Most transit riders are happy with TTC service, but they’re worried there soon won’t be enough of it.

Although complaining about the transit agency can often seem like a favourite sport for many Torontonians, a new poll says a significant majority of people who use the service reported being satisfied with it.

But three quarters of all respondents said they feared the network isn’t being expanded enough to keep up with Toronto’s booming population.

The poll, conducted by Forum Research last month, found 69 per cent of respondents had used the TTC in the past month.

Among those recent riders, 73 per cent said they were either somewhat satisfied (32 per cent), satisfied (30 per cent) or very satisfied (11 per cent) with the TTC. That was an increase of seven percentage points compared to February, when Forum found 66 per cent were satisfied with the TTC to some degree.

The new results are slightly less favourable than the TTC’s own polling, which last year found an average of 80 per cent of riders had a high perceptions of satisfaction.

Roughly half of respondents said they don’t commute to school or work by TTC. The most popular reason cited was inconvenient routes or long commute times (29 per cent), followed by a preference for the privacy of a car (15 per cent) and poor service (13 per cent).

Exactly 75 per cent of respondents said they didn’t think the TTC is growing fast enough to keep pace with population growth. Just one quarter said enough was done to expand the network and meet future demand.

According to provincial government projections, by 2041 Toronto’s population is expected to increase by about one-third to 3.9 million people.

The city’s next major transit project, the Eglinton Crosstown, could open as early as 2021. It will be owned by the provincial government but operated by the TTC.

That project will be followed in 2023 by the Finch West LRT, which is also being built by the province, while the one-stop Scarborough subway extension could be complete by as early as 2026.

But there are no immediate plans to build new rapid transit downtown, where most of the projected growth is expected to happen.

The subway relief line, which would connect the eastern portion of Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth) to downtown, is tentatively scheduled for completion by 2031. But the $6.8-billion project is not yet fully funded.

A plurality of poll respondents, or 37 per cent, said the relief line should be the TTC’s highest priority project. That was double the support for the second most popular project, the Scarborough subway extension, for which just 18 per cent of respondents said should be the priority.

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Forum conducted the poll on June 29 and 30 using an interactive voice-response telephone survey of 2,521 randomly selected Toronto voters.

The results are considered accurate, plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Results from subsamples are considered less accurate.

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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