The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[1overcosc]

Just noticed something from those numbers.

Loyalist Township was shown as a 15.7% increase.

Loyalist doesn't have its own transit system. Instead it has a contract with Kingston where Kingston Transit provides transit service to them in exchange for a payment.

So really, Loyalist Township's increase can be credited to Kingston Transit's policies.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by TownGuy

Kentville, Nova Scotia must be a typo. Over 400,000?

Anyways Cobourg seems to be doing well. 110,000 and 6% growth. Seems to be tops for a population around 20,000.

When you look at the other communities in its size category Kentville isn't really outlier. Of course when we say Kentille, we're referring to the group of communities that make up much larger urban area that consists of several significant communities.

[SkahHigh]

Cool shot taken from Griffintown just South of Downtown

Montreal by Rob F, sur Flickr

[Beedok]

3.8% is pretty good for Thunder Bay considering the city's more or less stagnant by population.

[youngregina]

16 percent growth for Regina is really good considering how much people HATE the transit system there. I'm glad they are finally recognizing that not everyone needs to pass through downtown to get to their destination.

[Chadillaccc]

I'm not on here as much as I used to be, thankfully, so I'm not sure if anyone has posted the APTA First Quarter 2015 report...

The 7 urban rail systems - ridership/weekday

Montreal - 1 235 800
Toronto - (subway) 1 036 800 (streetcar) 292 600
Vancouver - 363 800
Calgary - 333 800
Edmonton - 100 800 (2013 - City of Edmonton data)
Ottawa - 14 500

sources:
(Edmonton) http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/2013_LRT_Passenger_Count_Report.pdf
(all others) http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2015-q1-ridership-APTA.pdf


... and ridership of the 6 major cities in general...

Toronto - 2 746 600
Montreal - 2 213 300
Vancouver - (incomplete)
Calgary - 606 800
Ottawa - 537 500
Edmonton - (incomplete)

Source: http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2015-q1-ridership-APTA.pdf

[jigglysquishy]

I wonder why Vancouver does so much worse compared to Calgary. The Skytrain always seems to be at capacity. What does Vancouver need to do to get their numbers up?

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

I wonder why Vancouver does so much worse compared to Calgary. The Skytrain always seems to be at capacity. What does Vancouver need to do to get their numbers up?

Keep building denser around the stations, have good frequencies and keep expanding the network. Add park-and-ride maybe?

[1overcosc]

I think Vancouver's transit system is fairly poor in the inner city which drives potential riders away, judging from what I've heard on here.

I would imagine Vancouver's climate may have a negative affect on transit ridership because it could make cycling more popular at more times of the year; as opposed to other Canadian cities where cycling can only really draw riders away for a few months a year.

[Innsertnamehere]

Calgary has a very concentrated employment cluster downtown, Vancouver has very little space downtown comparably. Means ridership Is lower as employment is more dispersed in less transit accessible areas.

[SkahHigh]

The AMT will reportedly have a new CEO. Paul Coté, former president of VIA Rail will replace Nicolas Girard. Great choice, finally someone who has knowledge of transportation and is not simply an administrator.

News story here (in french): http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/08...-sera-congedie-de-son-poste-de-president

[niwell]

Have more centralized employment. I'd be willing to bet that the number of non-commuting trips on the skytrain are much higher than the C-Train. But Calgary has a hugely centralized office district with limited (and expensive parking) that makes rail transit very successful from a commuting standpoint.

[Hybrid247]

Seems like ETS is taking a new approach to attracting new riders

• Video Link

[hipster duck]

The Skytrain is too suburban-focused. For vast swathes of the City of Vancouver, the skytrain just doesn't go where you need to go.

[MalcolmTucker]

Sort of like BART vs the Muni Metro in San Francisco?

[nname]

Originally Posted by jigglysquishy

I wonder why Vancouver does so much worse compared to Calgary. The Skytrain always seems to be at capacity. What does Vancouver need to do to get their numbers up?

Calgary's rail feed into central employment area in 4 directions, compared to 2.5 for Vancouver (Millennium Line only count as half as it neither goes downtown nor long enough to reach central Broadway). So to attain the same ridership, Vancouver's would have twice as much ridership per line compared to Calgary.

Once Evergreen Line open next year, Vancouver's daily rail ridership should maintain above 400k. Even more if they finally decide to count transfers between Expo and Millennium Line as 2 boarding instead of just one.

But to really get the ridership up, they need to build the Broadway extension of Millennium Line. The line alone would've generate 254k boarding a day by 2021.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Sort of like BART vs the Muni Metro in San Francisco?

Exactly. Skytrain is like BART, and we don't have a Muni metro.

I have a transit pass, and I use the Skytrain about once every two weeks. And that's the much more City-focused Canada line. I might use the Expo and Millennium lines once every two months.

[Hybrid247]

So what's the status on the Broadway line? Is it the planning stage at least? A line extending along Broadway to UBC seems to be a no-brainer.

[GlassCity]

You'd need to see overall transit ridership numbers to support my theory (so I admit it might be completely wrong) but I think a possibility for why the C-Trains ridership is so close to SkyTrain's is that it takes up a much larger share of overall transit ridership than SkyTrain does, with buses being used much more in Vancouver than in Calgary. The CTrain might be shorter, but it goes all the way into the far reaches of the suburbs, so for many people there's no way they can get anywhere without taking it. Whereas here, there are a lot of trips that can be/only be accomplished by bus. For example, there is no SkyTrain to UBC, but pretty much every east-west bus terminates at UBC and they are just packed. UBC generates more than 50,000 trips a day (http://news.ubc.ca/2008/12/11/archive-media-releases-2008-mr-08-164/) so that's an extra 50,000 the day the SkyTrain gets extended there.

Originally Posted by Hybrid247

So what's the status on the Broadway line? Is it the planning stage at least? A line extending along Broadway to UBC seems to be a no-brainer.

Nothing is happening with it right now. Since the referendum failed there's no funding for it (estimated cost would be $3 billion), and even then it was only envisioned to go halfway there because of this cost. I agree that it's a no-brainer, but it's much more controversial here than you would think. It's funny because people here are saying the SkyTrain is too suburban focused, but in Metro Vancouver a lot of people complain that Vancouver gets too much and that SkyTrain should be extended further out into the suburbs than along Broadway to UBC for example.

There was a small study done to compare different potential technologies and alignments through potential ridership, speed and things like that. It says that by 2041, ridership would be 320,000 people a day–that would add a lot to the question being discussed above! Here's a link to a quick infographic if anyone's curious: http://www.translink.ca/-/media/Document.../ubc_rapid_transit_study_infographic.pdf

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I agree that it's a no-brainer, but it's much more controversial here than you would think. It's funny because people here are saying the SkyTrain is too suburban focused, but in Vancouver a lot of people complain that Vancouver gets too much and that SkyTrain should be extended further out into the suburbs than along Broadway to UBC for example.

Really? I have never heard a resident of the City of Vancouver express this opinion.