Anything more recent than this? I'm not moving goalposts but 2023 was coming out of COVID and much has changed b/w then and now. Is TTC ridership up/down compared to violent crime on TTC in that timeframe?
2025, TTC. Framework for Ridership Growth
Reasons for stopping use of TTC:
54% - No longer need to travel around Toronto
49% - Switched to driving
11% - Concerned about safety
11% - Switched to a more reliable option
9% - Switched to walking or bicycling
7% - Switched to a more accessible option
2% - Switched to a less expensive option
3% - Other
It must be noted that the pcts. add up to 146%, as I assume multiple options were allowed, and annoyingly due to that it's not easy to remove the cohort that simply stopped taking the TTC because they no longer need to.
As a rough ballpark, if we assume the "No longer need to travel around Toronto" is a single-choice, we can cut it out.
This would leave concern about safety resulting in ~1 in 4 people choosing to take alternate means of transport over the TTC, identical to the amount of people who switched due to unreliability. We often talk of unreliability being one of the key problems of the TTC and why so many don't take it, and yet safety ranks above it! This is additionally only the cohort who have taken the TTC and no longer, not the cohort who never chose to take it due to whatever reason. This same slide deck specifically states reliability and safety being a barrier to entry for non-customers.
Safety is a REAL concern by riders. To dismiss safety, which is a bigger problem for lapsed customers, than reliability (ever so slightly), then you have no ground on to ever say that reliability is a problem for TTC ridership!
You're safer taking taking public transit than driving
How do i say this... "safety" is primarily a metric derived not from actual incidents, but from experiencing incidents
that could reasonably lead to danger. An insane person harassing random people may not ever actually cause anyone physical harm but he still massively decreases the perception of safety. This is additionally compounded in public situations- safety is not just a measure of potential threats against
you, specifically, but to
those around you as well. I have heard some people call this the "Proximity theory of crime". Call it what you'd like. It is the notion that the effect on the perception of safety of a crime is compounded by the number of people who witness the crime- not just the number of victims.
What i am trying to spell out is that if one person assaults someone else in the subway in full view of 500 people, this actually has a greater effect on the perception of safety than if two people in the middle of rural Ontario collide and a person dies. You can talk statistics on the number of deaths all you want, but most people do not think rationally with their life!
This is why the general public often does not think of driving as scary as it really truly is (A literal 2 ton death machine) because of its greatest problem-
sparsity! In opposition, this is why so many people think of PT (And cities in general!) as dangerous because of its biggest benefit-
density!
So what are they? Enlighten us rather than expect us to operate on the same brainwave as you.
Of the cohort who commit petty crime and even serious crime on the transit system, they overwhelmingly jump the fare box. We likewise find that stopping those who jump the fare box also stops this cohort.
I have no data for the TTC, but for the
LA Metro:
As illustrated earlier in this report, Metro’s law enforcement contractors have found that up to 96% of those arrested on the system do not possess fare...
Finally, i would like to apologize if i came out a little scuffed in my comment, because I do feel quite strongly about safety in general, having been witness to harassment and crime on the TTC both first hand and second hand- and unfortunately, that probably isnt very interesting to anyone on here because anyone who has ridden the TTC for any time could say the same.
