If Toronto can’t improve its world-class traffic, it will decay into a gridlocked carcass

Open this photo in gallery:

I’m sometimes asked how I can satirize driving every week.

How can I not?

The material is limitless. There are few activities as ripe for ridicule as driving and the automobile. Take, for example, the release of the 2023 TomTom Traffic Index last week. TomTom, provider of GPS-based navigation systems, analyzed data from more than 600 million in-car navigation systems and smartphones to identify trends in 387 cities across 55 countries throughout 2023.

TomTom found that Toronto had the third-worst traffic in the world – not in Canada, not in North America, in the world. Only London and Dublin ranked higher. Think of a city with legendarily bad traffic. They all ranked lower (better) than Toronto. Los Angeles (233); New York (20); New Delhi (44); Vancouver (32). It took the average Toronto driver 29 minutes to travel 10 kilometres. Top runners can cover this distance faster. The pace would also be considered slow for most cyclists on a road bike. Drivers in Toronto spent 255 hours a year driving (98 of those caused by congestion). TomTom also offers real-time traffic analysis. As I write this, the average speed in Toronto is 16 kilometres an hour and there are 387 reported traffic jams spanning 371 kilometres.

When the 2023 TomTom Traffic Index was released, I expected outrage. Instead, there were the usual press release rewrites in the media. CTV Ottawa went with the fact that the Ottawa commute time was the ninth longest out of 12 Canadian cities. There was, essentially, a collective shrug at the news that the largest city in Canada has some of the worst transportation infrastructure and systems in the world.

Incredibly, there has been far more outrage and consternation about the renaming of Dundas Square as “Sankofa Square.” The largest city in Canada is a transit nightmare and the mayor and the media squabble about a patch of pavement that is an embarrassing tribute to ugliness. Want to rename Dundas Square? Here are some options:

• Disappointed Tourists Square
• Bladerunner: The Movie: The Square
• Imitation Times Square
• William Hogarth Presents

Being told your city has the third-slowest traffic in the world is like being told you have high blood pressure. If you ignore it and do nothing, it will eventually kill you. Dublin is a small city (population: 544,107). Its traffic congestion has been caused primarily by its badly laid out road network and a change in commuting patterns following the pandemic. London has its own reasons for being the worst. Despite the fact it has a good transit system and a congestion tax, London’s size – the metro area population of London is 9.6 million – makes traffic difficult to manage.

The Greater Toronto Area has a population of 5.9 million. What’s its excuse?

The city has the Toronto Transit Commission, a system built for a city of one million that is underfunded and left to scrape and beg for resources. If you live within walking distance of a subway station, it’s not a bad way to get around (provided that the train doesn’t break down). Sure, it becomes an ad hoc homeless shelter in the winter, and sure it’s not that reliable. One of the main drawbacks of taking transit and the reason traffic is so bad is that it is often not faster than driving. For instance, my commute by car takes around 40 minutes. The same commute by transit takes 1.5 hours.

The city is one large orange construction sign. Downtown is so dug up it is in a state of perennial gridlock. Take the 2019 King Street Transit Priority Corridor project, which stopped vehicles from passing through intersections. They are only allowed to turn. It was supposed to speed up streetcar traffic and it did. Then construction, some for condos, some routine maintenance, but much of it for the new subway, affected streets in the downtown core. More signs were thrown up prohibiting traffic – for instance, no right turn onto Richmond from Yonge.

Result? It’s become lawless. Frustrated drivers now ignore traffic signs. King Street is flush with drivers who give the middle finger to the rules.

A 2023 study by researchers at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities found, “there are approximately 6,800 illegal turns and thru movements at intersections per day on the King Street Transit Priority Corridor, but less than 0.3 per cent are being ticketed by Toronto Police, on average. Thus, more than 99.7 per cent of drivers are not being fined for breaking the law on the King Street Transit Priority Corridor.”

Why should anyone outside Toronto care if no one in the city cares enough to do anything about it? Besides, Vancouver is No. 32. Not exactly a great rating. It has its own reckoning coming.

Like high blood pressure, bad transit systems can eventually prove fatal. If Toronto’s congestion woes continue, if the city does not embrace public transit and other forward-thinking solutions, the city will decline and eventually drop dead. As a nation, you don’t want your largest city to decay into a gridlocked carcass.

As a city, Toronto is getting nowhere fast.