Green Space Near the TTC

Toronto is known as "the city in a park" due to its extensive urban green spaces. What's the best way to explore the city's great outdoors by subway? The answer is easy to find in GIS using a buffer and overlay analysis.

I downloaded spatial data layers containing all Toronto parklands and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) rapid transit system. Studies show that most people are willing to walk up to 800 metres (about ten minutes) to get to and from the train, so I generated 800-metre buffers around each of the 73 rapid transit stations in the city, splitting any overlap down the middle.

I then clipped the park layer to the buffers, and calculated the percentage of each buffer's area that was occupied by green space. I also extracted the name of the largest unique green space within each station's buffer zone. The results are displayed in the table.

Fittingly, stations on Line 2 (green) do well. Seven of the top ten stations for nearby green space are on that line, and its stations on average have about 11.8% nearby green space compared to averages of 8.5–9% on the other three lines.

This is likely due to the line's east-west orientation, running perpendicular to the north-south ravines that comprise the city's largest areas of parkland, particularly in the Don and Humber River valleys.

Coincidentally, seven of the bottom ten stations are also on Line 2. These poorly performing stations are naturally concentrated along denser urban corridors and closer to downtown, such as along Bloor Street. Wilson on Line 1 stands out as a suburban stop with poor access to green space—it's hemmed in between Highway 401 and Downsview Airport.

At some point I would like to visit all of the stations and their nearby parks to discover which is my personal favourite.