Kyle Campbell
Active Member
Sure, not everyone has time as their main priority, but @Bojaxs is not alone here. For me personally a large reason I would pick driving over transit is if driving is faster. The main reason I mostly cycle downtown Toronto is because it's faster than both driving and transit. I think it's important not to downplay the role time spent travelling has on picking the mode of travel. Yes, it's not the only factor, but I think it matters to a lot of people. Of course I could be totally wrong here.
P.S. In the airport example here, I would 100% take the bus if it's 15-20 minutes faster (and has one fewer transfer).
It's generally not realistic though when doing a local service that has all stops
Let's ignore Ottawa and consider other airports
It's 58 minutes from O'Hare to downtown, or 26 minutes by car. No transfers, just direct on the blue line
It's 35 minutes by car from JFK to times square or 55 minutes by train
It's 20 minutes by car or 44 minutes by train from downtown Philadelphia to it's airport.
It's 1 hr from Edmonton's airport to downtown or 30 minutes by car.
Generally the train is only competitive to car for airports when it's a premium Express service, such as UPX. If Line 5 eventually hooks up to Pearson expect 1hr + to make that trip downtown.
YOW is by far the smallest airport on the continent with a rail link, and Ottawa is the smallest city in North America with a fully grade separated transit system. I choose to look at it as Ottawa getting in on the ground floor, rather than that it's failed as it can't match big city budgets. The entire O-Train system, Lines 1,2,3 and 4 cost less than just building the first phase of the crosstown
Line 2 was designed with double tracking in mind in the future, and Line 4 was designed with eventual interlining to Bayview in mind once Line 2 is double tracked