I was pretty excited when I found out a couple of years ago that a permanent express line was going to be put in to the airport.
It was about time that a city like Toronto got transit to the airport. Now we could finally be a world-class city. Narita has the Shinkansen into Tokyo station. Heathrow has the Piccadilly line into London. And Toronto would have the Union Pearson express.
Unfortunately I forgot to calculate in Toronto’s lack of planning. You see Toronto is shit at planning. For example the ROM. Super-cool building but if you look at the original designs you will notice the current structure has a lot less glass.
That’s because no one thought about antiques and how bad sunlight is for them. If they had, they might have rejected the designs and gone with something else.
And so it is with the UPX.
Look at it from a traveller’s perspective. Most people travel with someone. So for $27.50 each, a couple can take the UPX from Pearson to Union station. But what is Union isn’t their final destination. Like let’s say Bay and Bloor is their final destination, they would need to pay an additional $3.25 each for the TTC up to Bay station and the drag their luggage a block or so to the hotel.
Well, for $60 you can take cab from the airport and not have to schlep your luggage through around Union station (station is currently in a state of extreme disrepair.) or drag it down the street.
Proponents will point out that the train is only $19 with a Presto card. Perhaps, but who carries Presto cards? Schmucks like me do. 905ers do. Commuters do.
People who commute into Toronto from far away; places like Barrie, Ajax, Oakville. For us, it doesn’t make sense to come all the way downtown to then take a train back out of town. We already live out of town. For me, it would be an hour out of my way, so Presto is a bit of a red herring.
So we know no one travelling with someone else will use it. And no one outside of Toronto will use it. But what about all those single travellers living in the downtown core?
Well it turns out they don’t use it either. For example, let’s say you live at Gerrard and Woodbine. You can walk to Woodbine station wait for a train on the Bloor Danforth line. That will take you directly to Kipling station where you can wait and board a bus to the airport.
Or you can walk to Woodbine station wait for a train on the Bloor Danforth line. Get off at Bloor, schlep up to the Yonge University line, wait for a train and ride to Union, walk around Union (remember the repairs) pay another $27.50, wait again for the next UPX, and save what exactly?
The benefit / hassle ratio just isn’t there.
The Metrolinx recently offered the service for free over a weekend. They were beaming like idiot children at how they broke passenger records.
The vast majority of those people were elderly with children who had nothing to do on a Sunday so they went for an outing.
Notice any luggage? Of course not, they are not actually going anywhere.
As is so typical of Toronto, they didn’t plan ahead or properly review the situation to figure out what the issue actually was.
They needed to ask people who actually used transit what they would find beneficial, or make their trip easier. It would need to be folded into TTC as an additional line included in the $3.25 to be of any real benefit. Until then, the UPX will continue to fail.
Of course, they could augment the cost with zoned fares but that is a fight for another day.