Torontonians take three times as many transit trips per capita as Vancouver residents. But the West Coast city has built more than twice as much new rapid transit in the last 20 years.

A new report released Friday by the Pembina Institute shows that much of Toronto’s success in attracting people to transit is based on old investments in subways and streetcars.

But our continuing devotion to those subways is not cost-effective, and it threatens Toronto’s success in attracting riders that other cities are trying to emulate, according to the report.

The study compares Toronto transit to four other Canadian centres: Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa.

It shows that Toronto still has the most transit and the most ridership. But, as the city’s election campaign kicks into high gear, the report suggests politicians step back and look more broadly at how other cities are building transit, said Pembina’s Ontario director, Cherise Burda.

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It points to the perils of dithering over yet another round of subway plans.

“It’s not to say we shouldn’t build subways. Of course we need to keep doing, that but the subways we’re going to be building are for the next generation, and this generation is stuck in traffic,” she said.

In the past 20 years, Vancouver built 44 kilometres of SkyTrain and bus rapid transit (BRT). Calgary built 29 kilometres of light rail and BRT. Toronto opened only 18 kilometres of new rapid transit in the same period. Those cities moved ahead by diversifying their systems, building transit that can be realized faster and serve more communities, said Burda.

“Everyone’s building either BRTs or LRTs or both, because you can get a BRT up and running in two to three years, an LRT maybe four or five,” said Burda, who notes that the punishing Calgary winters might have given that city good cause to consider subways instead.

The report paints a brighter picture of Toronto’s transit future. The city has more than 50 kilometres of new LRT and subway on the books — far and away the most ambitious plan among five cities profiled in Fast Cities: A comparison of rapid transit in major Canadian cities.

But the cost of that expansion is nothing short of staggering, according to the report. It shows that Toronto’s $14 billion transit program — the lines that have either been funded or are under construction — costs $236 million per kilometre. That includes the Spadina subway extension, the Scarborough subway, LRTs on Finch and Sheppard and the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.

Ottawa’s LRT program comes in at $176 million per kilometre. BRTs in Calgary and Montreal are costing about $30 million per kilometre, and the Evergreen line of the SkyTrain $141 million.

When you look at costs for transit systems, focusing solely on subways is a huge mistake, said University of Waterloo transportation professor Jeff Casello, who has studied transit systems around the globe.

Transit operating in mixed traffic like most of Toronto’s streetcars can be built relatively cheaply — anywhere from $100,000 to $5 million per kilometre, he said. If you put that transit on a separate right of way, like that of the Spadina or St. Clair streetcars, it costs about $30 million to $40 million per kilometre.

“When you go from mixed traffic like the streetcars to something like the Spadina line you get lots of the benefits” without going to $300 million per kilometre, the cost of building a subway, he said.

“For one kilometre of subway you can build five to 10 kilometres of LRT,” said Casello.

“Not every situation is perfect for LRT, but an upgrade from buses in mixed traffic to LRT is something you should consider,” he said.

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One reason Calgary has built LRT is the concentration of employment in the core. The LRT hasn’t spawned much commercial development outside the downtown. In Toronto, however, the growth of highways north of the city, such as Highway 401 and Highway 407, has encouraged employment growth in other areas without any viable regional transit connections.

Casello says the Pembina report shows how well Toronto has done in maintaining transit ridership in the absence of investment for a generation. Cities such as Dallas and Salt Lake have made enormous investments but haven’t attracted ridership levels anywhere near Toronto’s.

While Burda said BRT is not the right transit technology for downtown Toronto, it could work in the suburbs. BRTs are already being built in Mississauga and along Highway 7 north of the city. A bright spot in Toronto has been the growth of the TTC’s express bus service, which has more than doubled since 2004, according to the Pembina report.

It says that “Toronto leads the way in express bus service with 87 kilometres of express Rocket Lines that serve neighbourhoods that are not reached by rapid transit. It is followed by Vancouver with 38 kilometres of B-Line buses and Calgary with 16 kilometres of rapid buses.”

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