Map of the Week: Transit spending

CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Map: Average annual household expenditure on transit

This week's map looks at household transit spending on transit in the GTA by census tract.

The basic pattern is familiar: transit spending is high in areas built at a streetcar scale and lower downtown - which was built to a pedestrian scale - and in the post-1945 suburbs, built to a car scale.

Transit spending is higher in the west end north of Bloor and up as far as Eglinton than along the Danforth - it's not clear why.

There are pockets of (relatively) high transit use in parts of Mississauga and Brampton, and also around York University, on both sides of Steeles.

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Map: Average annual household expenditure on transit with 1000m overlay

Transit spending has a less clear relationship to the subway lines than I would have expected. Here is a mashup of the radius map from last week (1000m radius around subway stations) with transit spending:

After a certain distance from the core, the existence of a subway line seems to have little effect on transit use. The upper horns of the YUS system, the Bloor/Danforth line west of the Humber and east of Vic Park (and the LRT) and the Sheppard line have no effect on the underlying map. Here is another zoom:

Click on the map links for fully interactive versions.

Comments

[Dug]

Are "use" and "expenditure" the same thing? Perhaps people farther from subway lines need to take a bus and then transfer to the subway making for a higher expenditure? Don't know if that costs more in Toronto but it does in the USA.