‘A tipping point’: Toronto traffic, transit congestion likely to worsen with in-office mandates: experts

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the federal government should follow the city’s lead and bring workers back to the office full-time. CTV’s Dylan Dyson reports.

TORONTO — Greater Toronto commuters are likely bracing for traffic and transit congestion to worsen over the coming months as a number of major employers get ready to increase in-office days.

Even before return-to-office mandates take effect, experts say vehicle traffic in the city is at a tipping point, while delays, construction and public safety concerns plague the public transit system.

“I think people should be very concerned, both policy-makers and commuters themselves, about the impact that a back-to-work mandate is going to have on the commute,” said Jennifer Keesmaat, a former chief planner for the City of Toronto.

“We were already hitting a tipping point because transit ridership has decreased and so many people are getting in their cars.”

In many Canadian cities, she noted there is not sufficient road capacity to accommodate even a small increase in vehicle traffic, which will likely lead to longer commute times, more frustration and lost productivity.

Toronto’s traffic delays are due partly to congestion in the city’s relatively few arteries, said Giles Gherson, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Street parking, bike lanes, and in-street patio spaces during the summer months all contribute to clogged city streets, he noted.

This issue, Gherson said, is made worse by more than one million additional vehicles driving on Toronto roads over the past two decades.

Some of Canada’s big banks, including BMO, RBC, TD and Scotiabank, have all stated that more workers will be required to be in the office four days a week beginning in the fall. Some of the reasons cited by the banks include operational improvements and opportunities for collaboration.

Rogers Communications Inc. asked its corporate employees to come in four days a week in October, with plans to increase to five days in February. Investment bank Canaccord Genuity is reportedly moving to five days a week starting this month.

The Ontario government also announced in mid-August that public servants will be required to return to the office four days a week starting Oct. 20 and on a full-time basis starting next year. Premier Doug Ford said he believes employees are more productive when they work in person.

Stuart Green, a spokesperson for the Toronto Transit Commission, said in a statement that the TTC always increases service in September as a seasonal adjustment, and intends to release more information in October regarding plans to increase service in the fall.

He noted the TTC has seen that Monday and Friday tend to have lower ridership compared with the rest of the week, and the system has the capacity to absorb additional ridership on those days as more people return to the office.

“In other words, we should be able to accommodate an increase in peak demand within existing service. I’m told we’re also expecting lower post-secondary demand this fall compared to the spring, as colleges and universities are reporting reduced enrolment – that frees up some more capacity,” Green said.

He added that the TTC can provide extra service if unexpected bumps in ridership occur.

“We’ll monitor the impact of return to office and integrate any additional requirements into our 2026 budget ask,” Green said.

Keesmaat said she expects travel times will be longer when in-office mandates take effect, unless municipalities engage in concentrated campaigns to encourage public transit.

Given the circumstances, she said she is a “bit surprised” there’s not more of an effort to get ahead of the issue.

A statement from Kalinka Madej, a spokesperson for the City of Toronto, said the municipality encourages commuters to take transit when travelling into the downtown core.

“The City of Toronto will continue to monitor travel patterns and will adjust congestion management strategies in collaboration with transit partners to keep people moving efficiently,” the statement reads.

However, Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, sees the impact of return-to-office mandates on congestion differently. She said while some Toronto employers are cracking down on hybrid arrangements, the change appears to be incremental.

“If you look at that as a share of all employment in downtown, the increment is not that large. We’re talking about a couple of percentage points,” she said.

Still, Toronto’s congestion issues are likely to persist, Chapple said.

“By many indicators, Toronto has the worst congestion in North America. That doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. But I wouldn’t expect it to get much worse,” she said.

Recent data from Statistics Canada said the number of Canadians commuting to work is up for the fourth year in a row.

The proportion of employed people who are commuters — which the agency defines as those who usually work most of their hours outside the home — reached 82.6 per cent in May 2025, up 1.3 percentage points from May 2024. It also compares with a low of 75.7 per cent in May 2021, when pandemic measures meant many workers were encouraged to stay away from the office.

With more wheels on the road and passengers on public transportation this fall, Gherson said it will put pressure on an “already bad situation,” and spotlight the city’s efforts to alleviate congestion.

“Now they have to respond to ensure that congestion isn’t out of control with the number of employees coming back to the office,” Gherson said.

“That’s the real concern, that the whole effort here on the part of these employers to have more productive businesses ... isn’t going to be undermined because employees just can’t get there.”

On the other hand, downtown business owners are likely cheering the upcoming changes.

Gherson said the influx of people will be a “bit of a godsend” for Toronto’s core regarding the post-COVID recovery.

“That means all the businesses in the downtown core that rely on office workers as their customers, they’ve all been suffering for a good length of time now,” he said.

Gherson added the move will be better for the values of office buildings.

“When you start to see significant drops in occupancy, that is higher vacancy levels, that over time has an impact on the value of these buildings … and that in turn has a depressing effect on property tax revenues,” he said.

He said the Toronto Region Board of Trade delivered an action plan on congestion to the municipality in February, and the city adopted all five of its recommendations.

Some of the recommendations included setting up a construction planning office to better co-ordinate lane closures, raising the threshold for allowing construction projects to close lanes for an extended period of time and establishing a culture of accountability for gridlock at City Hall.

Keesmaat said encouraging more people to use public transit can be done by building back some of the confidence that was eroded since the pandemic.

“Service levels did go down, and public safety has been compromised. So municipalities should both be doing the work of prioritizing and elevating messages around transit and transit usage. But they also need to be improving the service,” she said.

Furthermore, Keesmaat said the infrastructure to improve operations already exists.

“Increasing the service level, which is something back when I was chief planner in 2012, we put a tremendous amount of effort and energy into automatic train control. So that we could run the trains more closely together, thereby offering a higher level of service on the subway,” she said.

“The irony is we’re not functioning at that full capacity today.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2025.

Daniel Johnson, The Canadian Press