Toronto’s mayor tries to improve transport

FEW cities these days have the cachet of Toronto. It ranks high on lists of the world’s most “liveable” cities (the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, put it fourth last year). Drake, a popular rapper, is an enthusiast for his home town. Lovers of diversity are attracted to Canada’s biggest metropolis. Yet native Torontonians who have moved away are strangely resistant to returning home. John Tory, the city’s mayor, who tries to lure them back, says they give two main reasons for saying no. The first is that the jobs are better in places like London and Hong Kong. The second is that Toronto’s public transport is much worse.

Toronto’s subway system has changed little since 1966, the year an east-west line was added to a U-shaped north-south track. In a ranking of subway systems in 46 cities by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, Toronto placed 43rd, with just 19km (12 miles) of track per square km of territory in 2003. The situation has not improved since then, while the population has grown. The last big extension of the network of buses, streetcars and surface rail opened more than a decade ago.