Mississauga, Not Toronto
Tangsel, not Jakarta
24 December 2024
During my trip to Vancouver, the IISMA UBC (University of British Columbia) awardees were surprised when I told them that I've explored more of Vancouver on the first day of my arrival than I've explored Toronto during my stay up to that point. That sounds crazy considering that the trip was at the start of December since I'd spent 3 months in Toronto, but there are some unavoidable obstacles to exploring Toronto other than my preoccupation with my academic and non-academic activities, particularly my (very) personal project.
I'm Not In Toronto
University of Toronto has three campuses spread around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA): Scarborough, St. George, and Mississauga. The Scarborough campus is in the Scarborough area, in northeast Toronto. The St. George campus is the main campus of the university, placed in downtown Toronto (right next to the Ontario parliament building, which shows how centered in the city it is). Lastly, the Mississauga campus is where I'm placed along with the three other IISMA UofT awardees. Mississauga is the name of the city (or perhaps town would be more fitting) to Toronto's southwest, and that's where the campus lies. It functions as Toronto's suburban area, just like Tangsel is to Jakarta.
Mississauga is not a bad city, let me be clear about that. I've walked through a sizable portion of it on foot when I walked from my campus to the Square One mall (around 20km), so I know how the city feels like outside of my campus wall. And what I can say is that it really does fit as a suburban area. Just like Tangsel, it's a mishmash of housing complex and individual shop bundled into one. Just imagine Tangsel but colder and with a better city planning, that's what Mississauga is.
Unlike Tangsel however, whose commute to the metropolitan city it orbits around (Jakarta) is relatively short (taking a commuter line from Rawa Buntu station to Tanah Abang station in Central Jakarta only takes around 30 minutes), going to Toronto from Mississauga is not that short of a trip. There are three options available for me: MiWay bus and the TTC, commuter line, or shuttle. MiWay is the bus system running in Mississauga. Using that bus, I could get from campus to the outskirt of Toronto in about an hour. From there, I could get on the Toronto's subway (managed by the Toronto Transit Company) to go to downtown in about 20 minutes. The shuttle, meanwhile, is provided by the University of Toronto to link the Mississauga campus and the St. George campus. It runs back and forth on an hourly schedule on weekdays (and a more sparse schedule on weekends) directly between the two campuses. From my experience, it'll take at least 45 minutes to get to downtown using the shuttle, though it usually takes north of an hour due to traffic jams and congestion. Lastly, there's a commuter rail line that goes from a station relatively close to the campus straight to the Union station (this is the main station that Toronto uses and it's placed right in downtown, similar to Gambir or Manggarai in Jakarta). The commuter rail line is the quickest, but it still takes 45 minutes. The biggest downside though is its expensive cost. A one-way trip costs 7.4 CAD or around 80 thousands IDR (1 CAD = 11000 IDR). It's due to this reason that I've only used the line twice.
Such is why I've almost always used the shuttle bus to go to downtown Toronto. Unfortunately, the shuttle bus suspended their operation at the tail end of my stay on the 20th of December. I remember the last shuttle that I took used one of the few buses that have comfier chair. Notably, the driver seems to have made the shuttle bus his. He printed out his name and stuck it up next to the driver seat. He also had a speaker attached to the bus's ceiling at the front of the bus. I knew that the speaker was connected straight to the phone because before the bus's departure, he was doing his daily Duolingo and the sound of that came out from the speaker. So it was cool that the seemingly old bus driver had a pretty good music taste since he had played one of Blackpink's first singles during the bus trip back to Mississauga. As I stepped out of the bus, I wished him a nice day and congratulated him on his Duolingo streak. It really was bittersweet knowing that that was my last time riding the shuttle bus. Afterwards, I had to be stuck with either the time-consuming MiWay + TTC or the expensive commuter rail line.
Toronto's Transit System and Its Stinginess
Greater Toronto Area in my humble opinion have a worse public transportation system compared to the Greater Vancouver Area due to the fact that it's fragmented. Toronto's public transportation system is managed by the TTC, Mississauga's public transportation system is managed by MiWay, Brampton (also a Toronto's suburb north of Mississauga) has ZUM for their public transportation, and so on and so forth for Toronto's many other satellite cities. In contrast, the public transportation system in the Greater Vancouver Area is managed by just one authority.
Now, that unification on itself wouldn't matter much since you can also use one card (the Presto card) to pay for all of the public transportation of the Greater Toronto Area. But, UBC students had the privilege of getting a UPass, meaning that their trip using the metro and bus system in the Greater Vancouver Area is completely free with no exceptions. This, combined with the aforementioned unified public transportation means that they can go to the farthest parts of the Vancouver's satellites without paying a penny.
UofT students meanwhile do not have the privilege of not paying when it comes to Toronto's public transportation. Though students at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) campus do get the free pass on MiWay, MiWay only covers the city of Mississauga. Meanwhile, students at the St. George and Scarborough campus (to my knowledge) do not even get any free pass on Toronto's public transportation.
Considering all of the above, I think it's should be clear now why exploring Toronto is not that trivial of a matter as a UTM student.