Toronto's Transit Crisis: Wealthy Exit Public Transit for Ride-Hailing, Creating Class-Based System
Source: Edgardo Sepulveda. "Toronto’s Transit Crisis Is a Class Crisis." April 5, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
Rich people in Toronto are ditching public transit for Uber and Lyft, which is starving the transit system of money and creating a two-tier transportation system. The wealthy get convenient rides from poorly-paid drivers while everyone else gets stuck with declining public transit service.
Conclusion
Toronto's transit crisis is fundamentally a class crisis where wealthy households abandoning public transit for ride-hailing services is accelerating the fiscal decline of public transit while creating economic segregation of the public sphere
Premises
- High-income Toronto households ($200,000+) now spend more on ride-hailing ($146 million) than on public transit ($118 million), representing a fundamental shift in transportation spending patterns
- Toronto has an oversaturated ride-hailing market with 80,000 licensed drivers (3x more per capita than NYC), while cities that imposed caps recovered transit ridership faster
- The TTC's ridership recovery lags significantly behind peers at only 78% of pre-pandemic levels, while Vancouver recovered 90% and US cities reached 85%
- Ride-hailing drivers earn a median of $5.97 per hour after expenses, well below minimum wage, creating a system where wealthy riders are served by exploited low-wage workers
- Every trip migrating from unionized TTC operators to misclassified ride-hailing contractors represents a transfer from living-wage public employment to below-minimum-wage private work
- Cities like New York that implemented vehicle caps and revenue levies have successfully protected transit systems while Toronto failed to regulate despite having the opportunity
Assumptions
- Public transit is inherently superior to private ride-hailing as a social good
- Class-based transportation choices reflect broader patterns of economic segregation
- Government regulation of ride-hailing markets is both feasible and desirable
- Transit ridership recovery is primarily driven by ride-hailing competition rather than other factors
- The 'death spiral' of declining ridership leading to service cuts is inevitable without intervention