Quote:
Originally Posted by niwell
I was in Portland earlier this fall and actually did some driving, which is something that is usually avoided on vacation. Walking around at street level it was clear that Portland isn't a huge city, certainly much less so than I'm used to. Driving on the other hand... It's admittedly partly due to topography, but some of the highway junctions near downtown were just on another level. Driving through you'd think it's a much bigger city than say, Vancouver.
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Americans often talk about how amazing Portland's transit is. It has a light rail system that generally follows the highways out in the suburbs and trundles along like a streetcar at what appears to be 10-15 km/h downtown (I wouldn't be surprised if the rush hour average speed through downtown is something like 9 km/h). It is probably the most modern/complete/functional system in the western half of the US. SF used to have better transit but they have built very little new infrastructure since the 1970's. Iif you ever feel Ontario politics are bad and want to feel better, look to California.
There is a noticeable difference in culture between Canada and the US on cars vs. transit. A large proportion of Americans even in big cities think that transit is impractical (just never going to be useful at any reasonable funding level for day-to-day trips, commuting, etc.) and for poor people. A much larger share of Americans get cars when they are young and seem to default to driving for everything. US transit systems are more frequently boutique projects; built to nice standards but not set up to move large volumes of people quickly. Transportation has also become a politicized holy war issue in the US, with Democrats feeling that they should make life sacrifices to take it so they can save the world and Republicans believing that it is an evil Big Government initiative. I hope that doesn't happen in Canada.
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