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Chicago Tribune compliments Toronto's transit system -- thoughts?

I think one of the differences with Toronto and the US is the difference in the types of poel who use public transit. Here in Toronto you see poel of every race, and economic background (lower to Middle class) wher as the US its usually the lower class that don't own cars that take public transit. It almost seems to have a stigma attached to that you don't make enough money to own a car so you take public transit.
 
The full quote was "Transit connects people to jobs. It provides a means of getting around for people who can’t afford a car." I don't see what exactly is inaccurate about that. He didn't say it's only for the poor. He said that it provides a (somewhat) affordable way of getting around for the poor, which is true. Obviously some people wanna spin anything to make the mayor look bad, but that's just political bullshit.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
I think one of the differences with Toronto and the US is the difference in the types of poel who use public transit. Here in Toronto you see poel of every race, and economic background (lower to Middle class) wher as the US its usually the lower class that don't own cars that take public transit. It almost seems to have a stigma attached to that you don't make enough money to own a car so you take public transit.
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Not true in New York City and San Francisco.
 
King of Kensington said:
Toronto has very high ridership by North American standards, as well as high frequencies. Do we know if the frequencies were extended because of high usage, or is usage high because of high frequencies?
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There's obviously feedback between the two, but normally usage follows frequency.

wild goose chase said:
I suppose if there is historical ridership data out there that's available this could be answerable. It would be interesting to know when Toronto's transit use rose to a point when it started to "punch above its weight" or so to speak, and started to outweigh cities much more populous than itself.

Alternatively, I wonder if any of the cities whose public transit systems are older and more established than ours ever had higher frequencies in the past and cut back?
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With Toronto, like most cities that were already large a century ago, transit usage was always high. The King/Queen lines used to have service every minute! It's just that our ridership didn't drop as much as other cities because we didn't hollow out as much.
 
LNahid2000 said:
Not true in New York City and San Francisco.
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Erm, absolutely true in New York but substitute a cab for car ownership in Manhattan. Keep in mind on this island that even $120k/year is lower-middle class; even the poor here can have $3k suits and a Cartier.

I think it's pretty easy to argue it's largely true in San Fran too (especially outside rush and airport trips) considering public transit barely even goes to the locations where the highest salaried jobs are located (yay hourly buses). This is changing a bit in the SF core but the suburbs (like Freemont which I'm most familiar with) it's still pretty hostile to transit usage.

Actually BART on a Saturday night when it's raining out can be a very unpleasant experience in the Richmond through Oakland chunks.
 
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rbt said:
Erm, absolutely true in New York but substitute a cab for car ownership in Manhattan. Keep in mind on this island that even $120k/year is lower-middle class; even the poor here can have $3k suits and a Cartier.
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FYI: Three quarters of New Yorkers live outside of Manhattan. Those who commute into Manhattan overwhelmingly do so by subway, not by taxi (and if you've been to Brooklyn in the last 15 years, you'll surely acknowledge that they don't qualify as poor)

Real estate values and rental prices are strongly tied to commute times by transit:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...6-a-month-to-trim-a-minute-off-their-commute/
 
Gentrified/hip Brooklyn is a relatively small part of the borough. Brooklyn overall is far more similar to Queens than Manhattan demographically.
 
facepalming_brooklynite said:
FYI: Three quarters of New Yorkers live outside of Manhattan. Those who commute into Manhattan overwhelmingly do so by subway, not by taxi (and if you've been to Brooklyn in the last 15 years, you'll surely acknowledge that they don't qualify as poor)
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~80% of New Yorkers outside of Manhattan commute to work by car; not subway. Yes, plenty do commute by subway but that only because there are a enough people in NY that even a minority is a big number.

Neither the rich nor the poor use transit as their first choice outside Manhattan.
 
rbt said:
~80% of New Yorkers outside of Manhattan commute to work by car; not subway.
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That is completely false.

56% of households in NYC do not even have a car:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car

According to the census, less than 10% of people who commute to Manhattan drive to work:
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2013/cb13-r17.html

According to this site, "cars provide less than 15 percent of commute trips to jobs in Manhattan."
"They provide a larger 44 percent share in the outer boroughs." (=Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island)
http://www.newgeography.com/content/004967-commuting-new-york

Your claim is accurate only for people who work outside of the city limits, i.e. in Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester County or Connecticut:
"In the inner counties and outer counties, cars are strongly dominant, providing for 80 percent and 88 percent of the commutes respectively."
 
facepalming_brooklynite said:
Your claim is accurate only for people who work outside of the city limits, i.e. in Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester County or Connecticut:
"In the inner counties and outer counties, cars are strongly dominant, providing for 80 percent and 88 percent of the commutes respectively."
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I'm not sure how any of what you said conflicts with anything I've said. You're talking about small subset of the population and I'm talking about everybody in the NY (population ~24 million).

Lets take MTAs best day every (5.7 million trips). That's only 2.85 million people if you assume a maximum of 2 trips each. So, 12% of the population took transit that day; that record day. Commuter rail & LIRR adds about 15% to that number; so lets round up to 14%.


Neither the rich nor the poor choose transit in NY. This behaviour isn't much different anywhere else in North America.
 
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I was talking about New York City (=5 boroughs) and the 8.5 million people who live within the city limits (not exactly"a small subset of the population"). The majority of these people (a) do not own a car and (b) take public transit to work. There is no social stigma attached to taking public transit in NYC.

If you want to talk about the greater New York area, then your points are more appropriate. However, you need to include other transit agencies in your calculations.

Your figure of 5.7 million average weekday trips seems to come from here:
http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/
Note that this number includes only subway trips.

It does not include the 2 million bus trips within city limits (scroll down on same page)

It does not include the 1 million trips on New Jersey Transit
https://www.njtransit.com/pdf/FactsAtaGlance.pdf

It does not include the more than 300,000 average daily ridership on Long Island Railroad
It does not include the more than 300,000 average daily ridership on Metro North
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter_rail_systems_by_ridership
 
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