It's a pretty low bar comparing it to YRT, don't you think? I don't see Vaughan on that list
I mean, if you saw how New Yorkers complain about MTA, and how their own corrupt idiot of a politician
(fk yuo Andrew Cuomo) also drove away Andy Byford (I miss the dude, man. i cri evrytiem), then you'd realize that Toronto's transit promlem is more of a North American problem (no thanks to 70 years of automotive industry lobbying).
My main gripe with the TTC is that the subway doesn't go to most of the attractions in the city.
Chinatown? CNE? The Zoo? Science Centre? Forget about it! Even the frickin CN Tower is a 15 minute walk away from the nearest subway station!
People complain about the bus/streetcar service because they can't take the subway to get where they need to go!
BLUF: auto-oriented suburbanization makes makes private automobile viable at the expense of everything else.
The problem is that subway was originally a streetcar replacement (i.e. Yonge line and Bloor-Danforth line), which means they are built in places where people literally wanted to go. For other places? Before the massive auto-oriented suburbanization development, there were streetcar coverage (e.g. CNE, Spadina Chinatown). If one look up on the history of TTC, they'd find out that Toronto used to have a much more extensive streetcar network, including some suburban coverage (think St. Clair streetcar). And it was heavily utilized; after all, they were expected to cover all expenses from the farebox alone.
The auto-oriented suburban development of places like Don Mills (read: Ontario Science Centre), and construction of highway such as Highway 2 bypass (eventually known as Highway 401) turned what used to be literal farm fields into sprawling suburban. It's not all bad though. After all, people can finally live their dream life of a plot of land in their own name, a little house on top with white picket fence, a stay-at-home mom, and 2½ kids, all on single-income. Incidentally, for some mysterious reason, the TTC has lost its ability to recover all costs from farebox revenue.
Fast forward to today, the "Highway 2 bypass" is less of a bypass, and more of heavily utilized trunk road in its own right (induced demand tend to have that effect), to the point where it is North America's busiest highway by traffic volume. Meanwhile, the subway network is more-or-less stuck in it's 1970s guise with additional extension further into the suburbs... because Canada apparently lost the art to build large public transit project or something.
The people former suburban lower municipalities (the whole story of how single-tier City of Toronto came to be is another can of worm) clamour for subways, but resists any attempt at densification required to make subway viable. Meanwhile, the lack of network effect means any extension of pre-existing subway lines will cause an already crowded Bloor-Yonge station even more crowded.
Meanwhile, the solution proffered up by our esteemed Premier of
Toronto Ontario is to... build more highways... in outer suburbs... that will almost all but guarantee more urban sprawl... and will make vehicular traffic worse. But hey, anyone who lives in Toronto and advocates for public transit must be a "commie pinko who rides a bicycle", eh?
Anyway, this is basically a rant on the history of Toronto subway and streetcar system (and Toronto in general). It's mostly from my memory so don't expect 100% accuracy. It's actually pretty facinating, and I encourage all GTHA-ians here to research it.
