How did Canada become more culturally public transit than the US?

[nec209]

In the US for the most part people drive than take a public city bus. I read some where was some thing happen in post WW2 where in Canada and the US gone down a different path.

I read there was lot and lots of poor people in Canada and really low income in post WW2 and lots and lots of European immigration in post WW2 unlike the US that had very strong middle class at the time and less immigration. So in Canada the city was more dense and public transit where in the US more highways and people driving and this shaped the culture of the country. So Canada more opt to take city bus than the US.

[Crawford]

I'd say the biggest factors are race/demographics, wealth and local control. Those factors best explain the divergence.

[nec209]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd say the biggest factors are race/demographics, wealth and local control. Those factors best explain the divergence.

Well I think now with lot of the Asians but post WW2 lots and lots of European immigration. May be the European immigration just thought nothing of it taking a city bus sense in Europe they use to taking city bus.

[chrisegeager]

Yeah, you're onto something there! In the US, it's pretty common for folks to hop in their cars rather than take the city bus. But why's that? Well, it's all about history and how things played out after World War II.

See, in Canada, there were loads of poor folks and low incomes post-WWII, plus a ton of European immigrants coming in. This led to denser cities and a bigger focus on public transit. Meanwhile, the US had a strong middle class and less immigration compare to Canada immigration, so they went all-in on highways and cars.

That's why you'll find more people in Canada hopping on the city bus, while in the US, it's all about hitting the road in your own wheels.

[jpdivola]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd say the biggest factors are race/demographics, wealth and local control. Those factors best explain the divergence.

I would also add:
1) a more efficient parliamentary system where it is easier for government to do things.
2) the population is concentrated in a couple major cities
3) there isn't a sunbelt so you didn't see the massive relocations away from pre-war cities to sprawly new cities.

[jbermingham123]

Racism is a very big factor

Obviously Canada has racism too, just like anywhere, but the US is more racist, and also had a massive number of southern black people move north into cities during the 40's manufacturing boom.

Racist white people used exclusionary neighborhoods and segregated schools to keep themselves isolated from this, but as soon as Brown v Board happened in 1954, the white flight began, and continued to accelerate well into the 60s. The fair housing act didnt get passed until 1968 (!!!), so for 14 years, white people were able to set up explicitly discriminatory suburbs.

Painful as it may be to think about this, we must remember that this wasnt a niche group of white people. or a niche group of suburbs.


The offshoring of manufacturing a couple decades later was just the cherry on top in the decimation of american cities.

[Nite]

The majority of Canadian live in large cities while that is not true for Americans, this means the needs of large cities in Canada get more government attention. Being openly anti cities or anti public transits not a winning formula to get elected in Canada.

[jmecklenborg]

Look at a map. Several giant highways were built directly through every U.S. city. Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver were spared a similar treatment.

[Xelebes]

Canada just didn't have the money for the crazy highway expansion in the 40s through to the 70s. The biggest projects that were given priority were the St. Lawrence Seaway while the Trans-Canada Highway project was always a patchjob due to jurisdiction rules (highways are provincial jurisdiction, coastal waters and canals are federal jurisdiction.) There were some ambitious plans that were drawn to build out Canadian cities like American cities, but the funding wasn't there and only parts of those plans were built out.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Nite

The majority of Canadian live in large cities while that is not true for Americans, this means the needs of large cities in Canada get more government attention. Being openly anti cities or anti public transits not a winning formula to get elected in Canada.

Yeah, it's more this than anything else.

1/3 of the Canadian population reside in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Let's pretend 1/3 of the US population lived in New York, DC, and Chicago.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Yeah, it's more this than anything else.

1/3 of the Canadian population reside in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Let's pretend 1/3 of the US population lived in New York, DC, and Chicago.

The U.S.'s population is more urbanized than Canada's. Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas, while only 73% of Canadians do.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

You forgot to put quotation marks around the word "urban".

Most Americans live in sprawl.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

You forgot to put quotation marks around the word "urban".

Most Americans live in autocentric sprawl.

[iheartthed]

How did Canada become more culturally public transit than the US?

For the same reason that America doesn't have a universal healthcare guarantee: policy failure. It ultimately boils down to policy failures by the government(s), and adequately addressing the gaps in policy often get derailed by culture wars (and people with special interests fanning the flames of the culture wars).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

You forgot to put quotation marks around the word "urban".

Most Americans live in autocentric sprawl.

Most Canadians do too if we're being honest.

[202_Cyclist]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'd say the biggest factors are race/demographics, wealth and local control. Those factors best explain the divergence.

Unfortunately, I think this is big part of this. In the post-WWII era, public transit in the United States became intertwined with race. The book, "The Lost Subways of North America," by Jake Berman, does an excellent job of describing this history. City after city in the United States either closed their rail transit systems or made suboptimal investments because white flight and racist sentiment.

I also don't think Canada had anything like the movement from the industrial north and Northeastern cities that were built around transit to the low-density Sunbelt sprawl in the decades following World War II.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Most Canadians do too if we're being honest.

True.

I'm totally with you that's it's policy/culture, not the sizes of our cities.

"Why should MY tax dollars fund something that I'LL never use?"

[bartolo]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The U.S.'s population is more urbanized than Canada's. Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas, while only 73% of Canadians do.

73% of Canadians live in large urban centres; population over 100 000.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...20209b-eng.htm

82.2% of Canadians live in population centres.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...g-a003-eng.htm

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

Painful as it may be to think about this, we must remember that this wasnt a niche group of white people. or a niche group of suburbs.

An uncomfortable truth that many don't like to acknowledge.

As a generic white-ethnic mutt with deep Chicago roots, when I was born (in the burbs) in '76, I still had plenty of blood relatives living on the Southside (my paternal lineage is mostly Southside Irish going back to the 19th century).

By 2000 there were zero, that I knew of*.

To hear some people tell it, the reason why legacy central cities lost anywhere from 60 - 95% of their white populations in the latter half of the 20th century had to do with everything EXCEPT race.





(*) It's possible there's some 2nd cousin thrice removed still hanging on in Beverly or something, but the connection has been lost to time.

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

The offshoring of manufacturing a couple decades later was just the cherry on top in the decimation of american cities.

Don't forget about the second part of the deindustrialization 1-2 punch: automation.

A lot of shit is still made in America's industrial heartland, it's just that most of it no longer requires anywhere close to the same level of human labor as it once did decades ago.

[FromSD]

American federal, state and local authorities do everything they can to accommodate automobile use: low gas taxes, abundant parking, massive road infrastructure even in the largest cities. This is much less true in Canada, where urban freeways in particular, are much less common.

There was extensive disinvestment in U.S. public transit after World War II, but even after that changed in the 1970s, public transit in most places was relegated to those who couldn't drive or couldn't afford to drive. Americans think that public transit is for poor people, and because of stubborn class and racial divisions, that limits its appeal to "choice" riders further up the economic scale.

Compare Seattle to LA, for example. Seattle voters turned down the chance to build a subway system in the '70s when the federal government offered them a big chunk of the required money. On the other hand, Seattle had always had a robust bus system, and when the voters finally approved a tax increase to pay for a light rail system, the resulting system was actually quite successful by U.S. standards. The thing about Seattle though--at least until the last 30 years ago or so--was that it was a relatively racially homogenous metro with a large intact middle class. The bus system, and later the rail system, weren't just for poor people.

LA, on the other hand, LA had a huge bus system with high ridership, but that ridership was mostly people who couldn't afford car ownership. Beginning in the 1980s, voters passed a series of sales tax increases to pay for transit and road improvements. Despite the development of what now amounts to a fairly extensive subway and rail system, ridership remains anemic and has actually come down a bit in the last 10 years. Choice riders continue to prove elusive. As the LA economy started to recover following the Great Recession, some transit users left the system once they obtained the means to own and operate cars. The pandemic made this problem worse as reports of homelessness and crime on trains and buses became more common. Wealth inequality and class divisions, in part overlapping with racial divisions, continue to be very prevalent in LA, and that has limited the appeal of public transit there.