Democratic Access to our Cities: The impacts of recent changes to transit services in major Canadian metropolitan areas

Abstract

In recent decades, transit ridership plateaued in Canadian cities, and the COVID-19 pandemic further altered public transit patterns. Understanding how changes in transit services affect democratic access to essential amenities is the first step in building a transportation system that enables access for all. This paper reports changes in public transit service in Canada’s 12 largest census metro areas (CMAs) from 2019 to 2023. We assess transit accessibility to jobs and groceries and show spatial changes and changes by income level. The resulting changes in accessibility were not uniform across metropolitan areas. Some remained largely unchanged, while others had greater accessibility in 2023. Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver experienced greater losses in public transit accessibility, while areas in urban peripheries tended to see gains. Lower-income households were disproportionately affected by reduced accessibility. Differences between metropolitan regions point to the importance of municipal policy.