Toronto has the worst average commute in the world

[Haljackey]

You've compared Toronto with an extreme example of overbuilding a highway network. I can't say our network doesn't look extensive on that map. Downtown is served by two highways, the Gardiner/QEW and DVP/404. The rest of the city has huge highways. Why would our downtown have more highways? Would it be preferable for Spadina to go from vibrant and historic urban arterial with lots of pedestrians and businesses to a trench with a lot of noise and pollution, surrounded by a dead zone. Vancouver has less developed highway network. Even considering their smaller size, so how do you account for the fact that they're not at the bottom of the list for commutes?

Building more highways is not a good idea. Highways work to dump more cars onto existing arterials. They then have to widened, which can cause a lot of damage to neighbourhoods. It's impossible in the older parts of the city without destroying a lot of what makes this city great: history and cohesive and walkable neighbourhoods. It also requires more wasted land on parking. Transit can handle our commuting needs a lot more efficiently and without the damage.

Actually my intention was to compare it with another city with a similar population to Toronto. I agree that Houston's network is over-bloated, but I just wanted to get the point across that Toronto's highway network is small compared to other major cities in North America.

Actually the downtown is served by one route according to your description. The QEW/Gardiner/DVP/404 is all one route if you continue driving on it.

I never said Toronto/the downtown should have more highways. I just said if it did I'd be willing to bet average commute times would go down based on this report.
-The time for building more highways has long passed. That was so 20th century. However good upkeep of the existing network is important.

Haljackey, I'm going to agree that we bust up some Toronto neighbourhoods to increase the number of highways.

Under one condition!

You move to Toronto and live next to one of these brand new and oh-so-bloody-necessary highways to commuter heaven.

Ah, right, didn't think so.

A livable city (which short commute times are amongst the indicators of, I'd say) is not achieved by a critical mass of highway infrastructure. Just thought I'd point that out.

Building more highways is just as regressive and oppressive as 90 minute average commute times. Hence, barely the answer to the question.

Check my reply to junctionist, I never said Toronto should build more highways. Of course a livable city is not achieved by a critical mass of highway infrastructure. However a well designed highway network is one step toward lowering commute times, which in turn makes the city more livable. Barcelona's network (#1 on the list) is a prime example of a good highway network.

PS: North American cities are hardly a model to aspire to. Well, maybe they are if you're so convinced of your inalienable right to live 60km from work behind a garage fronting a face-less suburban backwater cul-de-sac, with the supermarket offering so much parking it looks like an air field in sattelite imagery and the drive-through of your favourite "restaurant" no more than ten minutes away and your neighbourhood not being burdened by such mundane and archaic concepts such as character. Well, if that's you....I dare say, the highway is thine destiny!

Wow, where did that come from? I certainly disagree with this statement as I am a advocate for transit and living close to work. No one likes long commute times but I guess there are some people according to your analogy that put it aside to achieve their type of lifestyle. That's certainly not me.

Besides, suburbia is unsustainable. Once gas prices get $2.50-3 and over you're going to see a lot of suburbia and exurbs become ghostowns because of their overreliance on one form of transportation.

 

[kettal]

Great news, everybody! The National Post says commute times are fine in Toronto, and that everyone should just drive, and everything else you hear is just fear mongering from the "transit-industrial complex". Phew, what a relief.


The great gridlock joke
Terence Corcoran, National Post Published: Saturday, April 17, 2010
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=2917948

Here is the document which Mr Corcoran cites as proof that cars are better than transit: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-622-x/89-622-x2006001-eng.pdf

Incidentally, that same document also shows that bike commutes are faster than cars, and walk commutes are the fastest of all. Perhaps his methodology is flawed?

 

[hbl33]

While it's been common sense that public transit is faster than private transportation, I find Corcoran's conclusions are true about TTC (though I don't understand his approach too well). From my experience to this day, walking along Dundas from McCaul to Yonge is only within 10 minutes (whereas streetcar is 15 minutes and up!) Same for MT, with route 26 from Confederation to SQ1 requires me at least 10 minutes spare wait time before boarding bus (and gets me there in 10 minutes)! I can walk within 10 minutes for the same itinerary.

 

[SunriseChampion]

It came from that place in my heart reserved for things I dislike.


You did it again. You're still comparing our highway network to other cities in North America as if their structure was something to aspire to.

PS: I'm happy to know you share my disdain for inefficiency as it relates to our cities' built form.

 

[saiho]

Here is the document which Mr Corcoran cites as proof that cars are better than transit: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-622-x/89-622-x2006001-eng.pdf

Incidentally, that same document also shows that bike commutes are faster than cars, and walk commutes are the fastest of all. Perhaps his methodology is flawed?

well LA has lots of highways to move lots of people quickly and New York has lots of subways to move lots of people quickly but Toronto has neither. Plus, LACMATA has some new LRT/pre-metro lines that totally creams transit city, even if the provincial government did not cut funding to transit and it all of it actually got built.

 

[Calrissian]

well LA has lots of highways to move lots of people quickly and New York has lots of subways to move lots of people quickly but Toronto has neither. Plus, LACMATA has some new LRT/pre-metro lines that totally creams transit city, even if the provincial government did not cut funding to transit and it all of it actually got built.

Um.. wrong... Toronto's transit system is the second largest (New York #1) in North America, and its subways carries more people than all other subways (minus New York and Chicago) in N.A., and as mentioned in various prior posts, (and general stats) the 401 is the busiest stretch of highway in N.A., add in 407, 404, DVP, QEW, 400, 427, we have more than enough highways to carry a lot of cars... Not saying its the end, and Toronto is complete, but it does discredit your silly statement that "Toronto has neither".

 

[Second_in_pie]

Um.. wrong... Toronto's transit system is the second largest (New York #1) in North America, and its subways carries more people than all other subways (minus New York and Chicago) in N.A., and as mentioned in various prior posts, (and general stats) the 401 is the busiest stretch of highway in N.A., add in 407, 404, DVP, QEW, 400, 427, we have more than enough highways to carry a lot of cars... Not saying its the end, and Toronto is complete, but it does discredit your silly statement that "Toronto has neither".

Firstly, it's true that Toronto has the 3rd largest and busiest subway system behind Mexico City and New York. But against slightly smaller systems like that of DC and Chicago, Toronto actually kind of pales in comparison. There's two reasons for this.

Firstly (continuing to use DC and Chicago,) Toronto has a very long, snakey system. In DC and Chicago, they might serve a smaller area overall, but they serve that inner area well, with good coverage. Toronto doesn't really emulate that. We have one line looping through the core and going straight N/S, and another line going E/W just above the core. This setup leaves huge blank squares in transit service, instead of an obvious suburban area. Is Kennedy and Eglinton of insignificant difference from Don Mills in terms of built up urbanity? No, it's a quantum leap between Don Mills and Eglinton and Kennedy. Toronto's ready to go the whole way, to make mass transit a major part of life, like in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Mexico. We basically have right now a blank canvas. We don't have a beautiful picture, and we don't have an average one. We have a bare bones transit system that's being asked to develop somehow.

That leads into the second point, which is that Toronto's system is, as of now, overburdened. We need to expand our transit system. This isn't just a problem of straight moving people around, we need to create new routes just for transit users. And by expanding transit to meet our needs, we'll allow ourselves to continue towards a Transit-centric built form like that in Europe and New York.

Also, a little misnomer about Toronto transportation in general. We can boast all we want about our high use transit system, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of service in it. We essentially have two lines (two and a half,) and have literally all our passengers bottlenecked into those two. It's the same story with our highways. We have two highways coming into the core, again bottlenecking transit into a small area. I'm not for any new highway development in any way, but other cities choosing to appease to cars have four or five expressways going into the core. The only reason the 401 is the widest highway in the world and busiest in North America is that there aren't any alternatives. They could have built an alleviator along the FHC or something, but instead chose to keep building up the 401 so it became a mega-highway that could be replaced by 3 other normal-sized ones. I honestly can't think of anywhere else in the world where this happens.

 

[saiho]

Um.. wrong... Toronto's transit system is the second largest (New York #1) in North America, and its subways carries more people than all other subways (minus New York and Chicago) in N.A., and as mentioned in various prior posts, (and general stats) the 401 is the busiest stretch of highway in N.A., add in 407, 404, DVP, QEW, 400, 427, we have more than enough highways to carry a lot of cars... Not saying its the end, and Toronto is complete, but it does discredit your silly statement that "Toronto has neither".

Um... there are so many things wrong with that statement i don't know where to start. OK, Your comparing to the US which is a joke when it comes to transit especially, heavy rail metro transit. apart from the 2 cities you have mentioned, all the other cities that have subways are a joke eg. Cleveland, Baltimore,Atlanta, Miami, etc. a hopelessly flawed and very nearsighted comparison. Have you ever wondered why the 401 is the busiest highway in NA? because it is practically the only full E-W metropolitan freeway that is free and that is the reason it is congested out of its mind, plus what does having the busiest highway have to do with slow commute times? Just irrelevant. on the other hand, so what if it is big, wide, and has lots of capacity, apparently every day you go on it you wish it was bigger,wider and more overbuilt. Plus, naming all the highways to make to Toronto look like it has lots of expressways is not very convincing. you want me to name all the expressways of LA? Sure why not:
Glendale Freeway
Santa Ana Freeway
Golden State Freeway
Santa Monica Freeway/San Bernardino Freeway
Antelope Valley Freeway
Seaside Freeway
Pomona Freeway
Marina Freeway
Gardena Freeway
Hollywood Freeway
Ventura Freeway
Terminal Island Freeway
Glenn M. Anderson Freeway/Century Freeway
Harbor Freeway
Pasadena Freeway
Ronald Reagan Freeway
Foothill Freeway
San Diego Freeway
Long Beach Freeway
that my misguided friend, is only in LA proper and they are huge expressways not like the DVP or Gardiner. Funny how you don't go naming the subways like you do for expressways, not that it would have helped your case, but I will do it for you: BD line, YUS line, SRT, and Sheppard. Is that awesome or what? no, of course not! You are exactly like Toronto, don't build anything. It will fine. if we think we are lacking something then we are just being "silly". I think I ultimately discredit your silly statement that "Toronto can do nothing and get way from it"

 

[golodhendil]

Um.. wrong... Toronto's transit system is the second largest (New York #1) in North America, and its subways carries more people than all other subways (minus New York and Chicago) in N.A., and as mentioned in various prior posts, (and general stats) the 401 is the busiest stretch of highway in N.A., add in 407, 404, DVP, QEW, 400, 427, we have more than enough highways to carry a lot of cars... Not saying its the end, and Toronto is complete, but it does discredit your silly statement that "Toronto has neither".

Um, fact check. Not sure what your "largest" means, but if you are talking about rapid transit route length then, even excluding Mexico, TTC is smaller than NY, Chicago, DC, SF, Boston, Montreal, Vancouver and even Atlanta; our commuter rail system is also smaller than NY, Chicago, Boston, LA, Philly and DC. The only way Toronto's transit system might be "bigger" is if we count the route length of all surface bus and streetcar routes throughout the GTA. In terms of ridership, TTC has lower than NY, DC and Montreal (but is actually higher than Chicago); GO train has less than NY and Chicago and is basically comparable to Boston.

OK, Your comparing to the US which is a joke when it comes to transit especially, heavy rail metro transit. apart from the 2 cities you have mentioned, all the other cities that have subways are a joke eg. Cleveland, Baltimore,Atlanta, Miami, etc.

Just to nitpick. US cities that you fail to mention, in particular DC and Boston, while not perfect and obviously not comparable to the best Asian or European systems, are decidely not "jokes", and arguably have "better" systems than Toronto.

 

[DTGeek]

Um, fact check. Not sure what your "largest" means, but if you are talking about rapid transit route length then, even excluding Mexico, TTC is smaller than NY, Chicago, DC, SF, Boston, Montreal, Vancouver and even Atlanta;

Well obviously the metric is ridership. By the way, as an ex-Torontonian living in the SF area, I'm always shocked at the fact that BART is 50% longer than the TTC's subway/RT system. Its daily ridership is only ONE THIRD that of the TTC subway, and to me the system seems completely useless, as the way it's implemented amounts to semi-commuter-rail (many of the areas it serves lack decent local transit or density to feed into it).

Most of the talk in this thread is about planning, but at least in the case of the Bay Area, I'd say the commute difference has more to do with geography, weather, demographics and/or culture. Because of the lack of land and high housing prices, there isn't really much of an outer frontier like the 905, everyone is sort of trapped in the valley, and outside of SF proper there's a lot of homogeneity. And a lot of people rent and are therefore more mobile. People here tend to live MUCH closer to where they work in my experience than Torontonians. And why not, it's all pretty much the same.

On the other hand, in the GTA there's still something of a cultural expectation that if you're middle class and settling down and starting a family that it's reasonable to move into a nice detached home in suburbia. A lot of people also seem to think they should live in the nicest place they can afford that's within some tolerable commute radius. And the majority of people I've known who had a ridiculous commute did so by choice -- by choosing to live unreasonably far from where they work. There's also much less of a car culture in Toronto, which actually probably increases commute times, but leads to a much more sustainable city. If I'm driving MYSELF to work, my tolerance for commute length is significantly lower than if I'm just sitting on a bus or subway reading or napping or listening to my ipod. I think this is why a lot of very heavy transit cities (see also: NYC) will have longer commutes. This study would be more interesting if it were about how PLEASANT the average commute is. Snow and storms also don't help much with that average.

Anyway, the main thing I'm getting at is that there is no way IMO that the public transit or freeway systems or planning here are on par with Toronto's, or even close. The whole area just feels like an unplanned hodgepodge, where by comparison Toronto feels extremely well-organized. Even with such absurd real estate prices here, you still see things like 70s-era residential areas with large undeveloped lots smack in the middle of them (obviously the nicer areas don't have this, but still), and just terrible and seemingly random zoning in general, topped off by much of the peninsula being a collection of tiny 100,000-people municipalities that clearly ought to be merged. I think the commute differences have much more to do with other factors.

 

[golodhendil]

I basically agree with what you are saying. BART is indeed, usually, characterized as a hybrid metro/regional rail system. SF also tend to have generally worse transit usage than many of the comparable cities, particularly Boston, DC (both of which might be bloated by a higher "transient" population of students and people on business), Montreal, Vancouver, and definitely Toronto. But in any case, even if Calrissian were referring to ridership, he was still incorrect as I pointed out.

 

[kettal]

He's certifiably wrong in saying "its subways carries more people than all other subways"; but in a measure of total ridership, TTC is second to MTA.

 

[Calrissian]

Um... there are so many things wrong with that statement i don't know where to start. OK, Your comparing to the US which is a joke...

...that my misguided friend, is only in LA proper and they are huge expressways not like the DVP or Gardiner. Funny how you don't go naming the subways like you do for expressways, not that it would have helped your case, but I will do it for you: BD line, YUS line, SRT, and Sheppard. Is that awesome or what? no, of course not! You are exactly like Toronto, don't build anything. It will fine. if we think we are lacking something then we are just being "silly". I think I ultimately discredit your silly statement that "Toronto can do nothing and get way from it"

Hey, YOU were the one saying against LA and NYC, toronto doesn't have transit/roads to move a lot of people. I was pointing out that that was false.

And yes, I said Toronoto's Tranist SYSTEM, (not subway/RT only..) is #2 (after NYC) in ridership... thought that was obvious, but I can see how it could be misleading as people would associate that directly with just the subway. (Athough the ones on the ball in this forum were able to glean that from my statement).

My point basically was: your point was false. and still is. We need NO more new highways to move people (cars, actually)... Our transit system (Not just subway) carries alot of people, we need more of THAT, in the forms of: Transit city, subways, ROW, regional rail, etc.

 

[saiho]

Hey, YOU were the one saying against LA and NYC, toronto doesn't have transit/roads to move a lot of people. I was pointing out that that was false.

And yes, I said Toronoto's Tranist SYSTEM, (not subway/RT only..) is #2 (after NYC) in ridership... thought that was obvious, but I can see how it could be misleading as people would associate that directly with just the subway. (Athough the ones on the ball in this forum were able to glean that from my statement).

My point basically was: your point was false. and still is. We need NO more new highways to move people (cars, actually)... Our transit system (Not just subway) carries alot of people, we need more of THAT, in the forms of: Transit city, subways, ROW, regional rail, etc.

No i am saying, that Toronto transit system FAILS to serve the needs of the city. So what if the carries so and so amount of people it still FAILS to serve the needs of our city. Also its expressway network FAILS to serve the city's traffic and it FAILS to be effective, should I go on? I used New York and LA as polar opposites in the transit spectrum and even though all the cities in NA fall somewhere in between; Toronto manages to be stuck in a loop of lose-lose compromises between the two. The result, a city with both bad transit and a bad expressway network and of course we would wish to move closer to the New York side of spectrum.

 

[Calrissian]

No i am saying, that Toronto transit system FAILS to serve the needs of the city. So what if the carries so and so amount of people it still FAILS to serve the needs of our city. Also its expressway network FAILS to serve the city's traffic and it FAILS to be effective, should I go on? I used New York and LA as polar opposites in the transit spectrum and even though all the cities in NA fall somewhere in between; Toronto manages to be stuck in a loop of lose-lose compromises between the two. The result, a city with both bad transit and a bad expressway network and of course we would wish to move closer to the New York side of spectrum.

No, it doesn't fail to serve the needs of the city. The fact that it carries the 2nd most number of riders outside of NYC, proves that, but it does need to be improved to allow for more & better service. As for highways/roads? They serve cars, not so much people. We don't need highways downtown. But it does sound like you do want Toronto to get better transit improvement, so, we're on the same side there...