‘A Toronto issue’: Ipsos poll shows some TTC riders changing habits after violent incidents

Among several findings, the poll suggests that 44 per cent of Toronto residents feel unsafe riding transit alone, compared to 27 per cent of riders across the country.

People living in Toronto feel less safe on public transit than other Canadians, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News.

The poll suggests 44 per cent of Toronto residents feel unsafe riding transit alone. That compares to 35 per cent of riders in the 905 region around Toronto and 27 per cent across the country.

“In general people do feel safe riding transit. There’s a quarter of the population that doesn’t really feel safe, regardless of where you go,” Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos, told Global News.

“What we’re seeing in the data is that this really seems to be a Toronto issue, and particularly a downtown Toronto issue in the 416 area, where people have been seeing a lot of reporting on various incidents on the public transit system, and it spooked them.”

This new polling comes after a series of high-profile and violent attacks on Toronto’s transit system. It includes a fatal stabbing at the High Park subway station, a reported sexual assault on a bus, a driver allegedly shot in the face with a BB gun and an incident in which a group of teenagers allegedly swarmed a TTC worker.

While the number of incidents remains low compared to the overall ridership figures, Toronto has seen a recent uptick, one expert said.

“It has been generally trending downwards across Canada, but we have seen an uptick in Toronto,” David Cooper, principal at Leading Mobility Consulting, told Global News of attacks on transit. “There’s about 2.1 million passengers boarding per day and about five incidents.”

He said the TTC, in particular, had seen a number of high-profile, severe incidents.