To Understand Transit, You Need to Go Car-Free
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 3 авг 2024
- Here at RMTransit, we are firm believers that you need to have gone car-free and depend on transit sometime in your life in order to really understand how transit works and what is really important when it comes to transit. Let us convince you why.
As always, leave a comment down below if you have ideas for our future videos. Like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon so you won't miss my next video!
=ATTRIBUTION=
Epidemic Sound (Affiliate Link): www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
Nexa from Fontfabric.com
=PATREON & RUclips MEMBERSHIPS=
If you'd like to help me make more videos & get exclusive behind the scenes access and early video releases, consider supporting my Patreon or right here on RUclips! Every dollar goes towards helping my channel grow & reach more people.
Patreon: / rmtransit
RUclips Memberships: / @rmtransit
=COMMUNITY DISCORD SERVER=
Discord Server: / discord
(Not officially affiliated with the channel)
=MY SOCIAL MEDIA=
Twitter: / rm_transit
Instagram: / rm_transit
Website: reecemartin.ca
Substack: reecemartin.substack.com
=ABOUT ME=
Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
I remember when Karen Stintz was TTC Chair and drove a car into work while Andy Byford never did (I think he doesn't even know how to drive iirc). That's why he was so obsessed with getting "the basics right"; those small "quality of life" issues you referred to.
Andy Byford always preferred to take the "company car" as he called it. Getting the basics right is what matters to the riders.
Are you seriously telling me that the head of a transit company took a car to work and people didn't protest at the hypocrisy?
@@mdhazeldine She even drove to the motel she was supposed to stay at when she was filming her "Undercover Boss Canada" episode working undercover at the TTC iirc lol
@@mdhazeldine its too normal
absolute BS how new york treated Andy Byford
I think it also distortes one's expectations. I've lived in London, Singapore and Tokyo and ended up not getting my drivers license until I graduated from uni. The reasoning was in these cities driving cars is a more cumbersome experience than just taking public transit, especially when as you said you can use ride hailing apps for short hops when needed.
What happened though was I was expecting public transport to be readily available wherever I went and found it very unpleasant to go to cities such as LA where not having a car just makes life so much harder (not impossible, but way harder than just having one).
Isnt insurance cheaper if u get it earlier
@@grahamturner2640 No , I meant that insurance is cheaper if you have a longer driving history
Your mini-fridge story reminds me of dragging multiple large and bulky items from Ikea in North York to Bathurst & Queen during afternoon rush hour. It involved a shuttle bus, 3 subways and a streetcar! Fun times......
I've seen people haul bedside tables, chests and other bulky stuff on buses in Vancouver. It's sometimes possible but definitely not easy. I think these scenarios show where it's helpful to have delivery services (or carshare or taxis).
one time i saw a guy put three motorcycles on the thing in front of the bus and one fell off haha
Moved out of my UBC Dorm over 4 trips with three giant IKEA bags, so thankful it was only two bus trips out!
I appreciate this point of view. Even more radical than your point of view is the channel “not just bikes”. Listening to him talk about how normal it is to ride a bike to IKEA for large-item shopping is hard to fathom but looks so normal for the Netherlands.
There’s too much money to be made selling cars for governments in North America to properly address improving transit with equity. Electronic personal vehicles are not the solution to the climate crisis.
I can't imagine it would be feasible without extensive use of home delivery. I have an IKEA computer desk that probably weighs nearly as much as I do (some of their items are _really_ heavy!) Even with an electric assist cargo bike and flat terrain (round here it's certainly far from flat), I don't think I could get it home, even though it's only 15km each way. I could probably _just_ about manage a corner table and a filing cabinet, maybe a nice lamp, but anything more than that, no way.
@@Croz89 At the same time, it's not like you're gonna buy this kind of item every other week. In a lot of cases, you might be buying an item big enough that it won't even fit in your car.
@@alexseguin5245 That's where the roof rack can come in!
Yep. Day-to-day trips could be done with a bike + basket or transit + other active transit; Car share in the rare cases when you need a larger vehicle, but shouldn't be the standard.
I agree completely about "quality of life" aspects being important. To get maximum support from government, transit needs buy-in from as broad a spectrum of people as possible. Some people simply won't ride transit if the stations are too dingy, vehicles are not pleasant to ride in, or service is unreliable.
Something I don't think I've seen you mention in your videos is car-sharing services. For an annual membership, you can rent a car or small truck by the hour or the day with no paperwork. This can really take the edge off of using transit. Have a bunch of errands you need to do all over the city? Rent a car for a couple hours. Have a fridge you need to move? Rent a van for an hour. I would even go so far as to say when looking for an apartment consider how close the nearest the car-share vehicles are to where you plan to live.
Assuming the range of vehicles is good then you'll have the right one for the job. A pickup for heavy stuff like fridges and an EV for lots of distant point to point sorta trips. I'd argue car-sharing is better than own a car cause of the versatility of it compared to ownership.
Well, renting a car is kinda expensive though, at least from my experience.
Most car rentals are by day. Which is perfect for a road trip for a couple of days if you don't own a car or if you arrived in a new area by non-car transportation. (Planes, intercity trains or even intercity coach buses fits this description). However in the case you're talking about, those 'ppl' who do that would just have to pay a full day's cost (which is at least $50, if not much more) to do all those errands. I'm not familiar with carshare rates that're hourly or even less. But still I believe they're A LOT MORE expensive than riding transit no? So yeah I don't think people can live on car sharing & car rental. If people have to rent a car or go for a carshare on a daily basis usually it's even less costly to own a car. Which means with enough transit coverage it wouldn't be a choice of even the majority of the ppl.
@@davidfreeman3083 They're not for daily use. If transit covers most day to day transportation, you'll usually need a vehicle extremely rarely
Yeah, good car share services are incredibly important to widen your possible audience for being car free and therefore being much more inclined to not drive. If you’re used to always having access to a car, giving that up requires a leap of faith and car sharing can ease the worries.
I wouldn’t have lived car free for four years if the excellent car sharing service hadn’t existed. I calculated back then, I could rent a car about two days a month and would be at about the same as taxes, inspection and insurance was for my own one. In practice I already drove less then that and since driving was now pay per use, I realized paying 2-3 times as much as the train wasn’t worth saving like 10 minutes to me.
I often only used a car every 2 or 3 months, but just knowing I could have one whenever I needed it, was enough to not need to own one.
A key, IMO, is that one has good transit access to work. Living without a car in a city with reasonably good public transit (NYC, Montreal, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, the Bay Area, Calgary, Vancouver, and LA is fairly easy if one searches for housing that is reasonably close to a rail transit line that accesses concentrations of employment. Otherwise, it is a flight of fancy.
It has to be noted how exceptional North America is in this regard, though. "Reasonably good public transit" is the norm pretty much everywhere in the rest of the world. The quality varies a lot, of course, but in most of the world the use of private vehicles is the exception, not the norm.
I felt the carrying things when moving my suitcase around from a temp place to an apartment in Paris. The metro is just an incredibly inaccessible service. Several flights of stairs often going up and then back down in a labyrinth of tunnels. Escalators that take you to the other platform but not yours as if to mock you. And I had to do two trips of this. Couldn't afford a taxi at the time.
I guess a reminder that transit advocacy isn't exactly about getting rid of every single car, I stance I find only rarely, but rather about designing cities where the car is not the priority. It'll be maybe once every year I have to carry heavy things around. For some it might be more. I think a car is fine for that.
I went car-free when I studied abroad in Edinburgh between 2019 and 2020, and I relied solely on my feet, the bus, and U.K's train network to get around. I loved it, and I still didn't use transit enough! Even though I used trains and buses at home in the states before, I think I'm going to go even more out of my way to use them than before, especially now that I am actually driving on the roads.
Totally agree Reese. A transit system is like a chain, only as strong as it's weakest link.
I wish I can go car-free.
Where I live in the USA, there is no fixed route public transit at all. I have to drive everywhere.
I'm moving to a city for school next month, but public transit is still not great there either.
And, I'm so accustomed to driving as well, so it would be hard for me to go car-free.
In a city, especially a small one, you can usually get away with a "micromobility" vehicle like an e-scooter. I grew up in rural Russia and even there scooters are all the rage now (driving is very expensive and buses are too old). Now I live in a big city but I also never drive and barely even take the subway, what with my bikes, scooters, boards and roller skates
@@carbrained that's cool. I am going to have my car on campus in case I have to go home.
I might get a bike or something.
Or my personal favorite, the bus driver just blows past you for the lulz. It’s basically impossible to live without a car where I live…
:'(
I’ve made it a point to always flag down the bus, even though it’s generally not required. Less buses blow past this way.
@@middletransport There certainly are bus drivers who are still living in the 1930s, when it was always the job of the intending traveller to make sure they did everything absolutely correctly, and the driver/conductor was able to reject you if you got a single bit wrong.
I had that happen to us on an hourly route. My kids were having troubles with their shoes so I sent one ahead to tell the bus driver to wait (we still had 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave)
By the time we dealt with the shoe meltdown the bus driver took off 1 minute early and left me, my significant other, a 3 year old and 2 11 year olds behind.
We needed up calling for someone to pick us up
I live car free in Minneapolis. The transit system here is quite good if you live in the city limits but the farther out you go options become scarce. Dispite the system not being as extensive as other cities, I find it easy to get around here without a car. I know people at work who live in the suburbs and take commuter buses. What I noticed is that people who hate on public transit are people who have never used it.
Yes I don't have a car and have not driven anything since 2014. I have managed to explore large parts of Australia using public transport only. But there is a lot of walking required too. Especially in rural areas where towns often have no local transport system.
My whole family went car free 5 years and counting. And we live in TO.
It’s really easy, unless you have to travel to Etobicoke. That is literally the only reason my family uses our car.
It’s all about adjusting one’s habits. I know people who live at Yonge and St Clair (literally the most transit friendly area) but still drive to downtown daily for work with their single occupancy SUVs, and then they find all sorts of excuses on why transit sucks in Toronto. It’s like the Karens who find every possible excuse not to wear a mask at their local grocery store.
I've been car free for 2 years in Edmonton. It's possible. So much money saved!
@@guldukat2453 Yeah, that’s pretty inexcusable. Also just pathetic, I feel bad for them, wasting their money on a depreciating, money-stealing asset.
I've lived with both car ownership and being car-free. A big difference between the 2. Less expense and worry depending on transit. With apps that help you plan your trips and decide when you need to leave your home for the day, then forecast when that second bus is coming, life just got quite a bit easier.
Couldn't agree more. Every word is correct. I live in Calgary and don't own a car, and have had many experiences like your Walmart one. Car2Go and Communauto have made things better, but really getting the basics right on transit is probably the key to getting people to truly embrace living without a car, and all of the financial, environmental and lifestyle benefits that can provide.
This video is on the money, I've been living car free in rural Australia for about 8 months now and its completely changed my perspective. Small things like driver interchanges and driver breaks not being synchronized on long journeys (meaning you have to wait out the break), poor interstate links and crazy milk runs mean 4 hour drives are 12 hour bus trips with 3 changes and hours waiting in tiny towns in the middle of the night, its maddening. I've come to hate the obsession with sydney-melbourne high speed rail when conventional rail and buses that don't suck would improve many more lives, and prevent far more emissions, for a fraction of the price.
I always have problems or little discussions with my family every time i talk with them about Transportation and why it's important to do an improvement, because all of them have a Car and they use them every time to every task and trip they need to do :T and every time i go with some of them, they get really angry or uncomfortable about the BRT, or the Bus Lines or even the Bike Lanes.
lel, reminds me of my extended family which owns 5 cars and 3 drivers. Once my aunt asked uncomfortably why the city built an Elevated BRT line that cars cannot use
It's much more difficult to create a transit-friendly community out of a place that was not designed for it. In other parts of the world, cities are built to be transit-orientated and it's actually a hassle to drive (nowhere to park it, chaotic traffic conditions).
My wife and I lived in Stockholm for over 7 years and during that time, we had no access to a car at all as they did not recognise my New Zealand drivers licence. We actually survived perfectly well without a car, though there were times we would have liked to have a car from time to time - particularly for exploring outside the city. We used local transport networks across the country as well, and almost universally they were pretty good relative to the population.
We now live in Glasgow in the UK, and we don't use public transport at all. The ticketing system does not work and it is relatively expensive. We now use a car for nearly everything. I would say that when we first moved here and lived close to a train station I did use the train for commuting, but the problem is that the weather in Glasgow really is not conducive to comfort (it is cold and rainy a lot).
I use a bus on the daily and it is a generally good one, along with having a generally great app for it to see what lines to use, along with the whole experience being mostly great. There are obviously occasional problems, like buses being late or the app being wonky, but most often it runs about perfectly, and the buses are great too (I've noticed my city seems to have gotten new buses recently too which are so much better).
Also there definitely are several qol things that can make or break the enjoyability of a trip. For me the most noticeable one is the amount and placement of stop buttons on a bus. It's very annoying when a bus doesn't have sufficient amount of stop buttons, forcing you to reach to the other side of the central walking aisle to press a button instead of having one next to you.
This explains why I love using the public transit when traveling and I basically just use trains and walk long distances from the station but I've never been on the bus in my own city (Winnipeg) because they always take at least 2-3 times longer than a car. In fact the bus network here is slower than biking around the city so I end up only driving my car when it's a trip further than 10 km or I need to transport large items. I'm so glad I found a house and job in a walkable neighborhood so I can avoid both buses and driving most of the time.
Agreed. Better frequency is key. People are far more likely to use a route that comes every 10-15 min than one every 20-30 min.
And we should push for basic bus shelters at all stops. It shows a level of respect and concern for riders and makes the system more comfortable and appealing. It's ridiculous that even some stops outside rail stations do not have shelters (Yaletown-Roundhouse, I'm looking at you).
I definitely feel that the people who look after bus routes and bus stops here definitely don't take buses. Most shelters seats here in Melbourne still get wet in the rain and most bus stops are just a pole in the ground. Oh and we're definitely overdue for a bus routes review.
Of course "the people who look after bus routes and bus stops here definitely don't take buses". Buses are for people that can't afford cars. Not only money to buy car here for "afford", but also parking/a house with garage, etc.
@@onetwothreeabc That comment doesn't make any sense. I've got two cars at home and I take the bus to the train station.
Buses also serve some of the more high income suburbs here.
@@fauzirahman3285 How much would you pay for parking at your work place? Any tolls on the road? How much is your local gas price?
In contrary, how much is the fare for the bus and train?
@@onetwothreeabc It takes about the same time for me to drive as it is for me to take public transport which is why I take the bus+ train so I don't have to bother to look for a parking spot plus I can read a book or watch something on my phone.
Also parking at work is free but there's not enough parking. There are two ways to drive to work, one with road toll, about $8 one way, but the slightly longer way is free, but often congested, and about 30+ kilometre one way. Fuel is about $1.50 - $1.90 per litre depending on price fluctuations.
My day's fare is about $9 per day but it's cheaper if I take a monthly or yearly season pass.
@@fauzirahman3285 So you need about $10 of gas and $16 of toll fee everyday to drive compared to $9 per day or less to take the public transportation.
How about my proposal: change the fare of your local public transportation to $ 26 per day (same as what you would pay for a premium driving), and the bus stops all have rain shelter installed, and add new bus routes?
You're so right! In my opinion, the biggest single improvement to transit (aside from legislating to make senior staff of transit operators use their own transit regularly) would be to improve connections. Just think how the total transit experience would be transformed (to borrow your key-words) if you knew that you could get anywhere on the network with no hassle changing from bus to train etc., even with heavy luggage. And how many extra transit journeys and regular users that would generate.
It's funny, I didn't appreciate this nearly as much when I was living in Toronto as I do living in Hamilton. It's a double whammy really: the buses are less frequent (through still miles ahead of many neighbouring cities), and owing to former city boundaries and the resulting property taxes, many routes arbitrarily end or reduce service at these boundaries. Add to that the difficulty going from the Mountain down to downtown, the infrequent GO train service to Hamilton proper, it's no wonder I have taken the bus only a handful of times here, whereas I used to ride the TTC daily (though even that was supplemented by Uber).
Case study 1: Time from boarding the bus near Meadowlands to Aldershot GO? 60 minutes, 1 transfer. Time by car? 15 minutes.
Case study 2: Time by bus from the West Mountain to Meadowlands Indigo? 30-40 minutes, and either 2 transfers, or 1 bus and walking for 10-15 minutes on each end. Driving? 7 minutes.
To add to this: it takes me about the same time on transit commuting from Aldershot GO to northeastern Oakville as it did from Aldershot GO to Sherway Gardens. This is entirely as a result of poor transit connectivity at the last mile (TTC is mostly frequent, Oakville Transit is not and prioritizes connectivity with peak-direction travel, so arriving at and departing from Oakville GO before the next GO train, even if it means missing passengers from that train wanting to go into Oakville.
Finally just got around to watching this one, and so much I can say about it too. I'll just say that I might be a very interesting case study, as for several years in the late 2010s while doing an online planning program I lived in the suburbs without a car, but drove a school bus for work. I got a taste of the freedom of movement that car ownership provides, but ultimately was reliant on transit for personal longer trips.
I suppose that the conclusion is that we need to make ALL transit, or at least as much as possible, as enticing as good rail and rapid services so that people who choose or have to use transit exclusively aren't disadvantaged unless their lives surround a select key corridors.
I've been transit-only in the Boston area for four years now, though I will occasionally use a taxi if I have to make an early morning trip, for example to the airport. I would take the T, but it doesn't start until 5AM, which is too late to leave for a 7AM flight.
I have sometimes taken the last train and stayed at the airport overnight for an early morning flight xD (AMS Schiphol Airport)
@@LaPingvino Lol
@@LaPingvino Lol I planned to do this once for a work trip, but they said "just get a taxi in the morning". Well if work wanted to pay £120 for a Taxi vs the £20 train ride +£40 hotel, that's fine by me lol
I lived car free when I lived in Hong Kong, but it is impossible to do in Canada, if you want to do the things that you do in Canada.
I have also lived in downtown Ottawa where you can walk so many places, but you still need a car, but one instead of 2.
Without a car you can't visit friends and relatives in the suburbs, and other cities, shop for weekly groceries, go to Canadian Tire, etc, go to places in the country.
Go transit and the ttc can take me anywhere I need but not everywhere so I'm not complaining
i see transit as a hobby for me and very important I had these experiences it doesn't make it harder for me
These are good points Reece. I remember I took a summer course deep in Scarborough in the '80s and at the time the York Mills Bus (that ran eastbound along Ellesmere was every ONE HOUR! If you missed it you were screwed! So that meant getting there early, ran or shine.
I have not had a car in 25 years and love it!
I completely agree with this. I don’t even think you need to never step foot into a car ever to have this perspective change. Just not having a car as a „free“ and convenient option is a big change. Only having access to a car sharing service or taxis is already enough for a big change, since it makes the cost of driving hurt a lot more. Driving is going to be the most expensive option per single trip, so you’ll only use it, if there is a reason.
I've become a lot more transit and bike oriented recently, but we still have two cars. I live in the Netherlands, my wife works somewhere else in the Netherlands and has to start work early, and my parents live in Germany. My wife literally can't get to work on time by transit. And even though the train network is good in the Netherlands, it's still a pain to go between two small towns by transit, or to go across the border. That trip to my parents is 45 minutes by car, but takes 4 transfers and well over 2 hours, along with a very low frequency.
This made me appreciate just how invisible these gaps are unless you don't have a car. I wouldn't even have considered transit an option on this trip, but now that I consider it, i agree that it's horrible.
I've been car free my whole life because I was born and raised in NYC and having a car is so expensive and impractical here. However, I was always jealous of my friends with cars because they could do so much more than me. I can't even leave the city unless I'm going to somewhere with an LIRR or Metro North stop, which are not as common as I'd hope. They could shop at IKEA and bring large items home, they can go to the Jersey shore, they can reach parts of the city that are transit deserts. It's very common to not own a car in the city, but I'm going to college upstate this year and I can't even begin to learn to drive because I don't have a car to practice on!
Its a big cycle. Im from the UK, and we have really weird laws that you can't learn to drive in an automatic, you have to learn to drive in a manual (if you don't you have a restricted licence). problem is Only 1 person in my family had a car, and it was an automatic. EVERYONE I knew who learned to drive had 30+ hours experience with family, I didn't. and at £35 an hour for driver training, I was throwing over £1000 at the wall just to get to the absolute basic minimum level of understanding how to drive.
Spent nearly £2,500 trying to learn to drive, and never succeeded.
Car share is occasionally needed supplement to living without owned car in centrish Seattle
I lived in Tokyo for a couple of years, working for a car company (so I would have been able to have a car for a modest cost), and after a few weeks there I decided I was better off using subways and the regional rail lines (see the video on Tokyo's rail network), because they were just so damned convenient, so I was completely car-free during that time. One, it was wonderful not having the expense and hassle of having a car, and two, I really did learn what matters in transit. E;g;, I learned that, if the Hibiya Line train from my office seems to be delayed, it probably means that it has been scooping up every available passenger at every stop and will be packed when it gets to me, while the next one probably will be comparatively empty and a much more comfortable ride. I also learned that basic amenities are important, like air conditioning at the station so one can cool off in the Tokyo summer after walking to the station.
This is a very important point I think. Similar to citynerd talking about living in vegas car-free. I've had access to a car since I learned to drive at 16, but I definitely get how simply not having access to one just changes the paradigm so radically. I have no idea how this would work legally but it does make sense that the ones planning our public transit systems should also be the ones using them as their primary form of transportation.
Pre Covid, I'd always (with a few exceptions) use either the train or bus to travel whether for leisure or essential. During Covid I used my car as I was initially a bit worried on going on public transport due to potential spread of the virus. But now I'm more confident and I'm beginning a slow return to public transport, just like pre covid
Not just the virus but also crime (At least in U.S. Cities)
@@artificial_S I don't live in the USA. I live in the UK, and we have in general very low crime rates here.
As someone who has lived both with and without a car at various points in my life, I 200% agree with this! The difference is huge.
Yup. Went car-free for six years. Still in that time period I’d have to rent a car off my friend (who had his job only a few blocks away so didn’t need it during the week) ... which helped me for the 5-10 x / month I had gigs further flung around the metro region where taking transit wasn’t practical / unavailable.
for me when I lived without a car for about a year, the most important thing about transit is frequency
Great video!
In another RM vid, he says something like “if you need to consult a bus schedule to make transit work, you’ve already lost one of the biggest battles”. Bus frequency needs to be good enough that you simple arrive at the stop.
What to do i just love cars !! Currently in love with my mustang shelby 😍
If you like cars drive cars we don't care except the planet ofc but atleast try going car free if you have the option! in europe we still have some problems with transit and that is budget airlines
I agree 100% of everything you said. I can't aford a car in Toronto, so I have to TTC it everywhere I go.
Yes yes yes to all of this
I have a car, but I use local transport system and bicycle for commuting. Car is used to go in vacations or week-ends when I need to visit a place with no train station.
This is a great take. For a long time I had the view that Translink was a far superior system to the TTC, but then I realized this perception was, in part, due to the fact that when I'm in Vancouver, I'm a sometimes-transit-user, whereas in Toronto, I'm always living car-free. I still love Translink, but after realizing how my different experiences partly resulted from different use-cases, I'm a lot more forgiving of things about the TTC that I find terribly annoying.
I've lived in both circumstances. I've lived in places that don't have great transit and have relied on cars. On the other hand, I've been living in Toronto on and off for the part of 12 years and I rarely need to use a car, unless I need to travel outside of the city.
Yes I was without a car while living in Toronto I've lived across the street from Wilson sub and at Weston and Wilson, my experience with living within walking distance to a subway is awesome but having to finally get to your stop just to speed walk to the bus area is a drag
Using this POV in Jakarta had a crazy effect on me, everything is far apart and i mostly judge building and shopping malls based on Pedestrian accessibility
Some of our local transit/buses in Manchester are just super bad. There's nothing like the experience of getting off a two/three hour train journey and having Google maps tell you the fastest way home is just to walk thirty minutes with your cases in the dark...
In Nottingham, where I now live near a tram stop, I don't even have to check Google. I just walk up and know there will be a tram in the next five or so minutes, even late into the evening.
I'd rather have corridors served with a dense service, than the current pattern of UK bus service, which is a lot of buses using entirely different ways to get to the same destination. It means that you either run to one street and maybe catch a bus in two minutes and miss it, or walk to the other, but the next bus is going to be in 15 minutes...
It's true if you're not near a train or tram stop bus service can be pretty bad.
@@Croz89 The trams are pretty good. They are a bit over-capacity and slow in parts *eccles line*, but they are consistent, frequent, easy to use and pretty reliable. Plus, the ticketing system makes a lot of sense.
Most of the time they provide a really solid and relatively fast journey.
@@joshlikescola I live near Manchester but don't really use the Metrolink (I use heavy rail). My personal take is, it's a fine system for a city 2/3 the size of Manchester. Really a city this size should have a light metro at a minimum, or should have a system closer to what you have in cities like Stuttgart, where most of the city center track is underground (and some elsewhere) and the rest is 90% separated from traffic. The Metrolink works best on the old railway alignments, but the street running sections are often agonisingly slow with trams crawling around sharp corners. The vehicles are also too small when not coupled together, and could do with an extra set of doors.
I found that there were two types of non-transit users in my hometown (Kelowna, BC): the ones who didn’t know or barely knew that transit existed when I brought it up, and the ones who figure that it covers the needs of commuters so it’s probably fine.
(Note: it somewhat covers the needs of some commuters but there are so many places you simply can’t go and others that turn a 15 minute drive into a 90 minute Odyssey.)
I have been riding or just walking in Toronto because my grandma lives in Toronto and she does not have a car so I take walks and transit.
I did 5 months without a car in 1995 when I was in University. I lived on the outskirts of Dartmouth and went to school at Dalhousie. It was torture. My 20-30 minute commute turned in to an hour. The latest I could leave in the evening was around 9:30 and that involved a sub-optimal bus and a 25 minute walk through through poorly lit paths - something that only a guy could feel safe doing. My daughter is currently car-less in Halifax, but she lives in a central location on a main bus artery.
There were times when I would commute to work in winter (when i lived at home) where I would leave when it was dark, and I would get home when it was dark. My parents had programmed the heating to come on when they would get up in the morning, which was about half an hour after I left. I ended up becoming good friends with a few people along the way, like someone who was a sanitation worker at the local supermarket, as he was the first person there in the morning to tidy up and unlock
I’m car free but I actually use a bike as my primary way of getting around because sadly the transit is quite slow, usually slower then biking because of wait times mostly.
I depend on TTC when I move to Toronto this September
A lot of times the people who complain about transit being bad forget that it is bad because the people in charge before don't take transit and don't realize the gaps in the experience that make transit better. It's not even really about having more funding for transit, but rather better design and better planning. I've used transit for practically all my life nearly exclusively, and only recently had easy access to a car... And I loathe people who tell me why I've never started driving sooner and how transit hasn't driven me insane, yet.
These very same people don't support or are usually indifferent about transit issues, which makes creating policies, planning, and improving transit all much more difficult.
I didn’t have my drivers license until I was 27. So until then I was using buses, trains, walking or bike. And grew up in Nassau County, NY. Which to this day is hostel to public transport. Too many rush hour only runs, a small handful of 24 hour buses. And several areas in Nassau County, not covered by any bus.
Yeah that is so weird to me as a European who lived in New York a number of years ago. Long Island has a halfway decent rail network (but it could definitely use a lot of improvement), but instead of using the stations as transit hubs for good connecting service throughout the island, they just build a bunch of parking lots and call it a day. There's so much potential when comparing to integrated suburban transit networks in other parts of the world.
Ironic how the NICE bus isn’t really that nice at all
@@middletransport NICE Bus has been an absolute disaster. The MTA needs to come back.
Was that Wal Mart at Dufferin Mall? That mini fridge story is relatable because once I bought a box of cat litter from there and the trip back to the station was grueling
Yeep
The other really important feature is whether transit can be tracked in real time to plan routes. In Canada, so few transit systems work through apps like Google Maps.
I don't agree! Almost every city works with Google Maps!
@@RMTransit Really?!? I can't plan anything from Peterborough.
I lived in Chicago and ditched my car when I moved there. It was incredibly convenient when I took the red line. But travelling anywhere not along the red line could be quite cumbersome.
The buses aren't all that great because of bunching and getting stuck in traffic. Plus, a lot of buses just go up and down a single street, so you would often have to transfer.
I was able to sell my car a few years back. But transit in that city was so bad we uses my wife's car for a non work trips. (Or my truck, but that only gets used a few times a year when a truck is required for the task)
i came to the US in 2013, and lived in suburban New Jersey then. i didnt know how to drive, and Uber/Lyft hadnt come to NJ yet. Just the basic act of going to the supermarket for buying food was a major stress factor; because the only supermarket which was on the bus line was 4½ miles (or 7, sometimes the bus would take a different, longer route) away; there was a larger, better one 2 miles away in a different direction, but on the other side of a highway. Since the bus came only once every hour, i had to plan my grocery-shopping day around that; and couldn't buy more than what i could carry in my two hands. Living in this situation for 6 months really kicked my depression and thoughts of suicide into high gear, shattering all the great ideas i had about the US. And this was after being lucky to get a room on a main road, 1km from the railway station and maybe 400m either side to 2 bus stops...
Of all the US states, the transit situation in New Jersey confounds me the most. It is even more densely populated than The Netherlands, and approximately as flat. It has the potential to be extremely transit-friendly, but sticks to the North American suburban pattern instead. It's a little sad to see.
@@Codraroll 🙁
In York region, transit frequency is lot more important than the distance.
Going to a closer place sometimes take lot longer than going to a farther place
Oslo video would be fantastic
Did it until i was 28. It sucks even in a big city like Toronto in those weird 5% situations
My house has never bean able to drive and most people I know can't yet, we all pretty young tho. The ones who can are the ones who live in Village where the busses are hourly at best and take 2 to get to the city.
My area only has Bus and Trains for the whole country. They Mayor uses transit for her commute so knows how crap it is. We got upgrade plans and funding for it but if we'll get new trams and train lines is anyone's guess.
Hoping we do, my area would be great with a train link but they haven't given us it
Also consider mechanical issues with buses or trains
Doing it for a year now
Cities in North America usually have the "last mile" problem. There seems to be many areas that do not have connections from the station to the downtown area. Try checking out how East and Southeast Asian cities solve that problem, usually via tricycles and motor taxis.
Buses!
In Montreal the new REM train will actually ADD the last mile to commuters. This is how you can tell that the person designing it is not a transit user
Jakarta is trying their best doing this, 2 years ago the city managed to integrate the minivan system into a common ticketing scheme where transfers from BRT would be charged less within 3 hours
17 years
The issue is that places with a convenient access to transit system tend to have a high housing cost
Pet peeve about what they are doing on lrt and brt stops...Why not more wind protection, which is also rain protection when windy and raining
I’ll one up your mini fridge story and raise you an IKEA shopping spree of two shelves and a night stand all being done at the Ottawa IKEA with 4 of my friends all on transit. And this is before the LRT system was in place (not that it would have helped since IKEA is out in the middle of nowhere accessible only by car or one bus & where I was living I had to transfer to two different buses). Nobody knows transit hardships until they have tried navigating Ottawa as a solely transit user. We are also the coldest capital city of the G7 and most of our shelters aren’t heated and buses might come 45min after their scheduled arrival if you’re lucky and even then they’re usually over cramped and drive right past the stop. LRT hasn’t fixed that issue. If anything, it’s made it even worse at the Terminus stations. As a city resident in the suburb area and a user of transit daily (except for the pandemic since I could work from home and have never been happier actually and now dreading the thought of returning to a “normal” commute schedule), Ottawa’s system is so poorly executed and all the praise it receives on yours and other transit focused channels is so mind-boggling to me. I would have loved your mini-fridge experience with an actual subway in comparison.
Car owners think busses are fast until they are behind them.
after moving to philadelphia for college after having to drive in the suburbs, yeah driving sucks
Employees of public transit agencies, or at least the leaders, should be required to commute to work via their system (or at least ride it regularly).
Extremely interesting and controversial topic. Is it possible to go car-free in Toronto? In Moscow it started to be pretty convenient recent years.
It's absolutely possible in Toronto and actually not all that uncommon
@@RMTransit we have a stereotype opinion in Russia that it's impossible to survive in North America without owning a car. I hope it's just a misconception
Sometimes the big delays in transit are caused by an unusual number of first timers using the public transit system, because some common reason is causing them all to forego using their own cars. I'd almost argue that infrequent transit users are more likely to face problems than frequent transit users.
I don't think this is a good reason not to get people out of cars
@@RMTransit Oh no, I wasn't implying that at all. I was lamenting on the difficulties to get car owners hooked on public transit.
This happened when the first BRT and the first MRT line opened n my city. It was pretty crowded with curious people, but later on more "regular" customers started riding it eventually
I have access to car share if I need it.
Unfortunately public transport is viewed as something for the "poors" of society so the bureaucrats involved will never use it. It's even worse in Montreal because the funds come only from Quebec city so the projects like the new REM train are approved by people who don't even live in the city. So it's usually " hey don't you like the train we paid for? So yeah it doesn't fit your needs but it looks cool right? Now vote for us"😛
So I've asked this before in other places but haven't ever gotten a satisfactory answer. How do we go car free in areas where we really don't have a choice? I live in a city in the US that's VERY hostile to public transportation and out in the suburbs which is more hostile still.
If I want to take a train, even if the place i want to go to is within easy walking distance (which is rare) I still have to drive 20 mins into the city by tollway, or much longer if I want to avoid the tollway, and then the connections might not line up neatly and I'll end up waiting forever. So how do you fix that problem in outer suburbs and exurbs that are already designed so that public transportation coming in is virtually impossible?
You fix the easy things. Starting with those that the transit authority has control over. Eg reviewing / reforming bus routes. Though often extra funding is required and that's a major barrier. Which is where advocacy etc comes into it. It's also important to add all day service to commuter only lines and run them more frequently where you can do so with existing trains - thus reducing the waiting problems with bad connections. Then there is the remodelling of suburban roads eg with denser development and pedestrian crossing points near bus stops etc. There's also wider and long term things like abolishing minimum parking requirements which should start to make suburbs more walking friendly.
Suburbs are not a very easy place to start fixing transit, I think. It might be better for the city to fix the downtown first, then spread to the suburbs later. The suburbs have this inherent problem of low density: within the practical distance of a transit stop, very few people live, so the transit line will either need a ton of stops to cover everybody (making the transit really slow), or stop in only a few places (and thus not cover very many people). One approach might be to look at the zoning of the suburbs themselves, to increase their population density, but that is not likely to go down well with the people who live there unless it's done extremely gradually.
@@Codraroll see, that's the problem is unfortunately I live in one of those low density suburbs because I can't afford to live in the urban core and while a train station is eventually coming my way, I can't walk to it. I'll still have to drive about 5 mins to it and park my car, and even then it's only practical to take the train if my destination happens to be within a mile of the station (very rare) and I know exactly when I'm going to leave because the train only comes by once per hour so if you miss it by a min or 2, have fun sitting there twiddling your thumbs for an hour!
you must live downtown because i find the TTC unreliable
Women are also affected negatively by poor bus frequency and badly constructed stops. Much more so than the average male.
Yes, go car free. Bring your groceries home daily to your apartment on your bike. Rain, snow, freezing cold, hey, who cares?
Bring your 11 month old baby to the emergency room at midnight in January on your bike.
Car fee urban living may be your cup.of tea....you can spend the money you would spend on a car on video games instead...but if you have a family.....it doesn't work so well.
Daily grocery bike shopping works well for me. If you buy groceries every day, you don't buy that much at a time, so you can fit the groceries in a backpack.
I've lived in LA for almost 10 years without a car its easy
which part of the city are u in its not everywhere there is as ik (im in europe)
@@Mgameing123 East Hollywood
Perhaps a good thought experiment for those that can't or won't give up their car (and let's be honest here, unless you're living somewhere reasonably dense and don't venture out to the countryside too often, you're unlikely to do so) is to look at a regular trip you take in the car, for business or pleasure, and consider how you would make that trip without it. Maybe pull it up on google maps, look at the timetables, look at how long it would take, if you make the trip early or late look at the transit at those times. Perhaps in the end you realise the only practical option is a taxi or an uber, with all the expense that entails. Or maybe there is no alternative and you'd have to consider finding an alternative location for your activity (if there even is one). Then you can get a perspective on the inconveniences and sacrifices your transit would force you to make.
Regarding car sharing schemes, I think it's one big weakness is lack of spontaneity. You can't rely on the car being available 100% of the time and quickly accessible, so it means any car journeys generally have to be planned in advance, possibly days or weeks if the service is very popular, or it's a very costly taxi or uber. This pretty much kills one of the most important needs private transportation fills. Personally, I think this is where self-driving cars can shine in the future. If the technology means vehicles can operate without a driver, then it's easy to see how they could be used as really cheap taxis, probably so cheap as to be competitive with private ownership. I know some transit advocates see self-driving cars as almost an existential threat that will induce demand and create even worse traffic, but I don't think it has to be that way.
You don't see monthly expenses drop by $400 if you still drive while taking transit.
That goes both ways as well, and I can give you a perfect example of this, the Harbourfront streetcar shoreline design. Specifically the lack of car access to the hotels on the shoreline of Queens Quay.
1) The access to Scotia Bank Buildings (don’t know exact address) are often confused with the entrance of the streetcar entrance. There’s been a few cars that have ended up in the streetcar underground track.
2) No access to Radisson Hotel off of Queens Quay. Another problem and many cars have had to turn into the entrance illegally (ergo using streetcar ROH) because the access is very confusing.
The design may look nice, but they’re are some design flaws that don’t make sense logistically.
I’ve never lived with a car.
Imma in the same boat. European by any chance?
@@tsareric1921 No, Canadian.
@@fernbedek6302 That's a surprise. How do you find? Where I am being car free is possible if willing to take twice as log to get places
@@tsareric1921 Is smaller cities it can be rather awkward. I ended up doing lots of long walks or having to get taxis and the like a lot. In larger cities it’s generally not too bad because you can usually get to most things you would need on a reliable transit route, so you just avoid the parts of town that are hard to get to. I also bike a lot during the summer. My work is a hassle in the winter, because it’s somewhere with terrible buses, but, having never experienced driving to get there, I guess I just don’t exactly know what I’m missing so can’t compare the convenience?
@@fernbedek6302 Cycling is not reasonable unless your in the city centre or a quite village here. I've never been able to drive, or planning to learn, either so never really had an issue getting to places unless is past 1800 and/or Sunday.
Hi i agree most of what you said but no way would i not use public transit iv never had a car or bike only use bus trams trains in retired 8.5 years ago still dont want to learn to drive.i must tell you tho couple your old videos you not happy to much lines and systems on tfl london maps only you here every map they do they only get complaints not all lines are listed you are on your own with them putting on to much regards dave
I don't have a Driver's License anyway.
i live in London, why would i have a car ?
If you ever wanted to go outside London?
@@rjc0234 I am in no way british, but according to google, train to bath is faster than driving on M4.
@@ilcubo32 SO go from one very rich city to another rich city great. want to go to a village, or even a town? its a nightmare.
@@rjc0234 bath is a town/city with 88,859 people, that’s less than 1% of London’s population and a quarter of Bristol’s. And who said you can’t have cheap small towns around a big city. And for smaller villages which trains do not make sense, you can have busses, they can even go on a freeway (or motorway, expressway whatever you call it)
TTTTTTTRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUEEEEEEE.
the problem i see with the future is that at some point in the next 5 years we gonna have to radically change our views on personal car ownership. a green grid cannot, CANNOT, suport those EVs, nor the roads arround the city. how do i know this?! i live in a Country where 85 to 90% of electricity comes from Hydroelectrics, and i can say will all letters, that our grid is already over-stretched to the limit. and no ammount of expansion will alleviate the problem, heck not even with nuclear fusion i think cars are a feasible option.
so yeah, we need more of transit, but transit that serves ALL parts of the city. look at Recife's Subway system (that is not underground and that is pathetically small), and you'll immediately understand what im talking about.a majority of Buses without A/C on a city that is always 30C and inside of those metal sardine cans, it can reach 50C. no wonder there is people fainting left and right, and lots of them complaining on geting to their destination soaking in sweat. also, yes, we have a public transit that can get you anywhere you want... eventually and with a big ammount of patience. i remember going from the east to the west of the city everyday and spending 4 HOURS going back and foward because of those integration terminals that were extremely poorly implemented. also, you say you gotta wait 15 minutes and walk 500 m to get a bus, try waiting for an HOUR or TWO with a bus completely full of people for 99% of the time, and sometimes carying heavy loads like 4 big Returnable bags full of groceries totaling 10KG on each arm. we don't need more buses or trams, we need a big,fat, and decent subway system with places so we can sit down while carying those loads. and yeah, i think we should learn to live with transit, every single human being on earth. but at the same time, construct our cities arround transit: showers so we can at least be presentable in the destination buildings, buses at least every 2.5 minutes, or a big subway system that serves all corners of the city. and for cargo transport, we could use cargo trams and train lines. we really have no excuse to use road vehicles at all, if we plan well, but at the same time, planning well is having a shelter where we wouldn't be soaking wet, be sweat or rain, protected from puddle water those cars trows at us, and a transport with A/C for the love of god.
With car sharing, I think we need to update our driver licensing system to match how people will use the service. As it stands, you need to have a certain amount of driving experience before doing your G2 test, and even more driving hours before getting your G. Doing all of this with an instructor can get prohibitively expensive, which is why most people use their parents/families car for practice. But if we move towards a less car-reliant system, there will be tons of people who don't have access to a family members car to practice as much. Personally I think you should be allowed to get and keep your G2 indefinitely as long as you don't own or insure a car. Basically it would restrict you to car-share services, rentals, or occasionally driving a friend or family members car.
I have a drivers license but avoid driving at all costs.