Depends on where you live, I think. We almost exclusively rode public transit in Portland. It was clean and safe and went pretty much everywhere you needed to go. I averaged 1500 to 2000 miles per year on my car while we lived there and probably would not have added much to that if I had been working. I have a 2016 Mazda that has 18,000 miles on it.
My wife used to take the bus in Anchorage, but it was only because she worked in the downtown area. Service was slow and infrequent, but there wasn’t any will to spend the money to improve it.
We took transit everywhere in NYC when visiting, but we weren’t usually out after dark and I have no idea how it is at that time of day.
We almost exclusively rode transit in WDC/VA when we lived there. Another excellent, clean and safe mode of travel that went everywhere.
San Francisco had good transit when we visited there; no idea what it’s like now.
A lot depends on your particular circumstances. I took the city bus every day to my high school. In Los Angeles. In the 70s, when public transportation in L.A. was a lot worse than today — and even today, it’s not great. It was just what suited me best.
Well I don’t know all the cities I assume people are making reference to the big cities in Canada.
Well in the greater Vancouver area and greater Toronto area is it the average wait time for a city bus is it not 15 minutes where in most US cities the average wait time is 30 minutes and on weekends the bus runs only every hour or many times not at all.
That may explain why public transit has higher ridership in Canada.
You didn’t answer my other question. Are you basing the information you’ve been using in your posts in this thread solely on things you are looking up online, or have you actually ever lived in (or even spent significant time in) Toronto, Vancouver, or any Canadian city?
Sure. I have never felt unsafe on public transport in Canada. But you might not want to Google Canada, Greyhound and Ng. Places vary a lot, and the US is also huuuge.
A lot of growing cities with suburbs and exurbs seem to wish they had subways. Too expensive these days, unless technology gets better? Chicago seemed to me as a tourist to be doing a good job with practical measures. More informed locals might well disagree, of course. To me, trains on or above the ground seem more useful than better buses, if there is enough density.
Most people in Canada can’t afford a car because some jobs pay crappy wages and live with their parents, roommates or are homeless in the woods or streets with no jobs or jobs under they table that pay less than minimum wage which is illegal. The minimum wages in Canada are higher than USA. I live in Ontario Canada where the minimum wage is $16.55 but I make $20 in one job in the summer, $1000 per season in one job in the winter and $19 an hour in one job in my all year round job. Also it’s hard to get a drivers license in Canada because you need to do a written test called the g1 first which you pass and then wait a year to do a road test g2 which you pass and then wait another year to do a road test g. Also not all places in Canada are public transit friendly like St Jacob’s, Kitchener and Waterloo. Even London and Caledon where you need a car to work.
What are you referencing here, I don’t know about public transit only what I have read and about high rise what I have read.
It is only what I read that high density areas will have better public transit but I don’t know if that was the reason city planner built so many high rise in Canada. And hated low rise apartments because of terrible public transit. I don’t know if that was reason or there was other reason why they built so many high rise apartments in Canada.
And it does not explain where the public transit culture came from or when and why and why the US became car centric culture.
Chicago-area public transit definitely has its advantages, though much of it – particularly Metra (the commuter rail system which extends out well into the suburbs) and the CTA’s “L” (subway/elevated train system) – is built around the service premise of transporting workers from outlying neighborhoods and suburbs into downtown Chicago. (That said, the L also provides direct service to both O’Hare and Midway airports.)
The CTA’s bus lines, and the suburban Pace bus lines, provide extensive service, though getting from any particular point A to point B may often require transfers (but that’s likely true of any municipal bus service).
What they haven’t done particularly well is add to these services. In the 35 years that I’ve lived here, the CTA has added one new* service line to the L (the Orange Line, to Midway, which opened in 1993), and Metra has added one new commuter rail line (North Central, which began operation in 1996). In recent years, proposed high-speed train service between the Loop and O’Hare never made it out of the planning stage. Most of the region’s investments in the time that I’ve been here have been on improving dilapidated track and stations, upgrading train rolling stock and buses, and, in recent years, introducing technology such as electronic ticketing and real-time train and bus tracking.
That’s true not just in Chicago. Three decades ago, I was working in Westchester County (Pleasantville, to be specific) and had a co-worker who lived in Bridgeport. He didn’t like the commute so he looked into mass transit options, but there too, the commuter trains were designed to bring people to downtown Manhattan. In theory, he could ride the New Haven line to Grand Central and then switch to the Harlem line north to Pleasantville but it would take a long time.
I’ve taken Metra trains in to my various jobs in downtown Chicago, from my home in the western suburbs, for most of my working life. But, about a decade ago, I had a job in a far southwestern suburb: I could have taken Metra to get there, but it would have meant taking one line into the city, hopping on a different line back out of the city, and then taking a Pace bus for the last two miles. Could have been done, but it would have been 2 hours door-to-door, versus 35 minutes by car.
Wow. That makes me feel more secure if I ever choose to drive in Canada, as opposed to in the US where I may have gotten my DL because of a computer glitch.
Canada recognizes the US drivers license as relevant so you won’t need to do a driving test in Canada since Americans and Canadians drive in the same side of the road.
Canada Has 6th Highest Number of Vehicles per Capita - The Car Guide. Canadians love their cars and trucks a lot more than public transit or alternative mobility solutions like walking or riding a bicycle. With such a vast territory, it makes sense, right?..Believe it or not, there are currently 707 vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants in Canada, good for sixth place in the global ranking. The annual growth rate from 2015-2020 is 3 percent. Now, if you think the U.S. is worse, you’re right, but it’s not the No.1 country.
Only the rich Canadians and middle class Canadians with connections can afford car which are the 707 Canadians you mentioned. You ever seen a homeless Canadian driving a car? I never seen one. I just seen encampments of homeless Canadians on the news in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver even Hamilton too. Canadians have to sacrifice between food or rent.
I think this is the fundamental basis of your misunderstanding. City planners do NOT build high rises, other than possibly housing projects.
City planners try and set zoning rules. Developers try and build to make the most money. Somewhere in the middle, things actually get built but at the end of the day private sector builders are not going to willingly enter into a non-profitable project.
I’m not saying the city planners or the government built high rise apartments but if there was already culture of public transit riders or the people where poor than city planners or government well could of pushed higher density and ban low rise apartments.