One of the things that I’ll often hear people say about Toronto is that we’re a car-oriented city with inadequate transit, and that’s why we simply can’t implement things like congestion pricing. Usually it’s accompanied by statements like this: “Sure, I can see how it might work in London or New York, but they have proper transit systems, and we don’t.”
But is this really fair to say?
Let’s look at some of the data from the 2022 Transportation Tomorrow Survey.
For all trips starting and ending in the City of Toronto, people driving themselves around is the dominant mode share at 45.3%. But the transit mode share is not nothing at nearly a quarter of all trips. And if you add up taking transit, walking, cycling (and other forms of micromobility), and taxiing, you get to 42% of all trips within the city. That’s a meaningful number.
For home-based work trips within the City of Toronto, the split between driving and taking transit becomes dangerously close. (A home-based work trip is a trip within the city that either starts or ends at home and is done for the purpose of work.) Driving sits at 39.4% and transit sits at 37.1%. Add in walking (10.2%), cycling/micromobility (5.8%), and taxiing/ridesharing (1.4%), and non-car forms of mobility dominate when it comes to getting to and from work.
Looking at all trips to only downtown Toronto, transit once again dominates at 40.4%. Add in the other non-car forms of mobility and we’re up to nearly 75% of all trips.
The numbers become even more pronounced if we look at only home-based work trips to downtown. In this case, transit ridership increases to 48.7%. Add in the other non-car forms of mobility and we’re now at 80%!
These are fascinating figures because, let’s say you were considering a congestion charge for motorists driving into downtown Toronto, and that the proceeds of this charge would be used to make impactful investments in transit and other mobility infrastructure. Based on this data, you’d actually be benefiting the greatest number of Torontonians.
These numbers also help to debunk the objection that people simply have no other option. If you’re coming into downtown Toronto, you have options. The transit exists, and the majority of Torontonians use it.
I guess Toronto isn’t so car-oriented after all. (The rest of the region is a different story.)
Charts via the City of Toronto (TTS 2022); cover photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
In Ontario, couples with children overwhelmingly live in ground-oriented ownership housing. This form of housing is still the majority for all other households (at least according to 2021 Census data), but apartment rentals make up a much larger share.
Given these figures, it is not surprising that the Missing Middle Initiative has found that family migration patterns within southern Ontario tend to correlate strongly (r = 0.71) with where ground-oriented ownership housing is being built, which largely means outside of the Greater Toronto Area.
This is an important finding if you're worried about Canadians not having enough babies. But this correlation doesn't tell us exactly what's going on. The data suggests that families with children have a clear preference for ground-oriented ownership — even if it means moving farther out — but what other options do they really have?
Three-bedroom apartments remain a relatively elusive housing type because demand is low. But as we have talked about, demand is a function of price, and multi-family buildings are more expensive to construct than low-rise housing. So how much of this perceived consumer preference for ground-oriented housing is actually just people driving until they qualify?
In other words, how many people are simply solving for X amount of space/bedrooms at Y price? And what would happen if we made large three-bedroom apartments in walkable transit-oriented communities the most affordable option? It still wouldn't be for everyone, but I bet that we would see demand adjust.
More importantly, it would give people options.
Charts from the Missing Middle Initiative; cover photo by Jason Ng on Unsplash
I am endlessly fascinated by some of the small homes that get built in Tokyo. This one, also pictured above, is called the Borderless House.
Designed by Selma Masic — in collaboration with Sei Haganuma (Haryu Wood Studio) — the house sits on a 3-meter-wide lot, has a total area of 63 square meters across three floors (~678 square feet), and allegedly houses a family of four. Bridgestone also appears to be its immediate neighbor.
To put these dimensions into perspective, 3 meters is roughly the width of a “typical” new apartment living room here in Toronto. Usually, if you have a floor plate that can accommodate an outboard bedroom up at the glass, you design for a structural grid somewhere between 6–6.5 meters.
This gives you around 10 feet for the living room and around 10 feet for the bedroom. (As a a Canadian, it's important to always bounce back and forth between metric and imperial.) In this case, the entire lot is only 3 meters wide, though a corner lot always enhances a floor plan.
All of this is fascinating because, compared to North America, it represents a completely different way of conceptualizing space. Of course, the point of posts like this one is not to suggest that this is what all homes should be like. The point is that there are benefits to allowing those who would like such a home to be able to build it.
Cover photo by Selma Masic