What will this cyclist do when it begins to snow?
Scarborough mom feels safer on her child’s bike than taking TTC to work
After a few weeks of commuting on a crowded TTC bus route as the COVID-19 crisis roared back to life in September, Nita Goswami realized there had to be a better way. She didn’t feel safe taking transit, so she ditched the bus and found another way to get to work: her 10-year-old daughter’s bicycle.
The trip from Goswami’s apartment on Scarborough’s Tuxedo Court to Tredway Woodsworth Public School, where she works as a lunchroom supervisor, was slow going on the tiny bike, but Goswami found it preferable to a crowded transit vehicle.
“When I look at the bus, I don’t want to go on the TTC. At least not for now when the cases are so high,” said Goswami, a 38-year-old mother of two.
Her ride has gotten a little easier since a friend gave Gowsami her son’s old bike, which is closer to Goswami’s size. She said she enjoys getting outside and will keep riding until the snow falls, but she doesn’t know how she’ll get to work after that.
She could take an Uber, but the $10 trip each way would cut into the $125 she earns each week at the school, and every penny counts because she and her husband, who works as a pharmacist, are trying to save up to buy a home.
Goswami said she wants the TTC “to know about (the) hardship me and other families are going through.”
She isn’t alone in her reluctance to take transit. According to a survey conducted in July by the Scarborough Civic Action Network, a non-profit community group, 75 per cent of respondents in the eastern borough reported they had stopped or reduced their transit use as a result of fear of COVID-19. That’s despite the fact that 65 per cent said they relied on transit for essential trips like grocery shopping and accessing employment.
The pandemic has forced transit dependent residents across the city to change their travel habits, particularly those outside the downtown core where busy bus lines are often the only form of public transportation, and long distances between destinations make walking impractical. Many who are still taking transit are, like Goswami, the low- or moderate-income workers the rest of the city has depended on during the crisis, including school support staff, grocery clerks and child-care workers.
Earlier this week, the TTC came under fire for advising riders concerned about bus crowding to get off and wait for the next vehicle. Mayor John Tory criticized the advice as “insensitive,” and transit agency CEO Rick Leary apologized. Yet the TTC has been warning for months that as ridership rebounded from a low point this spring, it would become impossible for riders to stay the recommended two metres apart.
Steven Farber, an associate professor at the University of Toronto who researches transportation equity, said the TTC is limited in what it can do to fight crowding, given that it op
Urban planner Masooma Ali says the TTC’s message to riders “shows that this is a city divided.” erates a fleet of about 2,000 buses and doesn’t have access to more. “Our transportation system as a whole is not resilient to a shock like this,” he said. The agency is doing what it can “to keep services operating almost at full capacity, despite huge drops in ridership levels.”
Exactly what risk transit poses is up for debate. Meghan Winters, a professor who studies links between health and transportation at Simon Fraser University, noted there haven’t been recorded cases of transmission on public transit, but stressed that “it is important that we do all we can to ensure transit feels and is safe.”
Masooma Ali, an urban planner who grew up in Scarborough, said advising riders to take the next bus shows that the onus of avoiding crowding has been placed on riders, which “really just shows that this is a city divided. That responsibility should not fall on the people, especially the people that have been the backbone of the city and have ensured that it stays running through this pandemic,” she said. Ali said there should be more consideration for workers and people for whom public transit is their only means of mobility.