Wherever I roam

I have a morning ritual that I like to do before I start my commute: I flip a coin. Heads there will be a TTC delay and tails there won’t be. Honestly, it’s better than breakfast (which I don’t eat) and coffee (which I refuse to touch). More often than not I get tails and there is still a delay. Usually a fire, or a raccoon electrocuting itself. 

When not encountering those seemingly random acts of spontaneous combustion or divine retribution against wildlife, I’m usually almost run down by a black BMW when I attempt to cross at the intersection at Bay and Bloor. Often the driver is spurned to move by some jerk behind them honking like mad. After avoiding that Herculean trial, I’m greeted by my next foe as I cross Queen’s Park: an electric bicycle Uber Eats driver. 

This list of transit woes has only gotten worse as we emerge from the pandemic. With a change in municipal government only seven months ago, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the potential future of transit in this city. To help me in my efforts I recruited three fellow students, two from our own lovely University of Toronto and one from Ontario Tech out in Oshawa. 

My first subject was Elliot Sicheri, a third-year student in the Computer Sciences Program at UofT. We chatted over iMessage about what he thinks the future of transit in Toronto looks like. Sicheri bikes to campus most days, only taking the TTC when the weather is especially terrible but laments how a twenty-five-minute commute can easily bloat to 35 to 40 minutes, not including delays. It’s no surprise that he prefers to bike as he says he’s “never found [himself] unable to get anywhere, at least” via bike. Next, I asked about how he felt about bike lane expansion. He remarked that he thinks the “construction of bike lanes is great!” yet he was quick to recognise his biases that in the construction of bike lanes “[t]here is a point where it becomes a bit overkill.”

Sicheri relays to me how his ride down Bloor Street, especially the stretch between the ROM and St. George, had its bike lanes expanded to accommodate more bikers while reducing car lanes from two to one. “There wasn’t really any need to expand those bike lanes, I had never had trouble riding down Bloor before. If anything, it was more annoying to find an alternate route during the construction” I finally asked him what he thought the future of transit would look like in Toronto. Instead of focusing on biking, Sicheri flipped the script and talked about the construction of “the new subway line,” in reference to the Ontario Line. He notes that there aren’t any more jokes left to make about how long it’s been taking to build but he ultimately thinks it will be a good improvement to mobility in the city. 

My second subject for the interview was Nesta Muthunawagonna, a fourth-year student studying political science at UofT. We met in a crowded Reznikov’s after a class we shared. He, like myself, takes public transit every day to get to campus. So, I start with the most pressing question: does he feel safe while taking the TTC? 

“For the most part I feel safe,” he says as more people begin to file into the café for lunch. “No one is really coming up to bother me on the train but I also think it depends on what type of public transit you are taking. The GO Train feels a lot safer than say like the TTC. The time of day also matters. But never do I ride on the TTC and fear for my physical safety.”

I asked him next about whether Toronto should invest in its current public transit infrastructure or if it should continue with its expansion. “That’s a good question,” he remarks as the room grows louder and louder around us. 

“Personally I think expansion to current public transit would be a good thing. Toronto is a really congested city in my opinion, you know? It’s very easy to get stuck in traffic. I think investing in public transit is the way to go. That being said, obviously, that is a very idealistic kind of idea just because things take so long. I don’t even know how long the Eglinton Crosstown has been under construction at this point.” 

Finally, I asked him what he thinks about making Toronto a walkable city and if public transit has a role to play in that. “In my opinion, I do think a strong public transit system is necessary for a walkable city. You can’t have people walk for forty minutes or an hour to get where they need to go. Subways, buses, streetcars, they make things a lot easier. If you go to any city in Europe they have light rail or tram or some streetcar. It just makes walking a viable option.” 

The third and final subject I interviewed was Malcolm Joseph Raffaele who studies computer science, focusing more on data science, at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. He commutes to his campus via car daily. 

We chatted over Discord about how car transit fares in the city. “To be honest Toronto is actually a pretty well laid out city for combined use transportation. Toronto has a good skeleton of high-speed roadways and a solid network of arterial roads with subways (and soon LRTs) tucked nicely out of the way, with street cars and buses picking up the slack. This has been mismanaged on all levels at this point, the TTC is slower than ever and despite cars getting smarter roads aren’t safer or faster.” 

When asked if bike lanes affected his commute to campus, he remarks that they haven’t. “I drive next to bike lanes for all of five minutes. However, I think bike lanes are useful for providing an additional safe option for transportation. Unfortunately, bike lanes are put on roads like Bloor or Danforth which ought to be fast roads with 50 limits to allow people to efficiently use the alternative highways instead of having to feed in DVP, 401, and Gardiner.” 

Raffaele soon started talking about public transit and its construction in the city. “Construction is necessary for the transit improvement, however as a driver, our concerns are rarely taken into account with these projects. These projects keep going over budget and over deadline putting what has already a stress system of streets under further stress. Additionally, these projects put drivers’ time and lives on the line and we do not get to see much benefit.” He goes on to note that the “only theoretical benefit is that fewer cars end up on the road but most of us cannot take transit to get where we are going.” He laments that when car owners decide to do their commute on public transit, time is often doubled. 

We concluded our chat with a contemplation on making Toronto more of a walkable city and what the future of mobility looks like in the city. “It is definitely possible [to make Toronto a walkable city], but I think it is misguided as many proponents place through traffic in direct opposition to walkability.” He notes that by reinforcing through traffic it can create pockets of walkability that would benefit everyone. He wraps up by remarking that Toronto in the future would be best served by adopting a wired electric and hydrogen-based system of public transport that focuses on short-distance city travel. But, he knows that “[u]nfortunately that probably won’t happen.”

Toronto, much like the rest of the world right now, stands on the precipice of great change. How we approach that change, in my case, improving mobility in the city, will affect every other decision the city makes. Whether it be housing or mental health, mobility is king.