Substantial and long overdue investment in public transit—not cutting services and raising fares—will help cities avoid the “transit death spiral” and bring Canada closer to meeting its decarbonization goals, says University of Toronto Associate Professor Shoshanna Saxe, Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure.
People usually take transit for one of two reasons, Saxe told the MaRS Discovery District for a recent opinion piece—either it’s their only option to get where they’re going, or the best way to get there.
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“But when you cut service and raise fares, it puts pressures on both groups of people,” she said. “Ridership declines, the system loses money, more cuts are made, ridership declines further, and you put the system into a death spiral. And once you’re in it, it’s hard to get out.”
Transit systems around the world are continuing to struggle with lower ridership in the long wake of the pandemic, and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is no exception. Despite worsening commute times for drivers, MaRS says more Torontonians than ever are back in their cars while the TTC struggles to rebuild its ridership. Longer and more frequent delays on TTC routes—often for security-related reasons, not technical ones—plus higher fares and service cuts on 20% of routes are some of the problems transit riders face.
Delays may be beyond the TTC’s control, but the higher fares and service cuts are critical decisions the agency made in a struggle to finance operations. They are also very much the wrong moves, Saxe told MaRS. Higher fares will hurt low-income riders the most, possibly to the point that they stop taking transit, even if it means missing appointments. And slashing routes will tempt riders who use transit for its speed and convenience to hail an Uber instead.
Saxe said the better solution is to rescue the TTC and other struggling transit systems with long-overdue investment. As the least-subsidized transit system in North America, with 97% of its non-subsidy funding derived from passenger fares, the TTC must find the fast track to other funding sources. MaRS cites a pre-pandemic study out of McGill University to suggest congestion pricing and parking revenue as potential sources, as well as public-private partnerships and land-value capture [pdf].
With more cash in hand, transit operators must prioritize buses, even as they invest in light rail and subway extensions, MaRS states. Those projects may not garner the same attention as crosstown light rail and subway extensions, but “buses are vital to those massive projects’ return on investment,” the opinion piece explains.
“A huge percentage of ridership comes from people interchanging from buses onto the subway system,” Saxe said. “Public transportation is a network, and the value of each piece goes up the bigger the network is.”
Buses are also electrifying, MaRS says, citing Oslo’s $65-million investment to convert its entire bus fleet by the end of 2023, and transit-pioneer Bogotá’s intention to “wrap up 2023 with the world’s biggest fleet of electric buses outside of China.”
The TTC, for its part, has purchased 60 all-electric buses as part of its commitment to be emissions-free by 2040, MaRS reports.
A lot more support, from every level of government, is needed for all of Canada’s public transit systems to make the full switch to electric. Zero-emission fleets have lower operating costs than fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, so public transit will benefit from electrification “in the long term,” writes Ross Linden-Fraser, a senior research associate with the Canadian Climate Institute. “In the short term though, zero-emission vehicles bring higher capital costs and all the complexity of installing new charging infrastructure, refitting facilities, and retraining personnel.”
The federal government is offering funds to help municipalities cover these costs and has committed to getting 5,000 electric buses onto Canada’s streets by 2026. But the country “has a long way to travel to meet that goal,” Linden-Fraser says, with only 639 zero-emission buses in use or being procured as of this year. Recent procurements will help close this gap, Linden-Fraser says.
But be they electric or diesel, buses must be able to move steadily and swiftly. “Any bus with 50 people inside sitting in traffic is a very inefficient use of space and time,” Saxe said. The solution is dedicated bus rapid transit lines that keep transit vehicles free of traffic jams and snarls (and create a living incentive for drivers stuck in congestion to leave their cars at home).
Careful deployment of on-demand transit software may also help transit systems bounce back, MaRS says.
