The TTC’s Strategic Planning Committee will meet on March 31, 2026 at 9:30am in the boardroom at TTC headquarters, 1900 Yonge Street. There are three items on the agenda. Two of them deal with financial plans, and I will turn to them in a separate article. The third is an updated Ridership Growth Strategy, although it is really a rehash of current plans with little attention to actually achieving growth.
Previous iterations of the RGS, especially the original in 2003, were built on the premise of showing what actions to gain riders might be possible and at what cost. This is repeated in the current report, but with no new initiatives beyond those already in the TTC’s Five Year Plan.
The report begins by noting that ridership growth has stagnated and sits at a level well below pre-pandemic figures. Travel declined generally in Toronto from 2024 to 2025, and the change (-3.1%) lies in the middle of the range of declines seen by TTC in various periods. The report notes:
The shift in ridership and customer boarding patterns suggests that the surface network is serving fewer long-distance bus riders, discretionary trips, and shift workers at manufacturing and warehousing areas, as well as work commutes to businesses in the educational services, administrative and support, real estate and rental and leasing, and retail trade sectors.
Overall, the decline in surface boardings is system-wide and not tied to particular corridors, though outer parts of the city are most affected with boarding losses strongest in suburban and outer urban areas.
[…] the most significant opportunity for ridership growth comes not from creating new travel where it no longer exists, but from ensuring the TTC is the most attractive, reliable and competitive option for the trips people are still making. [Report at pp 1-2]
| Comparison to 2019 | |
| Ridership | 80% to 83% |
| Revenue | 92% |
| Expenses | 137% |
| Cost Recovery | Down from 65-70% to 46% |
| Ridership decline since February 2025 | |
| Midday and evening | 4% to 6% |
| Peak periods | 1% |
| Weekends | 4% to 7% |
| Toronto Travel by All Modes | |
| Q4 2024 | 6.6 million trips |
| Q4 2025 | 6.4 million trips |
The decline in offpeak travel is troubling because this segment showed stronger growth while the peak period recovery was hampered by changes in work and commuter patterns.
The perception of transit as an option is declining, but this is a refreshing, if not welcome, view of customer satisfaction stats. In past reports, TTC tended to pump every increase in values, no matter how small, without considering the overall trend as context.
Customer satisfaction declined in 2025 and is lower among priority groups: Gen Z, shift workers, women and customers with low income. Customers generally feel safe on the TTC, with 89% of customers reporting they feel safe on vehicles and 77% at stops, though there is room to improve. [p. 3]
The TTC recognizes the need to be more attractive to existing and would-be riders, but the challenge is how this could be achieved.
By improving speed, safety, affordability and making the experience seamless, the TTC can divert trips from other modes, most notably private vehicles and rideshare, and increase its overall mode share while retaining our existing customers. In a constrained travel market, growth depends on being the better choice: making transit the mode people prefer when they do need to travel and capturing a larger share of trips across all segments. [pp 3-4]
“Affordable, Fast, Safe and Seamless” are the plan’s four focus areas. Unfortunately, the detailed descriptions leave key questions unanswered.
- What is “affordable”? The report notes that riders care more about speed than “minor” fare changes, but what are the implications for fare and revenue growth? Are fares frozen forever or will they start to rise to cover part of transit’s growing cost?
- “Speed is not a luxury feature, it is a core performance requirement. Makes Transit Competitive with Driving. Travel time is the top factor in mode choice.” These statements imply an attempt to compete with auto speeds using transit, but this is simply not possible especially when access and waiting times, not just in-vehicle travel, are considered.
- The Safety bullet concentrates on perceived and actual safety and security for passengers, a factor that depends not just on the TTC but a wider group of social agencies and policies to address a variety of economic and mental health issues.
- The Seamless bullet talks about access to trip planning information, a positive experience on vehicles and in stations, and “confidence that they can predict and complete their trip”. This is not just a question of a better website or new ways to access information, but that transit operations reliably provide the advertised service. The Plan is utterly silent on the need for better service management and standards.
Steve Munro 