[OT] Public Transit

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 01:12:02PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> The subway system is a very imperfect hub-and-spoke system.  If you
> are traveling between two spokes, your transit time naturally
> doubles.  Two hours is better than I would have feared.
> 
> When the subway was built, many families had only one person who
> worked out of the house.  So there was a better chance that a home
> could be picked to reduce commute time.  And the city was a lot
> smaller: suburbs as we know them go going about the same time as the
> first subway line opened.

Unfortunately both the subway and go trains are run with the assumption
that people are going to work in downtown toronto and live in the suburbs.
That isn't true anymore, but the system still assumes it.  many of the
train lines still only bring people in to toronto in the morning and out
in the evening (and the trains run back empty bypassing all the stations
on the way back).

> Interesting.
> 
> Most people sure didn't drive to the City then.
> I think that they took a combination of the underground, buses, and trains.
> 
> The London Transit system is quite complicated (so is the road
> system!).  Interestingly, I find that the stops are a bit far apart.
> But it covers what I think of as London in a 2D fashion rather than
> our 2.5 * 1D subway system.
> 
> [I originally wrote 2d and 1d but I didn't want you to think I was
> talking about the fare.  London omnibus fare system in 1921 was 1d
> (i.e. one penny) per mile according to
> <http://www.archive.org/stream/electricrailwayj60mcgrrich/electricrailwayj60mcgrrich_djvu.txt>.]
> 
> Scaling transit is a tricky thing.  There seem to be phase changes in
> the process.  What works for one scale of city may not work for
> another: Kitchener, Ottawa, Toronto, New York.  History has a large
> effect too -- London's history is so different from Toronto's that
> lessons may not be very applicable.

Montreal certainly has a far better subway layout than toronto.  I think
their train service is actually better too, but I am not entirely sure
about that.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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