Canada’s largest city has achieved the dubious recognition of not only being the worst city in the country for commuting, but the sixth worst in the world, even surpassing known commuting nightmares like New York City and Los Angeles.
It comes as no surprise to the tens of thousands of people in and around Toronto who have to negotiate traffic every morning and evening that the city has been given this distinction of having one of the worst commutes in the world.
The ranking comes from a study by the comparison site Expert Market. It looked at 74 cities worldwide that had populations of 300,000 or more, taking into account such things as the average time spent commuting each day, the average distance of a journey, how long you have to wait for a bus or train, and the cost of a transit card.
When it was all added up, Toronto came in 69th out of 74.
"We need to give a seemless choice to commuters in the morning to get up, look at their options and say, this is as convenient as driving my car. I'll take it," said Iain Dobson, a transit expert with Strategic Regional Research Alliance.
Dobson says what is needed is more public transit not just in the city, but in the surrounding communities that funnel into Toronto.
Help may be on the way. Ontario’s newly-elected premier Doug Ford is making some big promises.
"We're going to build rapid underground transit that's going to extend not only in Toronto, but we're the first government that's going to run a regional transporation system," Ford recently said.
Toronto mayor John Tory says efforts are underway to reduce gridlock in the city, but the population appears to be growing faster than the infrastructure is expanding. The region is expected to have about 10 million people within the next 25 years.
