Transit Fantasies

[deasine]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

The thing with Paris though is that it's metro system has almost all of it stations within an area less than the size of the city of Vancouver. Except for a few stations, the trains barely leave downtown, so its all hub (and the lines that do leave downtown don't cross away from downtown). If you live out in a Paris suburb and want to travel to your neighbor suburb, you pretty much have to ride the Metro, or RER into the downtown area, switch trains, then travel back out.

London doesn't really have a super dense downtown, where there are super tall buildings concentrated in a comparatively small area, so the "downtown" is spread over a large area. Thus there are multiple lines that crisscross the city core, most of which enter and leave (pass through) the downtown area. I believe all the Underground lines pass through Farecard Zone 1. So it really is a hub and spoke system, but the hub is just a large area, not a single station.

My experience of Paris is there is no "set downtown." What makes up their city are a collection of hubs within about 10 of the 16 districts that make up the Paris City Proper. If one defines downtown as a place as the area of a city with a central business district, than La Défense outside of Paris, can be considered as Paris' downtown. La Défense, only has Metro 1, T2, and RER-A, that reaches the area.

With regards to London, what about Canary Wharf? Its only serviced by the Jubilee Line along with local DLR services.

Another city that comes to mind is Hong Kong. Central on Hong Kong island is the city's "downtown" so to speak, but there are many other busy business districts within Kowloon, Tsuen Wan, etc.

When I brought up the "hub and spoke" planning, I really should have been more specific. I'm talking about typical "one hub, spokes around the hub" planning, and not "multiple hubs and spokes."

My point is, Vancouver's growth isn't just about developing one major city core, it's developing multiple ones within a small area. Looking back at all the cities I've discussed, yes, there is a historic city centre (Paris/City of London/Hong Kong Central), but there are also a lot of regional supporting hubs (La Défense/Canary Wharf/Tsuen Wan and Kowloon).