Toronto’s gridlock is already back — and your commute may get worse than ever after COVID-19
Eighteen months ago, COVID-19 hit Toronto, emptying its streets and its public transit. With the city now showing signs of returning to life, people are once again on the move. Only, the ways they are moving have changed. In this two-part series, Toronto Star transportation reporter Ben Spurr examines the future of your post-pandemic commute. In part one, he explored the problems facing the TTC, and in part two today, he looks at the troubling return of gridlock.
More pollution, billions of dollars in lost productivity, poorer health and increased stress. All of those problems could await residents of post-pandemic Toronto, if the city doesn't get a handle on its resurgent traffic woes.
Eighteen months after COVID-19 plunged Toronto into crisis and emptied out its streets, drivers have returned to the roadways in numbers this fall. The city's famous gridlock is back.
And while the roads are not yet as crowded as before the pandemic, there are troubling signs that the travel patterns that have taken root over the last year and a half could pose a serious threat to the city's long-term sustainability.
For one, the roadways are busy again despite the city's office occupancy remaining historically low and commuters staying home. Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, car use is returning at much faster rates than transit ridership.
Experts warn that if those trends continue as Toronto opens up and more people return to physical workplaces, congestion could become worse than it was before COVID-19, which would have significant negative impacts on the environment, the economy and residents' quality of life.
I think it's definitely a danger right now, for sure, that things come back possibly with more traffic and more congestion," said Jesse Coleman, manager of transportation data and analytics for the city of Toronto. It's something that the city is taking seriously and managing actively."
When COVID-19 hit last spring, congestion practically disappeared overnight. In the two months following the province's declaration of an emergency in March 2020, Toronto's travel time index - a figure the transportation department uses to compare average citywide driving times to free-flow" conditions - fell to about 1.0 during traditional rush hour periods, meaning there were almost no traffic delays. (Before the pandemic, the baseline index for evening rush hour was 1.76, meaning drives took 76 per cent longer than they would if there was no traffic.) Traffic volumes also fell, to as low as 44 per cent of normal during what used to be the morning rush.
Since then traffic has fluctuated as pandemic restrictions were strengthened or eased. But with students returning to school last month, both traffic volumes and congestion reached their highest levels since COVID-19 began.
As of the week of Sept. 13, Toronto's daily traffic volumes were back to 85 per cent of normal, according to city data. The morning rush, which had been almost nonexistent earlier in the pandemic even as the evening grew busy, also returned. The first full week of in-person school saw morning traffic delays shoot up by 75 per cent compared to the end of summer.
The return of gridlock is taking a toll on drivers like Evan Tummillo, whose job as a director at an energy company requires frequent drives to Bluewater, Ont., about 200 kilometres west of his home in Toronto. The 30-year-old also uses his car to run errands and visit friends since he's become wary of riding the TTC during the pandemic.
In the early stages of the crisis, traffic was so light that trips that would normally take him an hour shrunk to 20 minutes. It was honestly a dream," Tummillo said.
But now he's back to spending up to two hours a day behind the wheel. The pandemic has given him a new perspective on many things, but his frustration at being stuck in traffic isn't one of them. We still have things to do. We still don't really want to be in our car," he said. It doesn't feel that great."
A city spokesperson said the municipality is constantly updating its plans to address congestion as part of its recovery strategy. The city has already taken steps to give people alternatives to driving like expanding the cycling network and implementing priority bus routes. It's also deploying traffic agents to manage busy intersections, activating smart signals that will adjust to real-time traffic conditions, and monitoring congestion hot spots using traffic cameras.
Eric Miller, director of the University of Toronto's Transportation Research Institute, speculated there are two why reasons traffic is coming back so strongly despite many people still working from home.
One is that although fewer workers are commuting, people are wary of riding public transit and are instead using their cars for the trips they do take. The latest figures from the TTC show transit ridership has only returned to about 45 per cent of normal.
Additionally, while many people are working from home, they're still making trips to do shopping, run errands and for other purposes.
(Working from home) reduced peak-period commuting travel, but not necessarily trip-making for other reasons," Miller said. These nonwork trips are always more car-oriented than work trips, and will be even more so at the moment" given people's reluctance to take public transit.
Data from location technology firm TomTom seems to confirm that nonwork travel is contributing to the resurgence of driving. As of the week of Sept. 20, congestion in the city was about 10 per cent below normal when measured on a weekly basis, but since mid-July there have been several occasions when congestion in Toronto exceeded pre-pandemic norms on at least one weekend day.
TomTom spokesperson Carol Hansen said the statistics suggest that people who are working remotely have become more inclined to get in their cars on weekends. Whereas before if you were in the office all week, it was kind of a relief to be home for a bit," she said.
The TomTom data, which is collected from an ecosystem" of smartphones, in-vehicle navigation systems and other devices, indicates driving is on the rise across Canada, although patterns vary from city to city. But in a glimpse of what could be in Toronto's future, weekly gridlock in Vancouver has started to exceed pre-pandemic levels. The week of Sept. 13, congestion in the West Coast city was eight per cent higher than standard conditions in 2019.
Carolyn Kim, Ontario regional director for the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank, warned that if congestion in Canada's cities worsens it will severely undermine the country's efforts to meet climate targets.
Pembina has reported that Canadian greenhouse gas emissions dropped by seven per cent in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, with the bulk of the decline attributable to a reduction in surface transportation.
In the long term, (the return of traffic) really endangers our ability to have a safe climate, and to ensure that we are limiting warming by 1.5 C," she said, referencing the target Canada and others adopted under the Paris Accord.
More gridlock would also put a significant drag on the economy. Prior to the pandemic, the Toronto Region Board of Trade predicted congestion would cost the region $15 billion in lost productivity by 2031 if it wasn't addressed. The problem will be impossible to tackle if transit use remains low and traffic snarls the road network.
(There's) a huge amount of economic impact," said Jonathan English, director of policy at the board of trade, who explained that chronic gridlock limits employment opportunities for residents and makes it harder for employers to recruit top talent.
There are also costs to individuals. A 2007 Toronto Public Health study found that traffic pollution contributed to 440 premature deaths and 1,700 hospitalizations per year in Toronto. Research has even linked traffic stress to symptoms of depression.
Taken together, the effects of worsening traffic could make Toronto a less livable and less competitive city. A 2016 ranking of 30 global cities of opportunity" by PricewaterhouseCoopers placed Toronto third behind only London and Singapore. But while Canada's largest city got high marks for health, security, intellectual capital and innovation, its gridlock problems held it back, and it ranked near the middle of the pack on traffic congestion.
Both Kim and English say the solution is convincing more residents to get out of their cars and get back on public transit.
Pembina is pushing for senior governments to provide long-term financial support to the TTC and other transit agencies so they can weather the dramatic loss of revenue sustained during the pandemic without making service cuts.
Meanwhile, the board of trade is working with the TTC and other providers to make sure would-be commuters know about measures agencies are taking to ensure their systems are safe, like enhanced disinfection protocols. The board is also supportive of providers like GO Transit adjusting their service to reflect anticipated future work patterns that will see more people staying home for at least part of the week, and travelling outside of traditional rush hours.
Basically, we have to make sure that people do feel comfortable (riding transit) and that the service is there for them," English said.
He acknowledged the potential for increased congestion is concerning, but he's optimistic commuters will return to transit, if for no other reason than there's no realistic alternative. The board of trade estimates that before the pandemic there were more than 500,000 jobs located downtown, and while about two-thirds have some capacity to be done remotely, many employees are expected to return to the office at least part time.
It's quite simply impossible for all the workers in the Financial District ... to get there by car," said English.
Miller, at U of T's transportation institute, also believes more gridlock isn't inevitable. The main determinants of post-pandemic travel patterns will be how many people continue working from home, and whether commuters become comfortable taking transit again. It could take years for those factors to settle.
The fact is that no one knows what the new normal' will look like," he said.
Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr