The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Actually, Halifax has a transit ridership per capita higher than Boston and only a bit lower than Washington or San Francisco.

Halifax fits perfectly into the "no good transportation options" framework. The city has awful traffic and nothing but slow buses and ferries. It is not very large; people should spend 10 minutes commuting to work. But they often spend 40 minutes or more.

Traffic examples:

VIDEO LINK 0:12
Dartmouth-Halifax traffic, March 1 2016
Video: Paul Poirier/CBC twitter.com/CBCNS (@CBCNS)

Source

The transportation network is essentially the same as it was in the 1980's, but demand on the infrastructure is 50% higher or more. The transit system is much worse than it was in the 1940's-60's.

[Doady]

I seriously doubt that Halifax has worse traffic congestion on its roads than Boston, Washington and San Francisco.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Doady

I seriously doubt that Halifax has worse traffic congestion on its roads than Boston, Washington and San Francisco.

Considering those metros are all at least 10 times larger, I'd hope not!

[Doady]

It is harder for mass transit to compete with private transportation in small urban areas or rural areas. That's why the bigger the urban area, the higher the transit ridership, which you can see on that graph. So I don't see why try so hard to downplay the significance of a metropolitan area having better transit ridership than a metropolitan area that is more than ten times larger.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Doady

I seriously doubt that Halifax has worse traffic congestion on its roads than Boston, Washington and San Francisco.

It is faster to bike from downtown Halifax to Sackville.

You be the judge of what that means.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Doady

It is harder for mass transit to compete with private transportation in small urban areas or rural areas. That's why the bigger the urban area, the higher the transit ridership, which you can see on that graph. So I don't see why try so hard to downplay the significance of a metropolitan area having better transit ridership than a metropolitan area that is more than ten times larger.

Really? Which city is bigger, Guadalajara or New York? Los Angeles or Ottawa? If there is a correlation indicated by that scatterplot it's pretty weak.

Looking around the world it's not all that true that congestion is always worse and transit always works better in large cities. There are big US cities that have fast-moving car traffic and small European cities with vastly better transit.

Congestion is a function of both the demand placed on the infrastructure and capacity. You can have a small city with poor capacity and congestion or a large city with ample capacity and little or no congestion (Detroit is probably one good example).

[Marty_Mcfly]

Originally Posted by someone123

Halifax fits perfectly into the "no good transportation options" framework. The city has awful traffic and nothing but slow buses and ferries. It is not very large; people should spend 10 minutes commuting to work. But they often spend 40 minutes or more.

The transportation network is essentially the same as it was in the 1980's, but demand on the infrastructure is 50% higher or more. The transit system is much worse than it was in the 1940's-60's.

This is extremely familiar. With no reliable public transport and road infrastructure (ie. highways, multi-laned streets, etc) which haven't been updated since the mid 90s, St. John's is in the same boat. We have the infrastructure built for probably 150,000 people when we now have a population of nearing 220,000 people. It's pretty common to be stuck in traffic during rush hour for 30-plus minutes depending on where you're commuting. In the grand scheme of things when compared to larger cities it isn't a big deal, but when you're only actually driving 15 km from work to home it should take no time at all.

I'd love to take the bus, but if only there were dedicated bus lanes...and that the bus didn't weave through every god damn side street imaginable. Heck, many years ago I was dating a girl who lived in the Kilbride neighbourhood and stayed overnight. I needed to be at MUN for 9am class. To get there, I had to take a bus from Kilbride to the Village mall, and then hopped on an "express" bus from the Village to MUN. And we sat in traffic for 25 minutes along the Columbus Drive crosstown arterial, inching along every few moments. There was nothing express about it....the busses which weaved through every residential street imaginable probably made it to MUN quicker.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by someone123

Really? Which city is bigger, Guadalajara or New York? Los Angeles or Ottawa? If there is a correlation indicated by that scatterplot it's pretty weak.

Looking around the world it's not all that true that congestion is always worse and transit always works better in large cities. There are big US cities that have fast-moving car traffic and small European cities with vastly better transit.

Congestion is a function of both the demand placed on the infrastructure and capacity. You can have a small city with poor capacity and congestion or a large city with ample capacity and little or no congestion (Detroit is probably one good example).

Umm... I never said European cities have worse transit ridership than US cities. I never said Canadian cities have worse transit ridership than US cities either.

The transit ridership of cities of a particular country are correlated positively to population. Keeping that in mind, we can truly understand the difference between two countries when we compare their cities. Was that really so hard to understand?

And if you really want to believe that Halifax has more traffic congestion as San Francisco, Boston, Washington, or that the city is somehow comparable to an abandoned city like Detroit, more power to you. I don't know what else to say to you.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

I'd love to take the bus, but if only there were dedicated bus lanes...and that the bus didn't weave through every god damn side street imaginable. Heck, many years ago I was dating a girl who lived in the Kilbride neighbourhood and stayed overnight. I needed to be at MUN for 9am class. To get there, I had to take a bus from Kilbride to the Village mall, and then hopped on an "express" bus from the Village to MUN. And we sat in traffic for 25 minutes along the Columbus Drive crosstown arterial, inching along every few moments. There was nothing express about it....the busses which weaved through every residential street imaginable probably made it to MUN quicker.

Looking at the 33 Tantallon schedule in Halifax, it is an express route with only 4 stops. It runs for about 26 km (exurbs into downtown). It is scheduled to take 72 minutes in the afternoon at rush hour.

The 1 Spring Garden bus runs through the urban core. It takes about 40 minutes to go 9 km, so around 14 km/h.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

They are underutilized because downtowns were gutted in the 60s and 70s leaving employment to shift to the suburbs where rapid transit is generally ineffective. As American cities start rebuilding their downtowns, there are new opportunities for using rapid transit. In most American cities, transit is significantly poorer than in Canada. Often, it is just a basic welfare service.

Syracuse NY which has half of Ottawa's metro population had an urban train line in operation starting in the mid 90s. They scrapped it about 10 years later as it only had 50 riders a day! I think it was about 10 km long and had 5 stations.

[ssiguy]

For mid-sized Canadian cities, I'm sorry but nobody is in even in London's league. At least when traffic is lighter in Halifax, you can get around quickly due to the city's huge freeway system. London has no urban freeways, the roads are quite thin, and the city has a dense urban form with no fast routes where the roads are not littered with traffic lights.

Anyone who has ever lived in London would back me up on this, London's traffic for a city it's size is truly bizarre.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

For mid-sized Canadian cities, I'm sorry but nobody is in even in London's league. At least when traffic is lighter in Halifax, you can get around quickly due to the city's huge freeway system. London has no urban freeways, the roads are quite thin, and the city has a dense urban form with no fast routes where the roads are not littered with traffic lights.

Anyone who has ever lived in London would back me up on this, London's traffic for a city it's size is truly bizarre.

That's true - I'm always struck by the contrast with similar-sized K-W, where getting around by car is (usually and relatively) a breeze.

[Marty_Mcfly]

Originally Posted by someone123

Looking at the 33 Tantallon schedule in Halifax, it is an express route with only 4 stops. It runs for about 26 km (exurbs into downtown). It is scheduled to take 72 minutes in the afternoon at rush hour.

The 1 Spring Garden bus runs through the urban core. It takes about 40 minutes to go 9 km, so around 14 km/h.

72 minutes, so very express.

I'm not sure if the express route I was speaking of is still running. It was a rush hour-only route that stopped only at the Village, Health Science Complex, and MUN. The true definition of inadequate...the idea was right, get the buss on the cross-town arterial and don't stop, but it only really works if all the traffic is smoothly moving along at 70 km/h.

Halifax's bus system would be an improvement over Metrobus.....if you find that hard to believe. Both cities could probably use a complete overhaul of their transit systems.

[SkahHigh]

There is very much a lack of vision in Canada's large cities concerning transit.

Halifax, Québec City, Winnipeg, London, Saskatoon, Regina... It's unacceptable that all these cities have to offer is bus service when LRT could be developped. Ontario is paving the way with K-W and Hamilton, but it's time the government of these cities wake up before they get stuck with too many problems and too little time...

I'm not holding my breath on Québec City, but Winnipeg, with a metro population over 800K, should really follow Ottawa's example.

[rbt]

Originally Posted by niwell

Chicago is a great example of a place that has an excellent transit system on paper, but on the ground can be extremely lacking. And it has much better bus service than many (most?) large American cities. I tend to mostly use bike share and uber when I'm there. Been frustrated by infrequent service and delays on the El too many times.

Indeed. It's interesting when you look at mileage per day. CTA kicks out 221,663 miles per day (typical weekday) and TTC kicks out 172,224 miles per day (subway + SRT); both are 2016 numbers.

So, TTC a typical station on TTC sees 2029 trains per direction per day (~19.5 hours in an operating day) and a typical station on CTA sees 495 trains per direction per day (24 hours for Red/Blue Lines; 18 hours for most other lines).


http://www.transitchicago.com/about/facts.aspx
https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2016/section_one.jsp

TTC reports km's and Chicago miles; don't forget to convert.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

For mid-sized Canadian cities, I'm sorry but nobody is in even in London's league. At least when traffic is lighter in Halifax, you can get around quickly due to the city's huge freeway system. London has no urban freeways, the roads are quite thin, and the city has a dense urban form with no fast routes where the roads are not littered with traffic lights.

Google Traffic doesn't seem to agree. If you look at maps.google.com, pick "traffic" from the menu at the left, and then show typical traffic for sometime in the future, you can see what different cities look like (e.g. at 8:50 am on a Monday or 4:50 pm on Friday).

London and Halifax are about the same. Victoria is arguably worse. Quebec City is bad too.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

For mid-sized Canadian cities, I'm sorry but nobody is in even in London's league. At least when traffic is lighter in Halifax, you can get around quickly due to the city's huge freeway system. London has no urban freeways, the roads are quite thin, and the city has a dense urban form with no fast routes where the roads are not littered with traffic lights.

Anyone who has ever lived in London would back me up on this, London's traffic for a city it's size is truly bizarre.

Worst traffic in any of the Canadian cities I've lived in, bar none. Reason enough for me to never want to move back there.

Originally Posted by someone123

Google Traffic doesn't seem to agree. If you look at maps.google.com, pick "traffic" from the menu at the left, and then show typical traffic for sometime in the future, you can see what different cities look like (e.g. at 8:50 am on a Monday or 4:50 pm on Friday).

London and Halifax are about the same. Victoria is arguably worse. Quebec City is bad too.

I think you'd have to know typical commuting patterns before making a comparison like this. I have no idea what they're like in any of those other cities, but London is bad when you compare it to other mid size cities in Ontario (KW, Hamilton being the ones I have experience with). I also dont trust google maps - coming down from Masonville to Victoria Hospital was at least a 40 minute drive during rush hour, and maybe even up to an hour if you were unlucky enough to get caught behind a train that crosses through the middle of downtown.

[swimmer_spe]

One of the big issues here in Canada vs Europe is government safety regulation.

Canadian cities are covered in heavy rail lines. For some cities, they are the lifeblood. The problem is, we cannot us smaller, cheaper passenger trains on them due to government regulations, where in Europe, those same trains are on mainline or mix with freight. The O-Train is the only exception. But they had to have special permission.

If the smaller cities could use lighter trains, like the O-Train, transit would be greatly improved.

[Laceoflight]

Originally Posted by someone123

London and Halifax are about the same [...] Quebec City is bad too.

At least, Québec has the excuse that ~45 000 of its commuters work on the opposite shore of a river with only 1,5 bridge(s)* to cross it (18% of people working in Lévis have to take the bridge everyday, and 12% of people working in QCC). Congestion assurée sur le pont.


*The old Québec bridge is not very efficient...

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

One of the big issues here in Canada vs Europe is government safety regulation.

Canadian cities are covered in heavy rail lines. For some cities, they are the lifeblood. The problem is, we cannot us smaller, cheaper passenger trains on them due to government regulations, where in Europe, those same trains are on mainline or mix with freight. The O-Train is the only exception. But they had to have special permission.

If the smaller cities could use lighter trains, like the O-Train, transit would be greatly improved.

Depending on how busy freight traffic is... I think a few Hamilton lines would be tricky, as would the most useful Thunder Bay line due to the frequency of freight trains. You'd need to basically build a third rail to make them practical.