How did Canada become more culturally public transit than the US?
In the US for the most part people drive than take a public city bus. I read some where some thing happen in post WW2 where in Canada and the US gone down a different path.
I read there was lot and lots of poor people in Canada and really low income in post WW2 and lots and lots of European immigration in post WW2 unlike the US that had very strong middle class at the time and less immigration. So in Canada the city was more dense and public transit where in the US more highways and people driving and this shaped the culture of the country. So Canada more opt to take city bus than the US.
From what I understand there was lots and lots and lots of European immigrants many of them poor in the 50s, 60s and 70s and lot more low income and poor people unlike the US that had very strong middle class and little immigrants.
So the city was more dense and public transit where in the US more highways and people driving
One of the big differences is that we didn’t have the hollowing out of the cities with a “white flight” of the middle class to car suburbs like in the US in the 50s and 60s.
The US had plenty of immigrants through that time period.
The “American Dream” of a house with a little plot of land around it dates back almost forever, and gave rise to the railroad commuter towns around Philadelphia and New York City, which gave rise to the streetcar suburbs of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. By the time affordable automobiles came along in the 1920a, high-density urban living had already started losing favor to suburbia. By 1929 60% of U.S. households owned a car.
The post World War II phenomena What_Exit and Fins To The Left describe came along later.
Canada has a higher population-weighted population density than the United States, even though the raw population density is much less. Therefore, a much larger percentage of the Canadian population lives with a lot of other Canadians nearby - so public transport works better.
That may have some thing to do with rust belt cities that are older and more urban like and dense. Where lot of the people moving to west coast and southern US cities in post WW2 and becoming more suburb like there.
Where Canada never experienced move shift like white flight or the rust belt cities.
Mostly likely the people moving were middle class.
In Canada lot of the people are in Southern BC and southern Ontario.
I had a stark experience of this when I visited Birmingham, Alabama, about 20 years ago,
I was accompanying a friend who had decided to go on a “civil rights” tour of the state. We went to Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham.
In Birmingham, we stayed downtown - it looked abandoned. It was clearly poor, with a lot of run down locations.
Since we were visiting notable civil rights sights (like the 16th street Baptist church that was famously bombed by terrorists), I suggested we try Ollie’s barbecue. That was the place that led to the U.S. Supreme Court case outlawing discrimination in private businesses. I had seen that the restaurant was still open.
Well, unlike the other things that we saw close to downtown, we had to jump on the highway to get to the restaurant. It wasn’t their original location, although they had black and white pictures of that place (located downtown) on the walls.
What happened? After the Supreme Court changed the law, white Alabama abandoned its downtown city center, and took its commerce with it.
(Oh, and the barbecue sucked).
I once heard that 80% of Canadians live within a 2 hour drive of the U.S. I’m not sure if that’s accurate, though.
Canadians probably use public transit more than Americans, on average. But not so much compared to many other places. Subway systems only exist in the biggest few cities. Trains are not particularly popular. Riding the bus has less of a stigma than the US, but people with more alternatives still sometimes avoid them (perhaps more due to slow speed than cost or safety, though).
Many countries mix an ethos of community spirit with promotion of individual rights and action. Canada is a nation of immigrants. Before the 1960s, these included many European immigrants from places which often had decent public transport options with little stigma attached to its use. So there’s that.
Canada is a little less “individual rights” than the US. Suburbs took longer to develop. Sidewalks are still a thing almost everywhere; in theory you could walk to most businesses. (Walking around American cities can feel sketchy to Canadians, and sidewalks aren’t where they probably should be. Even walking to the Palms just off the Vegas strip is surprisingly rough though there are shuttles.)
Streetcars weren’t always finished off by competing businesses in Canada. Most neighborhoods are diverse and increasingly so. Still, most Canadians own cars and much prefer these over public transit. The heavy users live in downtown areas with good connections or are students or elderly who use limited routes and may have other reasons to use it. Canada is a very big place. The majority of Canadians certainly live in cities, likely not far from the US border. City density is nothing like Mexico or Tokyo, of course.
Generally not true. The US had a lot of European immigration, too, during that time period, and the standard of living in Canada has historically been similar to that of the US.
Also southern Quebec. I’d say Montreal probably has the best public transit system in Canada. Its subway system, the Métro, is far more extensive than the one in Toronto, and also more modern and the stations aesthetically more attractive, despite Toronto being a larger and wealthier city.
Very true. While big Canadian cities don’t lack for suburbs, a big difference from many big American cities is that urban living in most locations is safe and pleasant and considered fashionable for those who can afford it. But before the astronomical increase in house prices, even working class people of modest means could afford to own a house within the city limits of someplace like Toronto, and those were big users of public transit, especially if they worked downtown. Also worth mentioning is that in the general Toronto area there is a pretty good commuter train service serving a pretty vast collection of suburbia, so “public transit” also extends to suburbanites. It’s amazing how large the rail network is and how far it extends, and there is also a highway bus commuter service.
There seems to be a greater willingness on the part of the provincial and other governments to spend on public transit and less on spending for highway construction and improvement. Indeed, the city of Toronto has historically been downright hostile to cars, and friendly to pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users.
Another reason for the prevalence of public transit is that the transit authority generally enjoys support from three different levels of government – municipal, provincial, and federal, the latter I think mostly for large infrastructure investments. I don’t know what public transit funding is like in the US but I imagine it’s probably as shitty as many public infrastructure projects.
I recall that General Motors and maybe another large corporation actually bought up a lot of public transit at one time. It was rail transit. Not sure if this happened in Canada too. They replaced it with GM internal combustion vehicles. That probably does not explain less public transit in general. But it could have been one tipping point. Get the systems, then stagnate them to sell more cars? Several of the already noted things in the thread, combined with this.
Canada is also more likely to adopt socialist concepts that work. A mix of capitalist and socialist systems. Canadians are more likely to fund public systems through taxation.
This is very much tied to a myth. Not necessarily a myth all on it’s own, but still one of the famous-but-not-really accurate history bits that gets repeated (and shows up in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) . Though the older one is the GM replaces-street-cars-with-busses version. Of course that one’s weakened by how many streetcars failed in places that didn’t have GM busses. You can see from the judge’s comments in the wiki that he didn’t seem to buy the argument much, either.
Most transit historians don’t support the the theory that GM bears responsibility. A lot of streetcars had been losing money for a long while before that for reasons mentioned in the wiki.
I think there’s another piece to it - there was never a time when everyone in those suburbs worked in the city but for the most part, public transportation in the US was set up to get people to the city (and sometimes more specifically the business district) .Which is great if you are trying to get from a suburb to your job in the business district but not so great if you are trying to get from one side of your suburb to another or from a western suburb to a northern one. At some point in the US, office (and other) jobs began moving out of the cities - I don’t know if the same thing happened in Canada, but if not, that might account for some of the difference.
Talk about your subway
Talk about your L
Talk about your street car lines as well
But when you’re living out where the fields are green
You got to go home on the five fifteen
Well I have not looked at the census but was mostly immigration going to New York, Boston and Chicago that had already higher city density and already public transportation. I mean New York, Boston and Chicago are kinda public transit culture cities unlike the southern US cities.
Well one thing that is really odd I noticed in Canada and bit of a culture shock that I had is lots and lots of high rise apartments in the suburbs and small communities.
It also not uncommon to see high rise residential in Canada in small communities of only 50,000 people or 100,000 people and cities of only 200,000 people to have many high rise apartments and witch is also not uncommon to plonked down high rise residential in low density suburb away from the down town area or urban core areas. And lot of these high rise residential are next to mall, park or major street or highway.
I wonder if public transit was one of the reason why Canada built lot of these high rise apartments. Where in the US is more car centric so why build high rise apartments when everyone is going to own car and drive.
What you would have to do is compare Brampton, Mississauga, Hamilton, Pickering, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Waterloo ,Kitchener and London to Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Austin, Denver, EI Paso, Las Vegas, Portland so on.
I find it hard to believe New Orleans, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Austin, Denver, EI Paso, Las Vegas, Portland, Tucson so on spend the same on public transit has Brampton, Mississauga, Hamilton, Pickering, Ottawa, Winnipeg, waterloo ,Kitchener and London. With those Canadian cities having higher ridership.
None of those are suburbs, except possibly Mississauga/Meadowvale. The others are all squarely inside the city proper and typify all the aspects of urban living. Toronto has a lot of high-rise condos for the same reason any other comparable city has them – because land is expensive. If Toronto has more than some comparable US cities, it’s for the reason I suggested earlier, that it’s well suited to urban lifestyles. It also has an enormous number of detached single-family homes extending right into downtown core.
As for Mississauga, it’s sometimes regarded as a suburban bedroom community for Toronto, but the reality is that it’s a big city in its right, with numerous industries and corporate offices and its own suburbs. It certainly has some high-rise condos, but ironically Mississauga is one of the few Canadian cities that has seen a small population decline in recent years precisely because city planners have been generally opposed to high-density development.
