Everyday traffic in Toronto feels like a punchline no one’s laughing at. From headlines about mounting congestion to Premier Ford’s promise to “remove bike lanes to free up traffic,” the popular narrative is clear: there’s too much gridlock, and not enough road. But what if we told you the story is more complicated – while some of the loudest solutions on offer might actually worsen the problem?
With data in hand from the 2022 Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS), paired with mapping by School of Cities’ Jeff Allen and Muhammad Khalis Bin Samion, we have a clearer picture of how people in the Greater Golden Horseshoe are actually moving – and where the bottlenecks really lie.
The Construction Culprit
The City of Toronto’s recent staff report states plainly: Toronto is North America’s busiest construction city. In summer 2024 alone, 24 of roads were closed at peak construction, doubling travel times. This isn’t hypothetical – Queen Street, one of downtown’s main arteries between Bay Street to Victoria Street, is closed until 2027 for Ontario Line construction. And it’s not just isolated projects: according to the 2025 Congestion Management Plan, the city is simultaneously managing major infrastructure renewals, private development growth, and critical utility work across 5,600km of road that hasn’t expanded in decades.
In response, the city has adopted a more coordinated approach (PDF): leveraging real-time traffic tech, enhancing traffic enforcement, increasing towing of illegally parked vehicles on transit routes, and expanding transit signal priority systems. These are solid steps – but as the report itself admits, “these measures will not eliminate congestion,” only mitigate it.
Even City Council now directs that staff evaluate how well these mitigation efforts are working and whether new tools (PDF) – like a Construction Congestion Management Levy or an escalating Road Disruption Activity Reporting System – might be required to push back against the current pace and sprawl of disruptions.
Building on these efforts, City Council approved the creation of a new “traffic czar” during the April 2025 meeting to lead a cross-divisional congestion strategy. While the role lacks enforcement powers, it’s designed to take a more holistic and proactive approach to tackling traffic pressure — particularly the kind triggered by construction delays and overlapping projects. Yet even with this added oversight, staff continue to caution that such measures can only help manage congestion more effectively, not solve it outright.
Congestion is a Choice
Here’s where perception diverges from reality: the congestion problem isn’t just caused by construction. According to the same city report, vehicle registrations are up 26% since 2014 – but Toronto’s road network has barely changed. In short, we’re squeezing more cars onto the same streets.
As Prof. Steven Farber, interim director of U of T’s Mobility Network, told CBC: “Drivers aren’t just stuck in congestion, they are the congestion.” Real relief doesn’t come from chasing wider roads or faster lanes. It comes from fewer cars, and more attractive options for getting around without one.
What the Data Shows
When we layer TTS travel data with Can-BICS cycling infrastructure and Metrolinx transit routes, a more nuanced map of movement in the GGH emerges:
- Downtown cycling mode share reaches 10–15% in some neighbourhoods, even though bike infrastructure remains fragmented.
- Suburban areas overwhelmingly drive, not necessarily because they want to – but because transit options are limited or unreliable.
- Trips under 5km still represent a significant portion of total travel in the region. These are prime candidates for shifting to walking, cycling, or short transit hops – but only if the infrastructure supports it.
So while many complain about congestion, the truth is many short car trips could easily be avoided if safer, more appealing alternatives were available.
The city’s own Congestion Management Plan recognizes this too. In addition to its construction coordination strategy, the city is investing $400,000 into Smart Commute programs via Transportation Management Associations, aiming to shift travel demand and reduce single-occupancy vehicle use in employment-heavy corridors.
The Policy Vacuum
One of the most effective tools to reduce traffic in other global cities – congestion pricing – isn’t even on the table in Ontario. Toronto isn’t pursuing it, and the Ford government has vowed to block any attempt to toll provincial roads.
Yet Toronto’s congestion costs the region over $44 billion annually in lost economic and social value. As Baher Abdulhai, U of T engineering professor and transportation systems expert, put it: “Demand keeps increasing, but space for building infrastructure does not. Congestion pricing is a way to ration demand.”
Opponents argue that drivers already “pay through taxes” and shouldn’t be charged again. But the reality, says U of T Infrastructure Institute director Matti Siemiatycki, is that drivers are already paying – in time, stress, and inflated delivery costs for goods and services.
New York City – North America’s first to implement congestion pricing – has already seen a 7.5% drop in travel times in its first weeks. Fees collected there go directly to improving public transit – something experts say is critical if pricing is to work fairly.
Psychologist Taryn Grieder adds that how pricing is framed makes a big difference: “If it’s presented like it’ll benefit them in some way, then it may be viewed as less of a punishment.”
In Toronto, that benefit could be cleaner air, more reliable transit, or shorter commutes. But only if we’re brave enough to have the conversation.
Making Congestion Count
Congestion is frustrating – but it’s also a symptom. A symptom of how we’ve chosen to allocate public space, and how we’ve prioritized cars over people. It’s not that transit, cycling, and walking don’t work – it’s that we haven’t truly given them a chance to succeed at scale.
The 2025 Congestion Management Plan is a start. It outlines a systems-based strategy that includes transit priority expansion, more efficient capital coordination, and innovative tech solutions through partnerships with Ontario-based companies. But until we pair these operational efforts with broader, bold policy shifts – like pricing, mode-shift incentives, and land-use reforms – congestion will remain the problem we refuse to solve.
And that’s the truth we sit with in the middle of the narrative: construction is disruptive, yes. But congestion is a policy choice. One we can change.
Lanrick Bennett Jr. is Urbanist-in-Residence at the University of Toronto School of Cities
