How Toronto Got Addicted to Cars

Toronto is a city with some great potential, and one of the best cities in Canada. But it has a problem: it's addicted to cars. Here's how that happened.

NJB Live (my bicycle livestream channel):

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References & further reading:

History of Toronto

Toronto Historical Streetcar Photos courtesy of Transit Toronto
Photographer: Richard Glaze

Historical Photos of Toronto from the City of Toronto Archives:

The Yellowbelt - Map TO

Map of Toronto with the borders of the 1974 - 1998 boroughs indicated
By Lencer - own work, used:OpenStreetMap

The Amalgamation of Toronto

Vote breakdown shows pre-amalgamation split

Amalgamation of Toronto

TORONTO ELECTION HIGHLIGHTS FAILURE OF AMALGAMATION

Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Toronto Megacity

The Megacity Threat to Toronto: Less Democracy for More Money

The fight for TORONTO

Sizing up amalgamation, 20 years on

Toronto: Trouble in the megacity, facing a financial crisis in 2010

THE FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF AMALGAMATION: THE CASE OF THE CITY OF TORONTO

Toronto Election 2010 Map
By DrRandomFactor - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: I Was Drunk But Never High at Work

Pt 1 John Tory on Toronto's Financial Situation (May 16, 2016)

Strategic Plan for Cycling in Toronto:
The “Toronto Bike Plan - Shifting Gears” (All Wards)

Premier Doug Ford and the politics of spite

The War on Cars 74. Not Just Bikes with Jason Slaughter

This video contains photos and video licensed from Getty Images

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Chapters

0:00 Introduction
1:14 The early history of Toronto
2:20 CARS! WE NEED MORE CARS!
2:35 Gotta get rid of those streetcars
4:17 Freeways everywhere
5:27 What was left of Toronto
5:55 Car-dependency in the suburbs
6:52 The MEGACITY
9:21 The worst mayor Toronto ever had
11:30 How the Conservatives f-up cities
13:02 You need to vote. DO IT.
14:25 Conclusion
15:00 My travel problems and NordVPN

[NotJustBikes]

I only promote products that I actual use and like, and this happens to be one of them. Maybe you'll like it too? If not, there's a 30-day money back guarantee.

Thanks to sponsorships like these I'm able to license historical video and images that aren't available anywhere else, and I like that.

[PeterSdrolias]

I grew up in downtown Toronto. My family did not own a car. We took the bus, subway and street cars everywhere. We would walk to the grocery store up the street. For almost everything else we would shop at Honest Ed's.
It was bliss!

[hinken]

The idea of putting a highway thru a city centre is just insane.

[benreeve]

"Toronto will commit suicide if it plunges the Spadina Expressway into it's heart...our planners are 19th century men with a naive faith in an obsolete technology. In the age of software, Metro planners treat people like hardware. They haven't the faintest interest in the values of neighborhoods or community. Their failure to learn from the mistakes of American cities will be ours too"

Damn. Miss Jacobs did not pull punches.

[mythirlmaiden]

Even with all its issues, even though I was living in a car dependant suburb in etobicoke it still had the best transit of anywhere I have lived in ontario. It was a culture shock moving out of toronto to the niagara region let me tell you. I had never even wanted to own a car and I was forced into because the transit was so abyssmal

[pedrobrunodeandrade]

"Urban planning is inherently political." Thank you, Not Just Bikes! Such an obvious statement, yet bizarrely controversial.

[troypavlek]

Remember, Torontonians: The "Please vote" is not just a platitude. On October 24th, there will be a very real choice between the status quo and Gil Penalosa, a renowned urbanist who fundamentally gets this stuff.

Transportation is political, and the chance to exercise your political views is coming in under a month.

[alanthefisher]

The condo tower/single family home insane juxtaposition of Toronto planning always gets me. Its pretty much the only place in North America where that's so common place everywhere in the metro area.

[Arkiasis]

Not only calling it the SkyDome, but editing in a SkyDome logo. Beautiful.

[rlwelch]

As someone who moved to Toronto in 2010, photos of city from the 60s to 90s are chilling

[chrisw]

I sent your last video to my city social media accounts, they made a point to tell me the administration and the planning department saw the video. You're doing the lords work.

[lukeothedukeo]

I'm literally on a train home from a weekend visit to Toronto and am excited to see how you break this city down. There was a lot to like, but after spending a lot of time in NYC and visiting some European cities, "so close to great yet so far" was my main takeaway.

[TheHothead]

Doug Ford underfunding transit, education, and healthcare to build a fucking highway through the Greenbelt that even traffic engineers say is fucking useless is the epitomy of what this video spoke of. Anyways, vote Gil Penalosa for mayor. He's an internationally recognized urbanist activist with a detailed plan to end car-addiction in Toronto and dismantle the yellow belt to build housing and liveable communities. Speaking of the yellow belt and Greenbelt, the Greenbelt was created to make the GTA densify, but then the yellow belt was never taken out of the zoning code; and now we have a national housing crisis.

[jasoncw]

Toronto very recently legalized the construction of up to 5 unit housing city-wide, effectively abolishing the yellow belt, which is a huge step in the right direction. In addition to that the Ontario Line is in the process of being constructed, the streetcar system will be expanded into the newly developed Portlands, Lines 5 and 6 are set to open soon and Dundas Street is being looked at as a potential transit mall like King Street. As you have already covered, GO Expansion is well underway to give S-Bahn like frequencies to the network, and College Street recently got new elevated (Dutch style?) bike lanes along the downtown stretch.

All this is to say, there is a lot of optimism to be had with Toronto's near future. The Toronto by-election (after Tory's uhhh yk) is mostly led by progressive candidates as well. Looking forward to any future videos on Toronto and its hopeful improvement.

[LS-Moto]

As a Euro kid back in the 2000's, I walked into my doom multiple times in Toronto. Man I'm happy to be walking all over European cities again.

[RMTransit]

Good video as always, though I am less sad about losing transit city! Toronto would be so much better if it had even 20% less cars in it. Edit: Now that I think about it, we built most of the decent stuff in transit city anyways like Eglinton and Finch - albeit worse than we could have!

[TheReaderOnTheWall]

I worked in Missisauga, a Toronto suburb, and it was the most wretched place to walk to go eat or do anything at all. At the time, I lived in Montreal, and the company I worked at was making me fly and rent a hotel every week. These few months must have made me emit more carbon than I will in the rest of my life.

Now I live in Strasbourg, France, and bike everywhere. It's not perfect, but it's much better than Montreal.

[socialist-strong]

Politics comes from the greek word for “city”.

It literally meant “the affairs of the city” or “city planning”!

[Areum_lee]

Hi there, just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your videos. I am actually a current urban planning student in Toronto and watching your videos have really helped me feel like I’m on the right track in life. I really hope to be able to address the issues that you bring up as I feel strongly about the connection and car dependency problem we face here in Toronto. Thank you so much for the work you do!

[joshmorcombe]

Absolutely love that you're not beating around the bush with politics here, it's important

Edit: a reminder that municipal elections all across Ontario are happening THIS MONTH. If you are from Ontario, take some time to read up on your local cantidades for councillor, school trustee, and (possibly) mayor, and make sure you are registered to vote!!!