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Canada is not all low-density. Vancouver BC is the most densely populated area in North America. Also the Calgary's south light rail line has 110,000 ridership. So they got LA beat.
I was speaking specifically to Memph's example. I know that Canada has plenty of dense areas.
And as far as the bolded, that is why I think LRT in low-to-medium density in Canada could do better than high-density in the US. PT just seems to be more well-used up there.
I was speaking specifically to Memph's example. I know that Canada has plenty of dense areas.
And as far as the bolded, that is why I think LRT in low-to-medium density in Canada could do better than high-density in the US. PT just seems to be more well-used up there.
I don't think Calgary's LRT success is because of some cultural reason that makes people more like to ride transit but that even though it's not particularly dense, it has a very large CBD that holds a very large portion of total office jobs. In fact, Calgary might have the biggest CBD that isn't served by heavy rail, with 39.8 million sq ft of office space in the CBD and another 6.6 million in the Belt Line, which is right next to the CBD and also quite well served by light rail. The biggest US CBDs without heavy rail are Houston's, Seattle's (comparable in size to Calgary's) followed by Dallas, Minneapolis and Denver. These are cities with MSA populations about 4 times greater than Calgary's, which means that the likelihood of any given resident in a neighbourhood served by the LRT systems working in the CBD would be expected to be 4 times lower. This gives Calgary a huge advantage on top of other advantages like limitted road capacity into downtown and high parking costs.
For the cities that have heavy rail, it's competing with LRT if they have any (usually don't), so the LRT might not be as busy.
Kitchener-Waterloo has relatively average sized downtowns for its size though (at least I think).
Calgary dominates every other city, including New York and every other Canadian City. The advantage is so great that any American city with light rail would have to have significantly higher residential densities to stand a chance. Philadelphia's light rail seems more like streetcars (slow, mixed traffic, close stop spacing, lower capacity than true LRT) at least in the dense parts of the city, ditto for SF, ditto for Toronto too, although it's streetcars do come relatively close to Calgary in ridership per mile.
Los Angeles while having dense areas is just so much more decentralized. New York doesn't really have light rail, only in NJ, it doesn't go to downtown, although NJ is dense, I'm not sure if employment is sufficiently concentrated and there's probably a lot of people in inner NJ working outside inner NJ. DC, Chicago, Montreal and Vancouver don't have light rail. That leaves just Boston's light rail (Green Line), and it's comparable to Calgary in terms of usage per mile. The other cities don't have significantly higher residential densities than Calgary.
Calgary dominates every other city, including New York and every other Canadian City. The advantage is so great that any American city with light rail would have to have significantly higher residential densities to stand a chance. Philadelphia's light rail seems more like streetcars (slow, mixed traffic, close stop spacing, lower capacity than true LRT) at least in the dense parts of the city, ditto for SF, ditto for Toronto too, although it's streetcars do come relatively close to Calgary in ridership per mile.
Los Angeles while having dense areas is just so much more decentralized. New York doesn't really have light rail, only in NJ, it doesn't go to downtown, although NJ is dense, I'm not sure if employment is sufficiently concentrated and there's probably a lot of people in inner NJ working outside inner NJ. DC, Chicago, Montreal and Vancouver don't have light rail. That leaves just Boston's light rail (Green Line), and it's comparable to Calgary in terms of usage per mile. The other cities don't have significantly higher residential densities than Calgary.
Calgary is great when it comes to light rail transit but when it comes to overall transportation, I wouldn't put it ahead of any of those cities mentioned since those cities have much more transit options like commuter rail, subways, and intercity rail.
Calgary is great when it comes to light rail transit but when it comes to overall transportation, I wouldn't put it ahead of any of those cities mentioned since those cities have much more transit options like commuter rail, subways, and intercity rail.
I don't disagree, I'm just trying to explain why its light rail is so unusally well used. Edmonton is a bit harder to explain actually, it's not denser than Calgary, has much lower job centralization but still gets 7,400 riders per mile of LRT, close to Calgary's 8,200.
By the way, my metro area has about the same ratio of jobs downtown as most big Canadian cities, which is to say much less than Calgary. The exact number depends on how you measure though, Downtown Kitchener had about 11,300 jobs in 2001, but there were also 5,600 jobs in Uptown (Downtown) Waterloo, out of around 120,000 jobs in Kitchener-Waterloo (not including Cambridge). It 2006, there were around 57,000 jobs within 2000 ft of transit stations, compared to 137,000 Kitchener+Waterloo though, so this also hits many other employment centres.
I always assumed the express buses from Staten Island would be miserably slow and stuck in a bridge& tunnel or BQE traffic jam. But it seems like New Yorkers like them.
Its basically the option between spending an hour to an hour and a half on two trains & a ferry or on a coach bus with A/C and reclining seats lol. It costs more than double the fare ($5.00 r/t daily vs $12 r/t daily) however people love them. I view it as the next best way to comfortably get to the city instead of driving in...unless I'm drinking I'll almost always drive but for daily commuting it makes the most obvious sense. Some of the routes actually go via New Jersey which could take less time depending on how jacked up the Lincoln Tunnel is. Some people who will do the daily express bus will occasionally take the ferry/train combo instead, especially if it's a nice day or they work within walking distance of the Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan. My father worked at 2 WTC from '86 to '01 and regularly walked the couple of blocks to the ferry, unless the weather sucked. Its nice to have the option of both, especially with the huge amounts of commuters. Of course we still have the longest average commute times in the US of about an hour and a half per day. It's no surprise to me, just this week I'm working on securing a really good employment opportunity in New Jersey that's 42 miles of driving....each way lol. Good thing I love driving it's along the Turnpike, so it should take about 45 minutes each way in good conditions...I'll fit right in with the statistics lol.
By what measure is Vancouver the most densely populated area? It's among the denser ones by most measures (though far behind NYC), but not the densest by any measure I can think of.
Sorry about that. My source was wrong. Vancouver has 13,590 people per square mile. It looks like it's probably #3 after New York City (26,402) and San Francisco (17,179), and slightly ahead of Boston (13,321).
Anyway my point is that Canada may have way lower population density then the US. But Canadian cities are not low density, by any means. Anybody who has ever been to Canada, will probably notice that Canadian cities have a lot more high rise apartment buildings then most US cities.
It doesn't make much sense here in Memphis. Traffic flows pretty well and there's tons of easy parking everywhere. I can get anywhere in town in 15-20 minutes. Why would I take a train?
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it's along the Turnpike, so it should take about 45 minutes each way in good conditions...I'll fit right in with the statistics lol.
