Quote:
Originally Posted by Doady
I don't care about rail infrastructure. I'm just talking about ridership. The US cities also have more rail than Canadian cities, but ridership of US cities is 1/10 of Canadian cities. Dallas has the largest modern light rail network in North America, but their system carries as much people as Winnipeg's (approximately 70 million boardings annually in 2019). The only US systems that can match Winnipeg are New York City, San Francisco, and Washington. Winnipeg has higher transit ridership per capita than Chicago with its massive "L" and Metra systems.
There is just no "North American context" when it comes to transit. Canada and US are like two different continents. Canada is much closer to Europe than it is the US. If you compare Canada to UK, the ridership numbers are almost identical. The main difference between Canada and Europe is the rate of cycling and walking.
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I see your point and I agree for the most part. Canadian cities are on a different level than American cities when it comes to transit ridership, and we should be looking at Europe for precedents instead of down south. Last I checked after NYC, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver take the next 3 spots for highest public transit ridership despite being smaller than Chicago and the cities in California and Texas.
Also, even though Winnipeg’s peak ridership in 2019 was “only” 50 million boardings, it still punches well above its weight in ridership per capita with roughly 62.5 trips/capita. Higher then Philadelphia and Portland while being on par with Chicago for reference. Not to mention the city is back to 90-95% pre pandemic levels in terms of ridership so hopefully they can get those BRT extensions going ASAP.