Transport study derails thinking on outer suburbs

[tayser]

interesting stats... we've just got the most recent data for population and PT usage in the past week for Melbourne...

Total trips in 2010 was 504,300,000 (broken down: train 226.6 mil, tram: 176.5 mil, Bus: 101.2 mil) and Melbourne's now over 4 million - 4,077,000 or 123 trips per capita.

We had a state government change 6 months ago and one of the "initiatives" the new government has is to reorganise Public transport to be along the lines of TTC, and low and behold Paul Mees is likely the front-runner to be plucked from Academic obscurity and plonked in a new role.

 

[Register123]

Just so everybody knows ( l lived in LA). Paying to transfer is similar to transfers made in the GTA (ie one system to another). You do not pay to transfer between buses that operate solely in the LA system, you pay when you transfer from LA metro to El Monte transit or Long Beach Transit. So it's the same as Toronto, transferring from TTC to Mississauga Transit. The comparison seems very misleading, it's exactly what we have here.

 

[Markster]

Just so everybody knows ( l lived in LA). Paying to transfer is similar to transfers made in the GTA (ie one system to another). You do not pay to transfer between buses that operate solely in the LA system, you pay when you transfer from LA metro to El Monte transit or Long Beach Transit. So it's the same as Toronto, transferring from TTC to Mississauga Transit. The comparison seems very misleading, it's exactly what we have here.

When I was last there, (October 2010) I always had to pay a new $1.25 fare when transferring from one LA bus to another LA bus. (Not a different city's bus, not a local muni bus.) The only way I was able to do any kind of transfer was to buy a day-pass from a subway station, and then I could use that.

 

[Register123]

This must have change more recently then. I left in 1999 and this was not the case then.

 

[lafard]

It's not just cultural. Toronto's urban area is very, very dense. Brampton's overall density is 16/ha - and close to half the city is still farms. Mississauga is 25, the outer 416 is in the low 30s, and the inner boroughs approach 70, with the core and fringes well into the 80s. If you set say 25/ha as the cutoff for heavy transit usage, you find that the majority of Toronto's urban area falls into that bracket - hence high ridership.

The island of Montreal is about 40/ha, and the City of Vancouver's 53.

You can't say it's 100% correlated, but the density is probably the biggest reason for the success in Canada.

 

[Mapleson]

It's not just cultural. Toronto's urban area is very, very dense. Brampton's overall density is 16/ha - and close to half the city is still farms. Mississauga is 25, the outer 416 is in the low 30s, and the inner boroughs approach 70, with the core and fringes well into the 80s. If you set say 25/ha as the cutoff for heavy transit usage, you find that the majority of Toronto's urban area falls into that bracket - hence high ridership.

The island of Montreal is about 40/ha, and the City of Vancouver's 53.

You can't say it's 100% correlated, but the density is probably the biggest reason for the success in Canada.

So Halifax, NS (5/ha) and London ON (8.4/ha) have higher transit usage than LA in large part to their densities?

 

[kEiThZ]

It might have to do with other policies too. In Ottawa, the federal government (the largest employer in town), does not give out free parking to the vast, vast majority of employees (including very senior bureaucrats). This strongly encourages public transit use, since parking fees alone can cost 50% more than a monthly bus pass (if on an annual subscription). Some other towns may be like that. A good chunk of military personnel in Halifax will bike, walk or take transit to work too. And both London and Halifax have large proportions of university students who are far less likely to drive.