Vancouver makes the "The 10 Global Cities With The Best Infrastructure"

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Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver will never have the ridership levels of Toronto or Montreal........never.

Vancouver, unlike those 2 cities or even Cal/Ed, has a VERY dispersed employment base.
Montreal has a lot of head offices downtown and 3 major universities and other colleges and gov't services. Tor is even more concentrated due to having gov't office downtown, a massive office base, and lots of schools.

Vancouver has a relatively little office space downtown, few government buildings {not even the City Hall is downtown}, neither is it's biggest hospital/healthcare centre, only one mid-sized college and no university except a couple very small campuses, and one of Vancouver's biggest employers, the ports, aren't downtown either.

Vancouver has a large downtown population but it still is a very decentralized city. Transit still gets the bulk of riders going to and from work and/or school and when those areas are dispersed it makes servicing them much more difficult.

Nobody said ridership in Vancouver would match Toronto or Montreal, at least in the foreseeable future.

While it's true Vancouver is more decentralized, jobs and high density housing are concentrated around Skytrain stations throughout Metro Vancouver, which is actually better city planning than any other city in Canada. This makes more efficient use of our infrastructure.

The Broadway line should generate a huge spike in ridership as this will connect our second largest employment district to almost all the municipalities in Metro Vancouver, via the Skytrain network.

If you look at ridership on a per capita basis, Vancouver needs to get about half the ridership of Toronto to surpass it. I think we'll easily do that.

[Vancity]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver will never have the ridership levels of Toronto or Montreal........never.

Vancouver, unlike those 2 cities or even Cal/Ed, has a VERY dispersed employment base.
Montreal has a lot of head offices downtown and 3 major universities and other colleges and gov't services. Tor is even more concentrated due to having gov't office downtown, a massive office base, and lots of schools.

Vancouver has a relatively little office space downtown, few government buildings {not even the City Hall is downtown}, neither is it's biggest hospital/healthcare centre, only one mid-sized college and no university except a couple very small campuses, and one of Vancouver's biggest employers, the ports, aren't downtown either.

Vancouver has a large downtown population but it still is a very decentralized city. Transit still gets the bulk of riders going to and from work and/or school and when those areas are dispersed it makes servicing them much more difficult.

I'd never say never. Maybe one day, Van will get there in terms of ridership. I think once the UBC line gets built, there'll be a huge, huge spike of riders. And it seems like the city is densifying the Broadway corrider as well, with new condos/apartments around the area, which will encourage people to take transit to get around better.

I also believe that over time, there will be a greater adoption for public transit, especially with our younger generation, as they continue to depend more heavily on transit. Transit's got to get better too - and this falls on Translink (they really should just focus on public transit infrastructure).