Italy has similar car ownership as Canada too, IIRC. That just goes to show that even though car ownership is brought up a lot in these kinds of discussions, it's a pretty poor metric for determining car dependence, transit or cycling usage, or walkability. In a healthy city people who own cars don't use them for every trip. They get around in other ways too.
I agree that equating ownership w/use is problematic/potentially misleading.
However, I think there's a need to go further. People's impressions/assumptions both about Toronto, but also many other places is simply wrong.
Lets take a look at Modal Share in Rome, Italy (data 2019)
As you can see Rome is rather car dependent.
Indeed, when one compares to Toronto:
You'll see that Toronto has slightly higher rail uptake, and substantially higher cycling uptake than Rome, while we do walk less here, and drive just a bit more.
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Lets throw in two more just to mess with folks, here's our oft compared peer in North America, Chicago:
Finally, here''s Stockholm, Sweden:
I think what stands out among the 4 cities I selected is that Toronto is doing remarkably well in transit and cycling uptake, with the most pronounced shortcoming in respect of sustainability being walking.
Bonus, here's Montreal:
All Data above from:
www.c40knowledgehub.org
