Quote:
Originally Posted by njaohnt
Don't judge a city's transportation success by the amount of RT, or by transit ridership. Walk Score says that Winnipeg has better transit than Edmonton, Calgary, and many other cities with rapid transit.
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Where rapid transit succeeds is moving large amounts of people quickly and frequently over long distances. Given a better walkability score, rapid transit would only add to this. Winnipeg may have a better walkscore but that site does take things such as the number of ways one can walk somewhere into account and the distances too. Edmonton and more-so Calgary are more spread out than Winnipeg, whereas Winnipeg is a much more dense city. This is important when considering why walkscore gives a better rating to Winnipeg. For the most part, it makes sense especially in the urban areas but Edmonton and Calgary also have more suburban areas which contributes to their lower walk-score. Further, in a city such as Calgary, there are less routes (more defined paths) or ways to get to a destination (this is true in car as well) which walk score's system takes into account. So given Winnipeg's density and more pedestrian friendly routes, rapid transit would only improve that walkscore further.
I agree that one cannot judge transportation success solely by the amount of RT, but Winnipeg would be better served with a rapid transit system in place than with no rapid transit system in place. Put another way: could you imagine Calgary's walkscore if it didn't have rapid transit? Yikes.
I do agree with esquire regarding general automobile infrastructure, which is an area Winnipeg could do with upgrades to move traffic more efficiently. The thing with the perimeter highway is that if it was more akin to Anthony Henday in Edmonton, it would move traffic safely and more efficiently (better and safer merging lanes, street lights all around for night time driving aid, no awkward left turns when going ~100km/hr in the faster lane, no slowing 100km/hr traffic suddenly with stop lights which could cause unnecessary intersection collisions, maybe even de-icers for the bridges too, etc...)