Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
One thing I will comment on is with regard to transit. I feel like for us it takes much higher potential ridership to justify the same level of investment. I mean, Denver embarked on a huge expansion of its electrified rail system spending over $6.5 billion US in 2010 dollars for a couple of commuter and light rail lines run by an agency whose entire weekday ridership is only about 340k per. Just imagine the ROI if Toronto were to spend that much. At US $300 million per km, we could have an entire new underground line stretching 22km (almost as long as the BD line) and probably more than their entire agency's ridership. Same thing in Seattle. They amount they spent on the Link LRT compared to its ridership is just... wow. We need to be less stingy with our capital investments.
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Be that as it may, I'm not really jealous of any American rapid transit system. They may have lower thresholds for investments, but the quality of what gets built tends to be lesser. As much as I hate the Ontario Line's U bend around Corktown (it's inefficient and cheap), the routing of a lot of American transit systems is way more lacklustre. American transit systems are more likely to be wholly focused on funneling people downtown and little else. In at least the larger Canadian cities, there is more multi-nodal and multi-faceted transit systems. Shopping malls, secondary business centres, dense neighbourhoods, post-secondary institutions, etc often have very good rail or bus access.
Take Denver, for example. The west line completely goes past Colorado Mills without a stop. The closest stop is for a nearby community college, but even that station is separated by vast green fields from the campus itself. The southbound lines use the rail ROW rather than going down Santa Fe Drive, a walkable main street, which would probably benefit more of that community rather than skirting the western edges of it. The key shopping neighbourhood of Cherry Creek has no rail access. Nor does Colfax Ave, a busy arterial and main street. Rather than go through walkable residential districts like Berkeley, Sunnyside, and Highland, the northwest line goes largely through industrial areas of little density. The University of Denver station isn't anywhere near most of the campus buildings.
Looking at a map of Metro Denver, the light rail very clearly is designed to get people to/from three nodes, Downtown Denver, the airport, and the Tech Corridor. I'm guessing (hoping) that a well-oiled bus system fills in all of these blanks, as often the bus network is better at serving locals, but it really depends. Cities like Seattle and Portland have decent bus systems, but others don't.
Anyways, I'll take Montreal's overcrowded metro or Toronto's underbuilt subway over any American transit system. Even centralized Calgary has a BRT line that doesn't go downtown (MAX Teal).
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