Quote:
Originally Posted by Doady
Transit ridership in Canada is not that different from Europe. Ridership in Canada is actually than in UK. Rennes is an exceptional case, not representative of the typical city of 700k. Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge is not a typical city of 500k either (e.g. London, Victoria, and Halifax all have higher transit ridership than Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge).
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Not sure about that tbh. If you look at other cities in France Bordeaux and Montpellier both have similar population to Rennes but went the tramway route and now each have 4 tram lines with 135 stations in Bordeaux and 80 in Montpellier. That’s not including the TER regionals for the regions of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie. Did I mention that all of the cities (including Rennes) are connected to the TGV high speed rail network as well?
Of course ridership numbers are quite a bit higher then their respective Canadian cities, and the only reason they are not blowing them out of the water as expected is because these cities are also much more walkable and bikeable then the majority of mid sized Canadian cities so they aren’t forced to take transit/car trips to grocery schools, run errands, hit up a bar, or even to go to school and work.
That’s just one country in Europe. I heard Germany has even better transit then France for mid-sized cities, and Utrecht in the Netherlands has BRT, light rail, and is part of the Randstad regional rail with decent headways. Then there’s countries like Switzerland which are operating on a completely different level with trains.
Let’s not get it twisted, besides maybe the UK (which makes up for its midsized cities having relatively poor transit by having London) Canada is far behind Europe in rail infrastructure.