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Pretty tired of "$REGION is too big and sparsely settled for transit" argument. British Columbia is over 2x the size of California, with about 1/10th the popul

Pretty tired of "$REGION is too big and sparsely settled for transit" argument. British Columbia is over 2x the size of California, with about 1/10th the population but the city of Vancouver, the only large urban area in the province, has consistently high transit usage and investment. In fact, projections for transit usage have understated the growth in transit usage.

adventured 9y ago
The lack of population density is a benefit in many regards. Texas is likely going to soon deploy high-speed rail at a cost not much higher than Western European standards or equivalent (adjusting for economic variance). There are two good reasons for that: Texas is far more friendly toward development, and there is a lot of sparsley settled, inexpensive land.
- api_or_ipa 9y ago
  The challenge of public transport is to get the timing exactly right. Ideally, you'd build transit where nobody currently lives but will move to immediately after construction ends. Build it too late and it's really hard to make the necessary infrastructure modifications. Build it too early and the line won't generate enough usage, political opposition will grow and other modes of transportation will replace it.
Rebelgecko 9y ago
I'm not very familiar with British Columbia, but does the whole province have public transportation on par with Vancouver? If not, that seems to support the comment about regional sparseness... The city I live in (Los Angeles) covers an area 10x bigger than Vancouver. Even when you compare the metro areas, Vancouver is ~4 times denser
- api_or_ipa 9y ago
  I brought up Vancouver's situation to compare it to New York because they both have large rural areas and comparable rates of urban and rural populations, about 50% of the population of NY and BC live in their largest cities. In addition, both NYC and Vancouver are highly urbanized, dense and developed cities. If it were truly the case that rural voters down play the importance of intercity public transit, then Vancouver should have the same dismal public transport priorities that plague NYC. In contrast, Vancouver has a long history of progressive public transit initiatives despite being attached to a very large and sparsely populated province which suggests that NYCs problem isn't the upstate voters.

adventured 9y ago

The lack of population density is a benefit in many regards. Texas is likely going to soon deploy high-speed rail at a cost not much higher than Western European standards or equivalent (adjusting for economic variance). There are two good reasons for that: Texas is far more friendly toward development, and there is a lot of sparsley settled, inexpensive land.

api_or_ipa 9y ago
The challenge of public transport is to get the timing exactly right. Ideally, you'd build transit where nobody currently lives but will move to immediately after construction ends. Build it too late and it's really hard to make the necessary infrastructure modifications. Build it too early and the line won't generate enough usage, political opposition will grow and other modes of transportation will replace it.

Rebelgecko 9y ago

I'm not very familiar with British Columbia, but does the whole province have public transportation on par with Vancouver? If not, that seems to support the comment about regional sparseness... The city I live in (Los Angeles) covers an area 10x bigger than Vancouver. Even when you compare the metro areas, Vancouver is ~4 times denser

api_or_ipa 9y ago
I brought up Vancouver's situation to compare it to New York because they both have large rural areas and comparable rates of urban and rural populations, about 50% of the population of NY and BC live in their largest cities. In addition, both NYC and Vancouver are highly urbanized, dense and developed cities. If it were truly the case that rural voters down play the importance of intercity public transit, then Vancouver should have the same dismal public transport priorities that plague NYC. In contrast, Vancouver has a long history of progressive public transit initiatives despite being attached to a very large and sparsely populated province which suggests that NYCs problem isn't the upstate voters.