The Transit Outlook in Toronto

This week’s case study about transit in Toronto was extremely informative and gave me quite a different perspective on the changes that are actually happening around Toronto’s transit system. On my commute home the other day I came across the advertisement I posted above on the subway. After this week’s class I felt I was able to be a little more critical of the claim that the TTC is making new changes. Specifically, after learning about how much funding is needed just to keep the TTC in a state of good repair. I think it would be easy for someone without this knowledge to assume that this advertisement means that transit is going to be modernized and changed but in reality the majority of these changes, approximately 93% of the funding, will just be maintenance to keep the trains running.

This was also the case when we looked at all the “new” transit lines that have been approved by council. I feel that the general public often believes that these approved lines are already funded and outlined in a clear way but this is rarely the case. It was very interesting to learn about the actual cost of many of the expansion projects (at least the costs that are known) and that in many cases the actual timeline and funding is uncertain. While it may look good in the media to announce exciting subway extensions and to highlight the areas which will now be much more accessible because of these approvals from city council, I think it’s very important for people to know that these plans are never set in stone or even completely planned out. The key takeaway I took from this week’s case study was to always try to understand and follow where the funding is going and who it is coming from. It’s clear that there can often be misleading announcements in the media or even advertisements on the subway that don’t tell the full story behind the changes and updates to our transit system.