Why American public transit is so bad

[C.]

Excellent YouTube video from Vox Media. Why American public transit is so bad.

• Video Link

[Steely Dan]

the overall gist of the video is certainly on point, but they chose an odd example to open with.

the woman in the opening lives in chicago's avondale neighborhood and works in suburban elmwood park. she says she could take the 152 addison bus west out to harlem ave., but would then have to walk 45 minutes south down to elmwood park.

what she completely neglects to mention is that, instead of walking down to elmwood park, she could very easily transfer to the 90 harlem bus and take that down to elmwood park (the very type of transit route interconnectivity that the video later goes on to argue for, wtf?).

now, bus-to-bus transfers are certainly not most people's preferred commuting choice, but in a very rigidly gridded city like chicago, that's as good as it's going to get. you have E-W bus routes every 1/2 mile, and you have N-S bus routes every 1/5 mile, and sometimes you have to use one of each (or with 1 of the el lines where possible) to get from neighborhood to neighborhood.

in no universe, regardless of money, is avondale ever going to be directly connected by a 1-seat train ride to elmwood park. the video argues for more transit interconnectivity, but then starts with an example that completely ignores said interconnectivity in an american city that actually has a relatively decent level of bus route coverage compared to most other american cities. odd choice.


source: https://www.chicago-l.org/maps/route/index.html

[C.]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the overall gist of the video is certainly on point, but they chose an odd example to open with.

the woman in the opening lives in chicago's avondale neighborhood and works in suburban elmwood park. she says she could take the 152 addison bus west out to harlem ave. (the city border), but would then have to walk 45 minutes south down to elmwood park.

what she completely neglects to mention is that, instead of walking down to elmwood park, she could very easily transfer to the 90 harlem bus and take that down to elmwood park (the very type of transit route interconnectivity that the video later goes on to argue for, wtf?).

now, bus-to-bus transfers are certainly not most people's preferred commuting choice, but in a very rigidly gridded city like chicago, that's as good as it's going to get. you have E-W bus routes every 1/2 mile, and you have N-S bus routes every 1/5 mile, and sometimes you have to use one of each (or with 1 of the el lines where possible) to get from neighborhood to neighborhood.

in no universe, regardless of money, is avondale ever going to be directly connected by a 1-seat train ride to elmwood park. the video argues for more transit interconnectivity, but then starts with an example that completely ignores said interconnectivity in an american city that actually has a relatively decent level of bus route coverage (if not usage) compared to most other american cities. odd choice.

Steely Dan, I really enjoyed this video, but the Chicago example did seem unusual and raised a red flag for me. I was questioning in my mind if there was really no north/south bus route that she could take. Is it the case that the 90 Harlem part of a suburban transit system, necessitating the need to pay an additional fare? The cost for transfers between different transit systems do add up for folks on a limited income. Not sure if that's the case here. The central premise is correct, but it's such an odd decision to open with this flawed Chicago example.

Toronto is shown as the shiny example as the city uses a grid and not a hub and spoke system as is the case in many American transit systems. Yet, in Toronto most residents have a two or three seat ride to their destination. Especially if commuting one from one neighborhood to another outside of the central core. That makes the choice to open with the Chicago example even more puzzling.

This thread has probably died, but maybe part of the answer to why Toronto has so many (condo) buildings proposed (and being built) is because the transit infrastructure is there to support it. If Toronto did not have the strong transit system it does, the traffic situation from all that density would be worse than Atlanta!

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by C.

Is it the case that the 90 Harlem part of a suburban transit system, necessitating the need to pay an additional fare?

no, the 152 and the 90 are both CTA bus routes.

in chicagoland, all bus routes that have only 2 digits or routes with 3 digits that start with a "1" are operated by the CTA, all other routes are 3 digits and are operated by PACE.

and even if it was a CTA/PACE transfer, now that both systems use the ventra card, i think tranfers between the two are only an additional 25 cents.

Originally Posted by C.

The central premise is correct, but it's such an odd decision to open with this flawed Chicago example.

agreed. it takes a whole lot of willful ignorance to try to argue a point about transit not getting people to where they need to go and then use an example that completely ignores the fact that there's a regular old city bus route RIGHT THERE that would, ya know, actually get the person to where they need to go.

it's so obvious, i have to believe that they're being intentionally deceptive here.

i mean, a 15 second google map search could've told these people that there's another bus route right there.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by C.

[If Toronto did not have the strong transit system it does, the traffic situation from all that density would be worse than Atlanta!

Toronto has awful traffic, perhaps worse than in any major U.S. city. There are very few thru-streets. This is a likely contributor to greater demand for in-town living.

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Toronto has awful traffic, perhaps worse than in any major U.S. city. There are very few thru-streets. This is a likely contributor to greater demand for in-town living.

Listen, I have better things to do that start a flame war.

But there are moments when you say such ridiculous things, no reasonable person can fail to correct them.

Toronto and its outlying regions are all based on the grid-system.

At the minimum, roads every 2km or 1.24 miles are through.

In reality, far more than that are typically through streets.

This is particularly true in the core City; somewhat less so in the suburban areas.

Traffic is bad; transit, in North American terms, is good (could certainly be better).

But lets keep the discussion based on the facts, please.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

But lets keep the discussion based on the facts, please.

The fact is that Toronto is a difficult city to travel long distances via arterials. This is absolutely tied into its relative lower auto commute share, because its very difficult to use car headed downtown during peak hours. It has relatively few freeways and major arterials, and a very high percentage of streets aren't thru-streets.

Just take a look at core Toronto, and you'll see half the streets aren't thru-streets, and the thru-streets that exist tend to be narrow for North American standards. Yonge would be a back alley in Detroit in terms of car capacity. There's basically one downtown freeway, and it's narrow. Streets often end and then restart following every arterial.

And, outside the core, the six and eight lane, 55 MPH type arterials you see everywhere in American sprawlburbia are much less common. This is a good thing, BTW. But it absolutely makes it harder to commute 50 miles every day. In suburban Detroit, for example, you have the eight lane Woodward, then just to the west, the eight lane Telegraph, then just to the west the six lane Orchard Lake, then just to the west the eight lane M-5. All high speed, high capacity corridors, making it very easy to live a totally autocentric lifestyle. I haven't seen this degree of autotopia anywhere in Canada, and certainly not in the GTA.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

Toronto and its outlying regions are all based on the grid-system.

At the minimum, roads every 2km or 1.24 miles are through.

In reality, far more than that are typically through streets.

My first thought as well...definitely a big (kind of boring) grid...and I haven't driven in Toronto in ages.

[sentinel]

Edit.

[Doady]

The idea that the post-war suburbs of Toronto were able achieve such high transit ridership without any different significant differences in urban design is kinda misleading. For example, suburban Toronto (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, and the 905) has over a thousand high-rise buildings, as much the City of Chicago, and subdivisions incorporate simple, basic TOD measures such as pedestrian walkways to minimize walking distances to the bus stops. The road system needs to be designed with transit in mind as well, not just relying on the existing concession roads.

I remember in another thread people bashing TOD and high density in suburban Orlando and saying 100% transit usage wouldn't make a difference. Any attempt to build suburbs that are not 100% car-dependent is just met with derision a lot of times. I think those kind of attitudes are more responsible for that state of transit in many US urban areas than anything.

Of course, you can see state pulling funding and killing Milwaukee's system these past few years, so government willingness to fund and support transit is important too, but I don't think that is the root of the problem. Transit needs support in other ways as well.

Btw, I have to say Chicago area is much more united and less fragmented than the GTA. 3 systems with integrated fares instead of 9 systems with conflicting fare policies.

[giallo]

edit

[Doady]

The concession roads in the GTA are usually spaced 0.85mi or 2km or 2mi apart. The north-south concessions in Scarborough are only 1km apart. Is that really worse than most of the US?

There are also often additional throughfares built to complement the existing concessional roads, like Williams Parkway and Sandalwood Parkway in Brampton, Glen Erin Drive and Rathburn Road in Mississauga, Denision St and Bur Oak Ave in Markham, etc. Some of these are busy bus corridors as well.

Throughfares too far apart promotes car use by restricting people's ability to use transit, cycle or walk. Fewer throughfares means higher cycling and walking distances, and fewer transit corridors. I think if the Toronto area was really worse than most of the US in this respect, it would show in its transit ridership, or lack thereof.

[Steely Dan]

"concession road"

Never heard this term before.

Is it the same thing as an "arterial street" in US cities?

[Nite]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

"concession road"

Never heard this term before.

Is it the same thing as an "arterial street" in US cities?

From Wikipedia
"In Upper and Lower Canada, concession roads were laid out by the colonial government through undeveloped Crown land to provide access to rows of newly surveyed lots intended for farming by new settlers. The land that comprised a row of lots that spanned the entire length of a new township was "conceded" by the Crown for this purpose (hence, a "concession of land"). Title to an unoccupied lot was awarded to an applicant in exchange for raising a house, performing roadwork and land clearance, and monetary payment.[1] Concession roads and cross-cutting sidelines or sideroads were laid out in an orthogonal (rectangular or square) grid plan, often aligned so that concession roads ran (approximately) parallel to the north shore of Lake Ontario, or to the southern boundary line of a county."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concession_road




basically they are the major roads that go for a long distance in a straight line in Ontario
so in Toronto they are the streets that cut through straight across the city and they happen at more or less regular intervals

arterial street to my understand are high capacity big city streets in the US while concession roads cover the entire province in both rural and urban areas and capacity doesn't matter they can be wide or small

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Doady

The concession roads in the GTA are usually spaced 0.85mi or 2km or 2mi apart. The north-south concessions in Scarborough are only 1km apart. Is that really worse than most of the US?

Yes, that's very bad. Most US cities are on a half mile grid or smaller. The only places with one square mile grid blocks are suburban areas like Phoenix and Plano.

[Stay Stoked Brah]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Yes, that's very bad. Most US cities are on a half mile grid or smaller. The only places with one square mile grid blocks are suburban areas like Phoenix and Plano.

you can see this in many cities from Detroit to Los Angeles. most states were surveyed using the township and range public land survey system. a township is a 6mi x 6mi grid, creating 36 sections. sections are 640 acres and are divided into halves, quarters, eighths. to adjust for the curvature of the Earth a government check, 11 sections are adjusted along the west and north side on every 6th township. cities and towns started with townships and sections established a grid along section boundaries often used to allow ingress and egress to range lands and farms. when settlement expanded these sections were often halved and quartered and you can see it in the older established areas. later half of the 20th century a change in city planning decided to break up the 1/4 mile grid in favor of neighborhood collectors serve the same function, lead to the section boundaries, which have become urban arterial roadways.

Phoenix
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ph...4d-112.0740373
LA
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lo...4d-118.2436849
KC
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ka...!4d-94.5785667
Detroit
https://www.google.com/maps/place/De...!4d-83.0457538
Vegas
https://www.google.com/maps/place/La...4d-115.1398296

[Centropolis]

[MolsonExport]

It is very bad in some cities because nobody takes it. Nobody takes it because it is very bad. And because nobody takes it, it is very bad. Rinse, recycle, repeat.

no props for OK city


wkipedia

[Doady]

1 mile spacing seems common in places of US (assuming they have any grid at all), so the 0.5 mile to 2 mile spacing in Toronto area seems little different.

You guys can see the map of Toronto in the video: tight grid, straight red lines at regular intervals. Having lots of long continuous corridors closer together is the foundation of Toronto's transit success. To say Toronto is the worst in the respect, or that it actually helps promote transit usage is very odd and sending the wrong message.

I always say where the corridors are broken, that kills the transit ridership. Look at Lawrence East in Toronto, or QEW in Mississauga, or Langstaff Rd in Vaughan. Where the corridors are broken or missing or replaced by freeways, it creates a major gap in the transit system or reduces the usefulness of bus routes that have to navigate those gaps. Such gaps promote car usage, not transit usage. Longer distances is the antithesis of urbanity.

You can see here how entrenched the idea of transit use being the result of barrier to car use, transit is merely a last resort, people only use transit because they have to, only if they have no choice. I think that is the root of the problem with transit in the US. Seriously, how much effort are people really going to put into the argument of Toronto not being built for the car, just to the advance this idea of transit being a last resort? Even Toronto city proper is mostly post-war suburbia. The City of Toronto's population in 1951 was only 1 million; it was built for the car and certainly the suburbs surrounding was built for the car as well. In terms of urbanity, Toronto is nothing compared to Chicago.

I think the only real difference with Toronto and Canada is transit is not just viewed as a last resort, so there are at least half-hearted efforts to allow people to get on buses in Toronto and its suburbs. Transit is looked down upon so much in the US so they don't even bother.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Doady

1 mile spacing seems common in places of US (assuming they have any grid at all)

Chicago's main commercial arterials are set up on a half mile grid, which allows the city to have a pretty damn comprehensive bus network. It's difficult to get more than 1/4 mile away from a bus route in the city. There are also the mid-major through streets on a 1/4 mile grid in between the commercial streets, but they are usually residential and the vast majority do not have bus routes.

Where things fall apart is out in the burbs where PACE provides token bus service that is generally only used by the working poor who have no other option, in most cases.