Familiarity with Pilot Close to Unchanged

| Filed under: Toronto

Familiarity with Pilot Close to Unchanged

Approval down, disapproval up

 

Toronto, February 9th – In a random sampling of public opinion taken by The Forum Poll™ among 977 Toronto voters, two-thirds (TOP2: 68%) say they are familiar with the details of Toronto’s transit pilot project on King Street, with almost 4 in 10 (37%) saying they are very familiar. This is a similar proportion to when we last asked the same question (Nov 23: 73%).

 

A quarter (BTM2: 26%) say they are unfamiliar with the pilot project, with 1 in 10 (11%) saying they are very unfamiliar. This is a similar proportion to November (Nov 23: 21%).

 

The shift in familiarity since November is equally proportioned between familiarity and unfamiliarity, with each changing by 5 points.

 

Few (6%) say they do not know, equal to November (Nov 23: 6%).

 

Respondents most likely to say they are familiar (TOP2) with the pilot include those aged 55-64 (78%), males (78%), earning $80,000-$100,000 (80%), with a post-graduate degree (80%), living in downtown Toronto (75%) or East York (n=88) (73%), and supporting the PCs (73%), NDP (71%), or Green Party (73%).


Respondents most likely to say they are unfamiliar (BTM2) include those aged 34 and younger (35%), females (30%), the least wealthy (50%), the least educated (39%) and those with some college or university (38%), living in Etobicoke (30%) or Scarborough (32%), and supporting the Liberals (31%).

 

Plurality approves of the pilot, but support is down

 

The plurality, about 4 in 10 (TOP2: 42%) say they approve of the pilot, with a quarter (24%) saying they strongly approve. Both measures are down from November where half (Nov 23: TOP2 50%) said they approved, and a third (Nov 23: 33%) did so strongly.

Just under a third (BTM2: 29%) say they disapprove, with one-sixth (17%) saying they disapprove strongly. Overall disapproval is up since November (Nov 23: BTM2 24%), but strong disapproval (Nov 23: 15%) is effectively unchanged.

 Just under a quarter (21%) say they neither approve nor disapprove of the pilot.

Respondents most likely to say they approve of the pilot (TOP2) include those aged 35-44 (43%), 55-64 (43%), or 65+ (45%), earning $20,000-$40,000 (46%) or the most wealthy (48%), with a post-graduate degree (47%), that take public transit to work (49%), living in downtown Toronto (59%), and supporting the Liberals (51%) or NDP (52%).

Respondents that are generally satisfied with the TTC, are more likely to say that they approve of the pilot than disapprove.

Respondents most likely to say that they disapprove (BTM2) of the pilot include those aged 45-54 (35%) or 55-64 (32%), males (32%), earning $60,000-$80,000 (37%) or $80,000-$100,000 (35%), that drive to work (44%), living in North York (34%), Etobicoke (34%), or York (n=60) (33%), and supporting the PCs (41%).

Respondents that are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the TTC, are much more likely to disapprove of the pilot.

Approval is higher amongst those that say that use transit to commute to work or school, with almost half (49%) saying they approve, one-third strongly (30%), with one-sixth (18%) saying they disapprove. 1 in 10 (8%) say they disapprove strongly.

Plurality’s travel habits unchanged in response to pilot

4 in 10 (39%) say their usage of King Street won’t change, with a quarter (23%) saying they will travel on King Street less, just over 1 in 10 (12%) saying they will use King Street more, and a quarter (25%) saying they do not know.

One-fifth (20%) of those that take transit to work say they will travel on King Street more, with few (5%) drivers saying they will use King Street more.

Similar proportions of drivers and transit users say their usage of King Street isn’t going to change in response to the pilot, with 4 in 10 (38%) drivers and 4 in 10 (41%) public transit users saying it won’t affect their usage one way or the other.

One third (35%) of drivers said they will use King Street less, with one-sixth (15%) of transit users saying the same. 

 “Approval for the pilot is down, and disapproval is up,” said Dr. Lorne Bozinoff, President of Forum Research. “But overall, more people still approve than disapprove. Generally, both drivers and transit users are saying their usage of King isn’t going to change because of the pilot, so making sure the data supports the changes will be important as the pilot progresses.”

Lorne Bozinoff, Ph.D. is the president and founder of Forum Research. He can be reached at lbozinoff@forumresearch.com or at (416) 960-9603.