% of Residents Commute to Work by Transit, 2010/2011
Old Toronto/York/East York/North York 39.5%
San Francisco 34.0%
Scarborough 33.1
Vancouver 30.0
Etobicoke 27.9
Seattle 18.2
Portland 12.1
It is impressive what Portland has done, but it is still catching up.
TTC per capita ridership peaked in 1988. Many systems peaked around that time also. Remember what happened in the early 90s? Similar thing that happened in the late 00s that also caused falling transit ridership everywhere.
TTC ridership per capita (linked trips) in 2013 was 185.9, compared to 2003 was 153.2. 2003 also happened to be the year the Liberal government was elected provincially and restored funding to transit operations.
It makes zero sense to attack the city and it's implementation of the 2003 Ridership Growth Plan and attack the provincial government elected in 2003 for failing to increase transit ridership when in fact ridership per capita has increased significantly since then, despite the lack of major infrastructure projects completed.
Ridership growth of 0.06% in one year is not much of a concern, especially for a city such as Toronto. It's the long term trends that are important. TTC ridership grew 4.78% in 2011 compared to 2010. King County Metro grew 2.98% in that time. So what? Just looking at one year is misleading.
Lack of ridership growth in 2017 might be explained by
the current streetcar shortage. Kind of hard to increase service and increase ridership when there is no enough vehicles even for the existing service. Blame Bombardier, not the TTC.
And obviously comparing the ridership growth in a built out city like Toronto to all of Metro Vancouver or King County is obviously stupid. Vancouver CMA population increased by 16.4% from 2001 to 2011, King County population increased 11.4% from 2000 to 2010, City of Toronto population increased 5.4% from 2001 to 2011.
TTC fare increases have been in line with the rate of inflation. What system doesn't do this? My problem with TTC fares is lack of time-based transfers like the 905 systems.
TTC farebox cost recovery ratio is very high but that is not necessarily an indicator of lack of funding or service. For example, if riders are doing shorter trips, then a bus can pick up many more passengers along its route without getting full. If people get on the bus and never get off, then the bus gets full much faster, and therefore gets less fare revenue. Cost recovery ratio is as much an indicator of built form and efficiency as it is of how overcrowded the buses are.
Furthermore, the TTC is huge system. Even with such a high cost recovery ratio, the municipal operating contribution per capita is still huge. TTC cost recovery ratio is around 75%, but subsidy is around $500M annually from a population 2.6M. Compare that to MiWay in Mississauga with cost recovery of 50% but subsidy of only $60M from a population of 700k. So even though the subsidy ratio of TTC is only half that of MiWay, the City of Toronto actually spends two times more per resident to subsidize transit operations than the City of Mississauga does. I don't think you can just look at cost recovery ratio and then say one system is underfunded compared to another.