How did Canada become more culturally public transit than the US?

[nec209]

Originally Posted by chrisegeager

Yeah, you're onto something there! In the US, it's pretty common for folks to hop in their cars rather than take the city bus. But why's that? Well, it's all about history and how things played out after World War II.

See, in Canada, there were loads of poor folks and low incomes post-WWII, plus a ton of European immigrants coming in. This led to denser cities and a bigger focus on public transit. Meanwhile, the US had a strong middle class and less immigration, so they went all-in on highways and cars.

That's why you'll find more people in Canada hopping on the city bus, while in the US, it's all about hitting the road in your own wheels.

But why was the Canadian middle class much weaker in Canada where the US had a very strong middle class.

[nec209]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

no, it can't be certain the usa is more racist than canada. or anywhere. at all.

what it is is its more open about its racism than anywhere.

and thats because its more open about everything.

in fact its so open people cant even wrap their heads around what that really means.

for a recent example, china built its whole economy off of usa openness. most information gathered like corporate and whatnot did not even require espionage and in fact was outright given to them.

its a characteristic of america and americans that evolved due to vast immigration and that is almost beyond belief, but not always unrecognized. some around the world would label it naive.

I don’t think Canada had much of black population in 1950 like the US.

[nec209]

Originally Posted by Crawford

And you see this in the U.S. The Canada-like U.S. cities (places like Seattle, San Diego, Honolulu, Portland, etc.) have fairly high transit ridership relative to system quality, minimal white flight, strong in-town neighborhoods, etc. The big city with the worst transit collapse (Detroit) is also the blackest city. Not a coincidence.

Are you saying it mostly poor people and low income taking the public transit in say Seattle, San Diego, Honolulu, Portland?

[nec209]

Originally Posted by craigs

The drop in LA public transit ridership over the last decade coincides with the passage of AB 60, which, as of January 1, 2015, allowed undocumented immigrants in California to get special "AB 60" driver's licenses for the first time. I suspect this caused a large shift from such immigrants taking buses and trains to driving cars, and thus was a major cause of the ridership drop in LA since 2015.


This is also about the last mile. The major boulevards that criss-cross the metropolis generally have decent transit options, but almost all of the neighborhoods on the sidestreets between the boulevards suffer from the last-mile problem. People don't want to walk a mile to a bus stop, wait, take the bus, and then walk another mile to arrive at their destination.

Well is it not the average wait time for a city bus is it not 15 minutes in Canada where in most US cities the average wait time is 30 minutes? And on weekends they run every hour in the US?

[pj3000]

If you grew up in the '80s, this defined public transit for you:

[edale]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Canada has always been more communal than the United States. Canadians developed a 'leave no man behind' mindset borne out of necessity. When the country was colonized, banding together for the common good was a matter of survival (climate and isolation) while looking out for your neighbour made for better social cohesion.

So Canada is culturally more invested in doing things that benefit society as a whole but a second factor heavily comes into play. Urban planning is a national strength. Canadian municipalities understood quite awhile ago that our auto-centric way of life was unsustainable over the long term, inefficient, and bad for the environment.

Intensification over more sprawl became central to planning 20+ years ago. Densification of our cities is coupled with massive PT investment to stitch it all together and encourage people out of their cars. We still love our cars but we'll hit a tipping point where PT is convenient enough, extensive enough, fast enough, and comfortable enough that PT becomes the more appealing option.

Some cities, quite predictably, are far further along this path than others.

I'm not sure I buy that Canada was better at controlling sprawl and encouraging public transit due to better social cohesion and concern for the environment and public good. That's pretty close to making a claim that Canada has more transit ridership because their people are simply better.

There's definitely more of a top-down approach to planning in Canada, and people are way more comfortable with big government type interventions to all types of issues. Canada has very little desirable land, both for human occupation and for agriculture. They have no choice but to be smart about how that small amount of land is used, especially when the government allows for massive amounts of immigration and has ambitious growth goals. Land use policies are no doubt more influenced by this than concern for the environment. If Canada included all the US Great Lakes states, I bet there'd be far more sprawl and less strict adherence to urban growth boundaries, for example.

[edale]

Originally Posted by craigs

This is also about the last mile. The major boulevards that criss-cross the metropolis generally have decent transit options, but almost all of the neighborhoods on the sidestreets between the boulevards suffer from the last-mile problem. People don't want to walk a mile to a bus stop, wait, take the bus, and then walk another mile to arrive at their destination.

Very true. This is my biggest barrier to using transit more in LA.

[nec209]

Originally Posted by edale

I'm not sure I buy that Canada was better at controlling sprawl and encouraging public transit due to better social cohesion and concern for the environment and public good. That's pretty close to making a claim that Canada has more transit ridership because their people are simply better.

There's definitely more of a top-down approach to planning in Canada, and people are way more comfortable with big government type interventions to all types of issues. Canada has very little desirable land, both for human occupation and for agriculture. They have no choice but to be smart about how that small amount of land is used, especially when the government allows for massive amounts of immigration and has ambitious growth goals. Land use policies are no doubt more influenced by this than concern for the environment. If Canada included all the US Great Lakes states, I bet there'd be far more sprawl and less strict adherence to urban growth boundaries, for example.

Why would Canada built dense cities in the 50s and 60s? I don’t think sprawl was an issue in the 50s and 60s and land was probably cheep.

So there is some other reason why city planners gone for higher density and public transit in the 50s and 60.

[Nouvellecosse]

I should point out that Canada did have slavery, just not the widespread slavery seen in the Southern US. That's mainly because, like the Northern US, we didn't have the type of agriculture that was conducive to it. And it also ended much sooner, probably in part since there was less economic incentive to continue it.

Whether or not Canada is or was less racist is hard to quantify. Racism certainly shaped, and continues to shape, the experiences of Indigenous people. But Black and Indigenous people currently and historically make up a much smaller percentage of the population compared to Black US so there are fewer such people to be racist toward. But there definitely are examples of very racist treatment toward Black people throughout our history. There's info on the history of discrimination and segregation here.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by nec209

Are you saying it mostly poor people and low income taking the public transit in say Seattle, San Diego, Honolulu, Portland?

No. In U.S. cities with more Canadian-like demographics (few blacks, lots of immigrants, lots of Asians, middle class in-town neighborhoods) you don't see the same hollowed out transit.

Seattle, which is very sprawly and almost entirely bus transit, ridership share is approaching Philly, which is a comprehensive metropolitan-wide grade separated rail system with much better urbanity, density and centralization. Legacy places like Cleveland and St. Louis have crap ridership compared to places like Portland and San Diego. That suggests that race plays a factor in cross-national ridership differences.

Granted, I don't think that's the main factor, but it's a factor. Even in NYC.

The express bus system serving the city fringes is a 1960's-1970's product of (then) white neighborhoods refusing to take the subway thru declining black/Latino areas, so the MTA set up a system where Italian-Irish-Jewish neighborhoods had a direct route to Midtown without having their secretary wife/daughter pass thru the South Bronx or wherever. Even today, as those fringe neighborhoods have diversified, there are lots of people of all backgrounds who generally won't set foot on the subway or a regular bus, but will happily take the express bus to a Broadway show or wherever.

[Blitz]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd say this is pretty debatable. Most of the GTA is pretty sprawly, autocentric and unattractive (last descriptor obviously subjective). That's 20% of Canada.

I'm also familiar with Windsor, London, Hamilton, St. Catherines and Kitchener, and I don't see planning utopias. There are a lot of hollowed-out smaller Ontario cities. Many look marginally better than across the border. Yes, Canada has generally planned better than U.S., but that isn't saying much. The crappy Canadian sprawl has bus riders, though, and the crappy U.S. sprawl doesn't.

Most of those cities you mentioned are in Southwestern Ontario...which isn't necessarily the best representation of Canadian culture. That said, all of those cities are more compact than their US counterparts of similar size. They are also full of residential towers (something you don't see in mid-size American cities).

[hipster duck]

I think this topic comes up frequently.

I think the overlooked reason from a demand side is that car ownership is a lot more expensive in Canada, particularly insurance. Given Canadian incomes and taxes, a two car household would eat up a much bigger share of a median Canadian household's discretionary budget than an equivalent American household.

From a supply perspective, the percent of Canadians who live within a 15 minute walk of a bus stop that has a bus that comes every 15 minutes all times of the day is much higher. Even if we just take the City of Toronto (3 million), the City of Montreal (1.9 million) and the City of Vancouver (700k), where that's generally true, that's 14% of the Canadian population. That would be the equivalent of 46 million Americans.

[pdxtex]

I will completely guess.

Probably because its a commonwealth country which has a culture and history of more high density living.

Canada like Australia has a small population but an enormous country so population centers become hyper urbanized and concentrated.

[ssiguy]

Yes, higher car & gas prices do make a difference but not by much. As I stated earlier, Calgary has the highest income levels in the country combined with the lowest tax rates but still manages ridership 15Xlarger than similar sized Nashville or Indy. In fact, Calgary blows every similar sized US right out of the water.

In a nutshell, Canadians view transit as an essential service like healthcare while Americans view as a social service like welfare with all the negative stigmas that come with it.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

I will completely guess.

Probably because its a commonwealth country which has a culture and history of more high density living.

Canada like Australia has a small population but an enormous country so population centers become hyper urbanized and concentrated.

Canada and Australia have far less habitable land in comparison to the US; Canada has the Canadian Shield and tundra in 2/3 of its territory while every living thing in the central and northern regions of Australia literally want to murder you.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by nec209

But why was the Canadian middle class much weaker in Canada where the US had a very strong middle class.

The U.S. per capita GDP is much higher than Canada. A lot of Canadian forumers posit a false equivalency, but the fact is that the United States is on another level, even the areas of the U.S. that border Canada like Ohio: https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...ghbours-report

The simple fact is that almost everyone in the United States can afford a car because credit is so easy and there is a huge market of ugly old cars that run. If the U.S. were to enact strict laws regarding auto loans and regulate the condition of old cars, public transportation use would increase.

[Crawford]

Yeah, those are additional factors. U.S. has significantly higher incomes, vehicles in U.S. are somewhat cheaper, and U.S. has lots of beaters providing working poor mobility.

In Germany, every vehicle is inspected annually and the old ones are forcibly retired per federal regulations. There are no beaters, so no such thing as working poor cars. Of course every village has bus service and walking/biking trails to adjacent towns.

[lio45]

Another important factor that hasn’t yet been mentioned is the Second Amendment. When everybody and their grandma can (and probably does) have a gun, interacting with masses of poor random strangers becomes more unappealing to the average person if they can help it.

(That point was indirectly implied in pj3000’s post above, the one with pics of the NYC subway in the ‘80s…)

[Crawford]

Some of those NYC subway pics are staged. The last one is infamous and staged. But yeah, whether or not it's staged is beside the point. To many Americans, that's the image of public transit.

[MolsonExport]

Our taxes are also much higher. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.