Quote:
Originally Posted by Metro-One
Sorry, but it is very east to argue that Vancouver has a far superior system than Portland. Yes, Portland may have more rail KMs than Van, but the system is substandard to Vancouver's in nearly every other way. One only has to look at the ridership per KM to get an idea.
Also San Fran and area are about 3 times the size of Metro-Van, so not an equal comparison at all. Even Montreal is nearly double the size of Metro-Van, and I will give you that Montreal does have a decent system for its size with a fantastic expansion planned. Most of the other cities mentioned are also far larger than Metro Vancouver and should have far larger systems, but the fact that it is hinted at that they are still comparable is pretty laughable for those larger cities.
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the trick is that vancouver's regional system is an unusual commuter/local hybrid with only a part of it actually in the city. these parts of the transit system are great, you can get from city hall to the waterfront very quickly, and from commercial drive to the waterfront quite quickly. but you only have these two lines, the system is mostly a commuter system that serves the outlying cities.
SF's system (i'm excluding BART except where it works in the city like skytrain does) is a local train network, as is portland's. on that straight city-to-city comparison between cities of similar population, like i said, those two lines in vancouver are great, and getting the third line down broadway will be enormously helpful, but the system up there doesn't yet have the coverage that a portland or SF does and it's certainly not "leagues beyond" them, even if the system up there is enviably 100% fully grade separated.
if you want to compare regional train systems, maybe portland could still work, denver too, and i'd still take those for sheer coverage.
denver rail (not including the new line and extensions currently under construction):
as an aside, i'm also highly envious of how easy the governance structure up there makes it to build rapid transit. here, it's a titanic effort the involves winning serious funding from the feds, along with a 2/3 voter approval for sales tax increase and all sorts of nickel-and-diming along the way. and then we have to contend with our famous NIMBYs and their lawsuits, and a super inefficient/costly procurement and construction process that makes overruns totally inevitable. up there, it seems a lot simpler.