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According to the TTC CEO’s latest report, customer satisfaction is still down, as are metrics including service reliability across the entire system, but especially with the trunk streetcars routes, many of which have been waylaid by Ontario Line construction. As for buses, the problem, in part, is the result of a vicious cycle: the worse the traffic, the slower the transit vehicles, which means more people avoid the rocket and drive instead.

In an effort to alter this storyline, TTC spent the summer concocting a “ridership growth strategy,” which it unveiled this month. The highlights: replace the Metropass with a fare-capping system, wayfinding, improve reliability by actually meeting the TTC’s own service standards, and increase subway frequency because more people are back in the office.

Depending on the size of the fare cap (i.e., free after 40, 44 or 47 rides), these changes are projected to add between 31 and 45 million passengers per year — a 7 to 10 per cent increase in annual ridership — and cost up to $18 million in net expenditure.

The 2025 ridership growth strategy feels, well, unambitious, especially compared to its 2003 ancestor, which was also known as a ridership growth strategy. That storied plan, plus strong management, a pro-transit mayor and council’s willingness to fund new projects, jolted the TTC out of a long funk and put the agency on track to break through the half-billion rider mark.

Will the current modest version do the same? Unlikely.

However, today’s conditions are similar to the period leading up to 2003: tight government funding, a heavy repair backlog, economic uncertainty and a public confidence crisis caused by the Russell Hill subway collision in August, 1995. Ridership plunged in the late 1980s and bottomed out in 1997, showing little improvement until the mid-2000s.

The 2003 strategy also called for multimillion-dollar investments in service improvements, an expanded fleet, and the construction of surface rights-of-way to improve reliability — the latter produced the St. Clair West streetcar right-of-way.

Mainly, the 2003 growth strategy was animated by a clear vision for why people choose transit over other ways of getting around. As the authors stated, “The key factors governing mode choice are speed, reliability, comfort, convenience, and cost.”

The order is important. If you know when your train or bus is arriving, and how much time will elapse before the next one comes along, you’re more likely to choose transit than if you don’t have that certainty. But for all sorts of reasons, including some the TTC can’t control, the post-pandemic version of ɫɫ�� transit is predictably less predictable.

The 2025 strategy stresses that the world has changed since 2019. As the TTC’s surveys show, GenZ is in the workforce, more people are shopping in person and fewer women and racialized minorities are taking transit. Recent surveys also show that 49 per cent of respondents who stopped taking transit switched to driving.

Freezing fares or eliminating the requirement to pay $156 to get a Metropass (the justification for the fare cap proposal) may make for good politics, but these aren’t the factors that mostly determine whether or not someone chooses transit.

The 2003 strategy acknowledged this foundational reality; the 2025 version does not.

Better wayfinding within stations is a laudable design improvement, but it won’t cause more people to ride the network. Nor will swapping out monthly passes for a fare system whose logic resembles a coffee chain loyalty program — buy 10 and the next one is on us.

The other core lesson of the 2003 strategy is that it costs money to improve service, and there’s little evidence the TTC or the city is willing to make those investments now. Ironically, the TTC’s 2025 plan cites the last time it invested in major service enhancements: between 2015 and 2019, when it expanded off-peak service and created bus express routes on busy suburban arterials. In all cases, ridership jumped by double or even triple digits.

So: kudos to the TTC for trying to plan systematically for ridership growth. But to get there, the commission must return to first principles, which is that most people will take transit when it is convenient and reliable. Master those elements, and the rest takes care of itself.