no rail transit. That area was residential and not particularly important when transit was built. So the main hub for shopping and tourism is pretty detached from transit. In contrast, Toronto's primary hubs are all along Yonge and Bloor, the main subway lines.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Crawford

If those stats are accurate and apples-apples, it would show that Toronto has a much lower vehicle ownership rate.

The modern city of Toronto is mostly postwar suburban sprawl, added to the city proper a few decades ago. Chicago city proper is more analogous to the old city of Toronto. So if Toronto has equivalent vehicle ownership today, it's a much less car-oriented city.

I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like what you mean is that Toronto has a lower car ownership rate than one would expect given its built form? Or that the metro-wide ownership rates in Toronto may be lower given the lower ownership rate in suburban part of the city proper? But the ownership rate in the city propers is what it is. The original question was about absolute numbers in terms of the comparative ridership. In either case, if you have about the same number of people and same number of cars then it's not going to make for a big difference in transit ridership so if you have a difference it must be caused by something else. If anything, you'd expect the more urban place to have higher ridership since even if they owned as many cars, they wouldn't need to drive them as much.

If both city propers have a similar population and similar rates of car ownership, it's a bit of a stretch to say that this means the one with the more urban built form is therefore more car-oriented since its ownership rate should be lower than it is.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like what you mean is that Toronto has a lower car ownership rate than one would expect given its built form? Or that the metro-wide ownership rates in Toronto may be lower given the lower ownership rate in suburban part of the city proper?

Yes, both of these points. Toronto has similar vehicle ownership across extremely dissimilar geographies, suggesting it's significantly less car-oriented overall. I wouldn't expect Etobicoke and Scarborough to have similar vehicle ownership as the North and South Sides of Chicago, but it appears to be the case. It essentially means that (postwar) suburban Toronto has similar vehicle share as (noncore) urban Chicago.

[niwell]

Based on my 15 or so visits across various parts of the city, Chicago definitely feels a bit more car oriented, even in areas that are more traditionally urban than anything Toronto has to offer. Saw a lot more traffic lineups at things like schools / daycares cycling around well-off areas, plus the massive parking podiums on new towers. Also evident while riding the El during rush hour as compared to the TTC. Though COVID and recent security concerns have certainly metered that feel in Toronto a bit.

I live in a pretty wealthy neighbourhood and during the week plenty of expensive cars remain parked (can tell from the plant matter/dust). Once summer weekends hit they are gone. Partly due to WFH I imagine, but also due to transit commuting and doing stuff on foot. Talking to people in Chicago - even those in the service industry - it seemed like a car is considered a bit more of a day-to-day necessity. Though obviously plenty of people live without one.

[mhays]

I haven't seen one of the key factors yet:

Toronto's growth tends to be highly concentrated, with dozens of tower clusters right next to transit.

Chicago's is more dispersed. Outside of limited highrises areas, it's a townhouse city and a SFR city.

Townhouses are great but residents probably aren't as close to trains as a big cluster of towers might be.

[MolsonExport]

Accessing DT Toronto by car is daunting, even during the off hours on weekends. Sure the 401 is 20+ lanes wide in some spots, but that does not stop it from slowing to a snail's pace much of the time. To say nothing about the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway (aka Don Valley Parking lot).

[llamaorama]

I think a big problem in Texas and other states is that mass transit is funded locally by sales taxes, and the amount of sales tax that can be collected by local governments is capped. So transit competes with other desired uses of that revenue. Since the other source of revenue for local governments is property taxes, and since property taxes are unpopular, lots of cities would rather take the full 2% they can get from sales tax and not have transit at all. This is the case with Arlington, which is 350k people and no transit at all except for a commuter rail station on the outer edge of it's city limits. Arlington has piloted various transit services in the past and they never performed very well. Arlington wastes money to keep pro sports in the city, but also for a city that is mostly comprised of working class older suburbia it does well on public services and amenities

I think if transit was run more at the county level or it was possible to have truly regional transit agencies with more varied sources of funding you'd see an improvement.

I blame the poor ridership conditions here in Fort Worth (something like 15,000 bus riders a day, before COVID it was like 30,000) on the fact that the bus only really goes between downtown and a few central neighborhoods. There a handful of long routes into suburbs that are part of Fort Worth and a commuter rail line to the airport that it partially operates, but aside from that lots of places aren't reachable. What would work better, in some alternate universe where politics allowed it, is if "Tarrant County Transit" was a thing that existed and there were buses that ran out to say, UT-Arlington, Tarrant College in North Richland Hills, Alliance Airport(business district not a place you fly out of), etc.

Another flaw I see looking at the map of routes here is that they seem to have been drawn without any real examination of where the places they go are actually like. For example a lot of routes on the west side terminate at Ridgmar Mall. I'm sure that was a great setup back in 1992 but Ridgmar Mall is dead and mostly empty and surrounded by blighted vacant retail centers. Really instead of this, buses should trunk together on the freeway frontage roads and then there should be a transit center on Camp Bowie West somewhere, which should have BRT, and which should be targeted as a redevelopment area.