Toronto's "urban myths"

[the lemur]

I guess it's not an urban myth but more a commonly asserted statement: the TTC is THE WORST transit system in the developed world.

I don't know about that. Some cities in the developed world have transit systems that are remarkably underdeveloped or which offer limited/infrequent service.

 

[King of Kensington]

I don't believe it at all but a lot of Torontonians love to say it.

 

[Johnny Au]

I guess it's not an urban myth but more a commonly asserted statement: the TTC is THE WORST transit system in the developed world.

Apparently, those who said that had never been to Atlanta's MARTA (aka "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta").

Often, it takes a Torontonian a visit to Atlanta's MARTA to realize that the TTC is not the worst transit system in the developed world.

Even closer to home is the Buffalo Metro Rail, which is how not to build an LRT line.

Let's just say that Atlanta has the worst subway system in the developed world and Buffalo has the worst underground LRT system in the developed world.

The TTC may be terrible, but it is better than Atlanta's or Buffalo's.

 

[wild goose chase]

I guess it's not an urban myth but more a commonly asserted statement: the TTC is THE WORST transit system in the developed world.

Well, to be fair I don't think you can really prove or disprove that something is "THE WORST" as it is an opinion.

I don't know about that. Some cities in the developed world have transit systems that are remarkably underdeveloped or which offer limited/infrequent service.

Yeah, if you count places anywhere in the developed world, and your criteria is whether you could get by working and living while relying on public transit rather than a car, obviously it'd be trivial to find tons of examples worse than Toronto in that regard -- just randomly pick a point on a map of North America and more often than not, chances are you'll end up in some rural area with no literally public transit or near a small town with the bare minimum of a bus line or two. I've lived before in a town with only a few tens of thousands of people, and I really appreciate the public transit of big cities like Toronto.

I wonder if most of the people who say Toronto has the worst public transit have mainly lived their life in the city itself, or perhaps moved from other cities where public transit is excellent? It's hard to imagine how by Canadian standards (and perhaps even US standards) Toronto is anywhere near the bottom, if not near the top of the list.

 

[wild goose chase]

Apparently, those who said that had never been to Atlanta's MARTA (aka "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta").

One thing about public transit in Toronto (I don't know about the other Canadian cities as I haven't really lived there relying on transit, but it doesn't seem like it that much either) is you don't see the association of public transit with racial minorities.

In some US cities like Atlanta as you mention, there is very much a negative image of public transit being associated with not just poverty, but specifically racialized poverty. It came as a culture shock for me -- it's something that growing up in Canada never occurred to me would have anything to do with race. Another Canadian friend of mine told me the same about visiting the Los Angeles area and realizing that it was mostly people of color riding the bus.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Try using Mississauga's transit on a Sunday.

 

[the lemur]

Yeah, if you count places anywhere in the developed world, and your criteria is whether you could get by working and living while relying on public transit rather than a car, obviously it'd be trivial to find tons of examples worse than Toronto in that regard -- just randomly pick a point on a map of North America and more often than not, chances are you'll end up in some rural area with no literally public transit or near a small town with the bare minimum of a bus line or two. I've lived before in a town with only a few tens of thousands of people, and I really appreciate the public transit of big cities like Toronto.

I wonder if most of the people who say Toronto has the worst public transit have mainly lived their life in the city itself, or perhaps moved from other cities where public transit is excellent? It's hard to imagine how by Canadian standards (and perhaps even US standards) Toronto is anywhere near the bottom, if not near the top of the list.

I think it's mainly people who have lived most of their lives in and around Toronto but have seen bits and pieces of other transit systems while travelling and concluded that everywhere else that has transit does at least one thing better than Toronto does. But they usually haven't waited forever for a bus in London or discovered how infrequent subway service can be in Washington, etc.

Calling the TTC 'the worst!' is just another hyperbolic way of saying it sucks. It presupposes that there's a gold standard for transit that some systems somewhere manage to meet. They can't all be comparable to each other.

One year Hong Kong's MTA (which is highly regarded) was asked by the Sydney transit authority (which is not) to audit it using the HKMTA as the benchmark. The resulting report was deemed so embarrassing it was immediately shelved and discovered only by accident. That doesn't mean Sydney's transit actually is objectively terrible, just that it can be improved like every other.

 

[King of Kensington]

I wonder if people in Chicago, Boston or Washington engage in such hyperbole.

 

[the lemur]

I wonder if people in Chicago, Boston or Washington engage in such hyperbole.

I kinda doubt it. The last time I was in Boston I took the T from the airport to downtown and it was jam-packed and even though people were complaining, no one brought up how much better it was in some other city or how the MBTA is the worst in the world. Same with Chicago, where I took the L from downtown to Midway and everyone had to transfer to a bus at one point, because of track repairs or something.

It either speaks to Toronto's globally minded insecurity or the fact that people in other cities perhaps have lower expectations about transit in the first place.

 

[Skeezix]

I wonder if people in Chicago, Boston or Washington engage in such hyperbole.

Probably. Anything involved in one's daily grind of a commute, especially when it has occasion to f*ck with one's day, can be "the worst" for some people - the worst road network, the worst transit system, the worst commuter trains, the worst bus frequency, the worst highways, the worst road rules, the worst police, etc.

I kinda doubt it. The last time I was in Boston I took the T from the airport to downtown and it was jam-packed and even though people were complaining, no one brought up how much better it was in some other city or how the MBTA is the worst in the world. Same with Chicago, where I took the L from downtown to Midway and everyone had to transfer to a bus at one point, because of track repairs or something.

It either speaks to Toronto's globally minded insecurity or the fact that people in other cities perhaps have lower expectations about transit in the first place.

I don't generally overhear frustrated commuters in Toronto on subways or streetcars comparing TTC to other systems either. I don't think this has anything to do with expectations or insecurity, but more just a normal and common human desire to complain, especially using hyperbole.

 

[the lemur]

Probably. Anything involved in one's daily grind of a commute, especially when it has occasion to f*ck with one's day, can be "the worst" for some people - the worst road network, the worst transit system, the worst commuter trains, the worst bus frequency, the worst highways, the worst road rules, the worst police, etc.

I don't generally overhear frustrated commuters in Toronto on subways or streetcars comparing TTC to other systems either. I don't think this has anything to do with expectations or insecurity, but more just a normal and common human desire to complain, especially using hyperbole.

True. There's a difference between saying something is 'THE WORST!' by itself, which is basically just 'This sucks!' or 'I hate this!', and claiming it's the worst in the developed world, as if that was the finding of a UN agency or the Economist or some other authority. I've probably said the TTC was the worst when I've been caught in some unexplained delay or massive crowding at St George or whatever. And then when I'm driving or biking somewhere, we have the worst drivers, the worst road surfaces, etc.

I do think, though, that along with our preoccupation with appearing 'world class', we sometimes worry excessively that we look bad on a global scale and that some things really must strike newcomers and visitors as appalling. I knew a guy from the UK who had lived here for several years and actually wrote one of those Facts & Arguments essays for the Globe saying 'Look, stop asking me how I like Toronto. It's fine. I'm not constantly comparing everything unfavourably with London. Stop worrying'.

 

[pman]

Agreed, it's impossible to prove or refute the hypothesis that the TTC is the worst transit system in the developed world. However, surely we can agree that it does completely suck.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Agreed, it's impossible to prove or refute the hypothesis that the TTC is the worst transit system in the developed world. However, surely we can agree that it does completely suck.

Only if you get windswept as a subway train enters the tunnels and are sucked off the platform.

 

[Johnny Au]

Do Atlantans ever feel that their subway system is the worst in the world? Or is it that Torontonians love to complain?

 

[Skeezix]

People everywhere love to complain. We are just more attuned to the whining of Torontonians.