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Originally Posted by Crawford
Atlanta is somewhat anomalous, but I'd say there are no more than a half dozen U.S. cities that have similar or larger walkable geographies as Toronto (NYC, DC, Bos, Philly, Chi, SF). Seattle, LA and Miami are probably borderline/arguable.
I don't think the walkability has much to do with bus ridership, BTW; Canadian cities with much crappier walkability, like Calgary, still have very high transit usage compared to U.S.
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Calgary is not super walkable, but it is walkable enough for good transit. Most US cities should be walkable enough for transit as well.
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Actually, Toronto builds rail where there's little usage. The newest subway extensions serve outer sprawl. Probably driven by politics, same as in U.S.
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The York University corridor is not a low usage corridor. The former 196 York U Rocket bus by itself carried 20,000 people per weekday with 2 minute headways. The overall subway ridership increased 40%, or 111 million boardings annually, because of that extension. That one 8.6km subway extension has higher ridership than the entire Long Island Rail Road.
The upcoming subway extension is along Yonge which has similar bus ridership. The York Region Transit buses come by every 3 minutes there. The TTC 53/60 buses together come by every 2 minutes.
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In the most recent quarterly numbers, U.S. Transit ridership seems to have stabilized. Rideshare is probably near-peak and now factored in. Seattle has always had high transit share, and Vegas has terrible transit, maybe it grew because the area has a booming low-income and foreign-born population.
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I looked at the APTA Q4-2018 numbers and they paint a bleak picture. Houston and Austin are growing. Pittsburgh growing. Champaign-Urbana growing. NYC stable. But almost everywhere else is like 5% decline.
Las Vegas has always had above average transit ridership. The ridership is not far from Seattle or Portland. It's slightly better than even Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is another great US example of good ridership and continued growth using mostly buses.
Rail follows ridership, not the other way around. Look at the big four Texas cities: Dallas has the most rail, and the worst ridership. To think that transit can thrive without buses seems like a big mistake. Cars and Uber can't replace what the buses provide.
Seattle, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh: these cities should be the model for the rest of the US, not Dallas.