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Originally Posted by Pavlov
Er, I don't think Ottawa wants to bring up highrise numbers for this conversation (as the past couple of pages have illusurated)...
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I was joking. Skyline side, Calgary blows both Edmonton and Ottawa out of the water. It looks like a city of 4 million people. It's beyond impressive.
Both Edmonton and Ottawa have made great progress in the last 10, 20 years, but there's a whole lot of catching up to do.
Never been in the ground in Calgary and Edmonton, so I can't speak to that aspect.
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Originally Posted by Surrealplaces
It always amazes me how much money American cities put into their systems, especially when most of those systems have embarrassing low ridership compared to Canada's cities.
I don't think singling Alberta is comparison is a good example. It's hard to compare Alberta to a places in Europe, transit is in a completely different league in Europe. You could look at Alberta and make comparisons to cities like Hamilton, QC and Winnipeg, and compare how much was spent on transit infrastructure from when the various cities were growing between 500 and 1 million. You can also make a comparison of how much how much Alberta cities put into their transit infrastructure when the cities were slightly less than 500k compared to say Halifax or London. One needs to look at the overall long term spending (which comes and goes in spurts) over the years, and the spending hasn't stopped. Edmonton is currently extending the Valley line, and Calgary is currently building the Green Line. No one can accuse Alberta cities of not spending money on transit infrastructure.
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I agree. Edmonton and Calgary made some great investments in transit in the late 70s to 90s compared to to cities today that are near the 1M mark. Edmonton has made some more great progress over the last decade. Too bad Calgary has been screwed by the CPC, both Premiers from Calgary too boot.
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I'm not sure it's actually true that transit is in such a different league in Europe than Alberta. Regional and intercity, sure. But when you look at urban systems in cities in the same size class as Calgary and Edmonton (between 1 and 2 million) they seem fairly equal. Some places in Europe seem to have stronger rail systems and some not. Like Porto for instance. Greater Calgary is about 80% the size of Porto and its LRT is about 85% as long. Cities in that size range in France seem to do a bit better with places like Toulouse having a metro system. Those in the UK seem to be fairly equal with Liverpool who has a frequent commuter rail rather than LRT that's longer but less frequent. And Glasgow has a single small metro line that's about 10km, augmented by commuter rail that's longer but much less frequent.
I can't compare any of the bus services though.
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Yeah, but European cities are far smaller area wise, so those comparable metros in I'm cover more ground generally. Most Canadian (and American) systems just stretch out as far into the suburbs as possible instead of offering a good, dense system in the core.