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Who's done better on transit? Vancouver or Toronto

who's done better on transit over all?

  • Total voters
    57
I think it depends. TransLink provides and manages transit, roads and bridges not just in Vancouver, but other municipalities in neighbouring towns and cities. Basically it's what Metro Toronto was to Old Toronto and the old boroughs. You can view this as an bureaucratic nightmare, with twenty-two mayors and un-elected body with the power to impose fuel and power tax.

However there are ideas we can take from this; with the Spadina Subway now serving outside Toronto, and the TTC has been serving people outside Toronto for ages, it would make sense to create an regional transit body that cover not just Toronto, but York, Peel and Durham regions, have the power to create tolls and fuel tax and elect a board like we elect school officials. Just a thought.
 
ssiguy2 said:
Sorry I meant to say #5 in per-capita ridership behind Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Calgary and only slightly ahead of Edmonton.
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I don't know much about Vancouver transit, but for that reason alone I voted for Toronto in that poll.
 
junctionist said:
Toronto voters rejected tax increases to build a subway multiple times. Voters only approved the subway when the situation on Yonge street was becoming dire in the 1940s with traffic congestion and overcrowded streetcars. Getting people to vote for tax increases to pay for transit expansion isn't a good strategy. Transit expansion should simply be a matter of public policy, and politicians should be upfront about the costs and the need to pay for it.
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The TTC funded the original subway entirely with its own reserves, or else it probably wouldn't have been built if it were up to the whims of the voting public.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
It's definitely a subway system. The trains are just tiny in size compared to Toronto's.

Keep in mind that Torontonians have a really skewed view of what normal subway trains are. The TTC's subway rolling stock uses some of the biggest trains I've ever seen. To Torontonians, Vancouver's system would appear to be running on "toy" trains. I've heard it described as such on a few occasions.

Compared to the rest of the world, Vancouver's trains would probably be on the smaller size, but not unreasonably so.
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Yep, Skytrain is definitely a subway/metro. There's no two ways about it. Because it has the attributes of a 'light' system, some could chalk it up as a "light metro" - which is still a subway/metro system. Basically if it's high-frequency, with rapid transit style station spacing, has rails, and is entirely grade-separated - it's a subway/metro. However, if a transit line is mostly grade-separated but still has sections with level crossings (like the Eglinton Crosstown), I think it wouldn't be called a subway/metro but rather a "pre-metro". Only once a line is entirely grade-separated (i.e no level crossings) then it can be called a bonafide subway/metro system. That's at least my understanding of the rules.
 
junctionist said:
Toronto voters rejected tax increases to build a subway multiple times. Voters only approved the subway when the situation on Yonge street was becoming dire in the 1940s with traffic congestion and overcrowded streetcars. Getting people to vote for tax increases to pay for transit expansion isn't a good strategy. Transit expansion should simply be a matter of public policy, and politicians should be upfront about the costs and the need to pay for it.
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The problem isn't voting or not, but people usually don't like change that is they consider part of the social norm that they've grew up with, that's why politicians are afraid to toll roads.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Vancouver has 188 40' trolleybuses and 74 60' trolleybuses. Toronto has zero.
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Isn't there 240+ streetcars alone in Toronto? Plus over 2000 buses? And isn't there a 450+ km network of commuter rail serving Toronto and the surrounding suburbs?
How many kms of commuter rail does vancity have again?
 
The SkyTrain is a full Metro but with smaller vehicles that are more in line with Montreal Metro cars. The SkyTrain has no capacity issues. The system was built with 75 meter stations which are eaxily expandable to 100 meters with the new MK111 trains running upwards of every 90 seconds. That's the equivalent capacity of having 10 MK1 cars{ the kind currently used on the SRT} running every 90 seconds................big time capacity over well over 30,000 pphpd.

It's actually the Canada Line which uses the standard Metro/subway cars that has the capacity problems because the didn't twin rail the entire length, the stations are only 40 meters and can be expanded only to 50 meters, the trains are slower due to underground curves which weren't properly inclined, and the trains do not have nearly as fast de/acceleration as SkyTrain cars.

Toronto and Montreal both have better systems than Vancouver but the gap isn't nearly as large as it was 30 years ago. When you take into consideration the size of the cities, Calgary probably has the best system in the country.
 
Vancouver has always entertained the conceit that it was different from other places. We were greener, more progressive, more livable.

This conceit even has a brand name. “Vancouverism” is the phenomenon we claim to export to the world: that model of a densely populated city centre served by an abundance of public amenities and public transit.

I think we can pretty well jettison that fiction now.

Vancouverism might be a reality for two or three neighbourhoods huddling in the downtown, and that greener, more progressive ethos might hold sway in one or two more.

But Vancouver — and I speak of it in the metro sense — is the sum of its parts, and most of its parts are suburban in their sensibilities, and that includes not just all of the suburbs but most of the neighbourhoods in the City of Vancouver proper.

They’re resistant to change. They abhor densification. They’re conventional in their sensibilities and they’re highly dependent on the automobile. More importantly, they’re not just dependent on the automobile, they prefer it.



Sounds awfully similar to the situation we have here in Toronto..
 
If people in Toronto didn't consider surface or elevated rail to be 'worse' for some moronic reason that would be nice. If Vancouver had to tunnel everything I doubt they would have made the progress they have.
 
11th said:
I'm not sure if it's relevant, but Vancouver also hosted an expo and the winter Olympics in just 30 years.
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This is why I want Toronto to host an olympics game. Nevermind the fact that Vancouver, Montreal, and even Calgary have hosted them. I think that an expo/Olympics is the best chance we have to get our rapid transit network fast-forwarded a couple decades and get a DRL built.

So, according to the Pembina institute:

Km of rapid transit (includes ROW streetcars):
Toronto: 83 km
Vancouver: 68 km

Winner: Toronto
This is not the best metric, since it doesn't measure the quality/speed/capacity of the "rapid transit", and a more sprawly city will require more km of transit to maintain the same coverage, so this measure is a little biased towards Toronto, which is less compact. You could have your entire city's population within 500m of a station of a 10 km transit line and perform worse than a city that has built a 20km subway from nowhere to nowhere.

% of population within 1km of rapid transit:
Toronto: 34%
Vancouver: 19%

Winner: Toronto
This is a much better measure, since it shows if rapid transit gets people where they need to go and reaches where they are. The one caveat I'd give is that if a city has a good bus network it reduces the need to be within walking distance of a station.

Number of rapid transit trips per capita
Vancouver: 52
Toronto: 133

Winner: Toronto
Toronto is the clear winner here, and this is a much better measure of dependence on transit. The only caveat I'd give for this is whether these rapid transit trips are replacing car trips, or if they replace trips that would be taken on foot or by bike instead. Maybe in Toronto there are destinations (like grocery stores) that are done by transit instead of by foot because the built form is less compact?

Mode share (data for census metropolitan areas):
Vancouver: 19.7% public transit 6.3% walking 1.8% biking - 27.8% non-vehicle
Toronto: 23.3% public transit 4.6% walking 1.2% biking - 29.1% non-vehicle

Winner: Toronto
There are some issues with using mode share, since it is only for work trips and doesn't measure the ability to say, get groceries or run errands without a car. But it is consistently recorded by the census and is a reliable measurement. Note that even though Vancouver has 3.6% fewer making trips by public transit, they almost make up for it by having more people walk to work or bike (more active transit).

New rapid transit within past 10 years:
Vancouver: 20
Toronto: 7

Winner: Vancouver

Vancouver has had some impressive expansion with its ICTS system, building a network from scratch over the last couple decades. There are some criticisms of it (small stations to save costs mean that there are capacity issues, using railway ROWs means that it doesn't always go where people are, etc) but this is better than the stagnation Toronto had seen. With the projects underway in Toronto and the failed Vancouver transit referendum, Toronto can probably retake this category.

Overall winner: Toronto
 
Why would they include slow moving streetcars as rapid transit? That's a big joke.
 
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