Toronto is considering raising parking fees and lowering transit fares during concerts and sports games to encourage people to take public transit rather than their car

It's been a long time since I cared about sports, but I remember when I used to watch them that a lot of games on the East coast (and Toronto counts, being in EST) would start relatively late so that they could be televized during prime time on the West coast. I could easily imagine a baseball game ending after 1AM if it went into extra innings or something.

Where I live, a baseball game should end technically early enough, but

• there’s never enough trains and it can take a long time to even get into the station, much less on the train
• the last train pulls into the last station at 1am, which means it passed your station earlier
• you need all the infrastructure to stay open long enough to get home

I actually have tickets for an upcoming 7pm game. I expect it to be done by around 11pm, but there’s no commuter train that late. The ballpark is on a tram line which doesn’t go anywhere I need to go, so I need too get to that transfer before it shuts down. In the ideal case it may take 45 minutes to get from the ballpark to a park and ride, but given the amount of time to get on a train, the shut down is uncomfortably close

Two replies:

Sporting events can often run until 10pm or later - If I use the trains, I usually am heading to Oakville. If I am lucky, there may be three trains within 90 minutes of the game ending (all hideously crowded), and are often full of drunken ass-hats you know are driving when they get off… But Richmond Hill? Vaughan? Hamilton? Further afield? Your train-line usually stops after the commuter rush, which explains why the highways are so awful

And as for TTC stopping at 0100, Bah - Most pubs and clubs are open later than that. While I don’t personally frequent them myself, I am reminded of growing up in the UK when you could generally still catch a bus or train after 0300 because many services ran all night. It also would also massively help those who work late shifts.

Toronto may have more subway stops than many American cities, but from a “serve the needs of the people” perspective, its transport system alone makes it a complete shit-hole to live in.

The problem is that a lot of the people that attend sporting events come from the 905 areas outside of TTC service. There are commuter trains to those areas, but they taper off as the limits of "working late" are hit.

frequency, and actually being able to afford a fucking ticket, but mercifully the cost generally doesn't seem to be high in the rest of the world

but holy fuck here in sweden the cheapest ticket for my province is almost 4 dollars, they excuse this by saying that "oh it's valid for 90 minutes and on all public transport within the zone!!! you only need one ticket!!" as if that helps when people want to go to the grocery store..

when services around specific events are this stupid i can only conclude it's actively malevolent, because surely any normal person would realize that services should run until demand is gone?