Hello! I really enjoyed your video. You make really good points, and I'd like to expand on what you said that might apply better to some cities. You mentioned that small cities should switch from hub-and-spoke to direct suburb to suburb. In smaller cities and towns, the reason why hub-and-spoke models exist is not to serve downtown commuters. In a polycentric small city, there isn't a large job concentration downtown anyways. The reason why this model is used is to provide a central transfer point that can provide amenities to riders (washrooms, shelters for people waiting to transfer, ticketing and customer service). It also allows for you to design a network centred around a takt (clockface timed transfers). Takts are basically the only way to do transfers in a network that only runs 30-60 min freq. or worse, as a rider will be unwilling or unable to wait 30 minutes or longer at a random suburban intersection waiting to make a transfer to an hourly bus in a grid network. Minimising transfers is good, but direct destination to destination routes are very hard to serve with a one seat ride in a small polycentric city because you usually end up with a high number of route deviations, which makes a route indirect, which makes it slow. On your point of on-demand transit: There certainly is a use case for on-demand transit, but know that if you switch to it from a fix route service, only the most desperate will continue to use it (captive riders), and for those who continue to use it it's almost always a downgrade. On-demand transit often needs to be booked in advance, isn't particularly flexible to a rider's schedule, often it will have erratic pickup times and travel times because it may need to serve other riders along the way. It might not even be able to provide a ride at all if a vehicle isn't available at that time. It's exorbitantly expensive to run and impossible to scale. You'll basically be operating a really shitty taxpayer funded uber. Ironically, the success of on demand transit depends on as little people as possible using it, otherwise ops cost skyrocket past fixed route service. Again, this is a tradeoff that might be worthwhile to make. There's a balance to be struck between coverage and service. On your point about adjusting service standards: I'd say this is a really bad idea because it lowers accountability from the transit agency. A route can be really unreliable but the agency can still claim it is on time by shifting the goal post. If you want to make life easier for drivers, then pad schedules. Schedule padding trades travel time for travel time consistency. Finally, I'd like to say that the small city context between Canada and the US is very different (which I understand you're primarily addressing the Canadian context here). Built form and small city typology vary drastically across the border. Vancouver (our big city) would be a very small city in the US (San Antonio sized). Could you imagine a San Antonio sized city having the most successful metro system by ridership of any American city sans NYC? Ottawa (a city with an entire light metro system!) is a little bit bigger than Louisville KY. Kitchener-Waterloo and Winnipeg have no comparison to a US city for how small they are yet how much transit success they've achieved. Sorry for the long comment! I hope it's good food for thought. Keep up the great work!
@@morethantransitt 1) Please pin Chloe's comment to the top! This is an actual informed comment. Most people don't know what they are talking about. Transit [private or public] has been around for over 100 years. Things are the way they are due to legitimate constraints. 2) That pulse and hub increase the frequency from place to places, when there is not enough frequency. Building a route from A to B, and A to C, and B to C, reduces the frequency between each route, while having a higher total frequency. On the other hand, having 2 routes go to B, and then out again, and then removing A to C, allows us to increase the service of the 2 routes with the same budget and total frequency! Frequency is king! Frequent transit service allows transit users to avoid consulting schedules, which increases usage. It really snowballs. 3) Once demand increases, then it makes sense to bring back service to A to C, because that's basically a grid. Passengers can begin to ride the end of C or A and take the short cut to the other. This reduces demand on the first 2 routes, which improves the service for everybody. 4) Pulse & hub service, and grid network, are both good, but have tradeoffs, and are ideal for different amounts of demand. The 3 constraints are budget, frequency, physical shape. Connections/transfers are a cost to the rider, but should also be seen as an opportunity. 5) Custom/on-demand service is probably the worst of all, and should be used only, when it can be cheaper than an alternative: no transit; expensive transit. I think that the way forward is to find a rich or upper middle class person, who will pay for the service to have time to work and read, or sleep, and won't mind the pickups of a few disabled passengers. Most of the disabled passengers should have been picked up before hand, and then the rich person can get on near the end, unless requested otherwise. The goal of this service is to find that balance between people, who are willing to pay more, while serving the captive riders. 6) Custom/on-demand service could be improved by getting commitments from the amenities in the community, like senior citizens all being served in a medical clinic on Tue. 10a-noon, and 1p-2p...or something like that. The idea is that the van has only 1 destination to drop off to, which saves time, and the first person off can be served first, while the rest of the passengers are being unloaded. This saves time, if the process of unloading is long, because if the first person is ready to go home, by time the unloading is complete, this saves money.
These days if you live in a small city, your proximity to all your needs is further than if you live in a big city. Because some of those needs are in another city.
In my country, Greece, outside of Athens, many teenagers are sadly killed in motorcycle accidents. In Athens, due to the presence of public transport, teenagers needn't rely on motorcycles.
Mostly, if small towns like that are connected to the wider world with frequent trains and they have decent bike infrastructure, they will be okay. But some transit within the city would be nice.
I like how some cities use it, they use the drivers and busses from the big cities and put them into small towns. Its nice for small towns because they only need a few routes and if all the routes connect to one place, they can have another route that connects them to bigger cities. Its also nice when small towns and big cities share a fare system, therefore making your transfer be valid once you get to the big city.
If you ask me, no city is TOO SMALL FOR TRANSIT, especially RAPID TRANSIT. Heck even Edmonton had 93 KM of streetcars when its population was less than 50,000. And even when it got modern RAPID TRANSIT-STYLE LRT, it had less then 500,000 and keep in mind that also included running a small subway section beneath downtown. In that respect I am glad that even Red Deer which ONLY has an urban population of 100,000 has plans for LRT in the future with even the map and station locations being pre-selected if you find the right document. I'm now looking to you Lethbridge! You also have 100,000 a huge university and campus across the river valley from downtown, an equally impressive community college and a busy airport that I can only see getting busier in the future... Make it so!
Yep!! No cities are "too small" to have good, reliable public transit!! A lot of Canadian cities had decent and widespread streetcars when they were barely at 100,000 population!
50,000 is pretty decend. Still those streetcars were around before thr major adoption of the Automobil. Those streetcars have long been replaced by bus services .
Town of Bridgewater, NS has just shy of 9k people. They made their transit pilot project permanent in 2019. Granted it's one bus, doing a one hour loop, six days a week. But if thats what it takes to get the ball rolling.
4:29 My man. Thank you. That is LITERALLY what I keep telling *everyone* that this city is seriously needing. Well, I don't even advocate for 3, I'd settle with 2 lines. Also, ironically that image on screen showing the purple and orange lines, that highlights EXACTLY where one of my "dream" lines runs lol. Another Fun Fact, "fake" London is already larger in metropolitan population than Calgary was when they started their LRT lines. This city is seriously overdue.
Canmore Alberta has a population of 16,000 and public transit. It also runs a regional transit bus over to Banff Alberta, which has a population of only 8300., The latter is in a national park so there was some funding to reduce car traffic there.
@@paxundpeace9970 my info comes with a grain of salt as I haven't lived there in approximately 12 years, but it WAS hourly at the time iirc, I used it living in Banff to head into Canmore for things on occasion lol
@@paxundpeace9970 depending on the routes, they can be every 20 to 45 minutes. I was in Banff 3 weeks ago and rode route 1 mostly (the touristy route), and it was every 20 minutes during day time from 9am to 3pm and every 30 minutes outside of those hours
Winnipeg is just about broke, so a lot of the road renewals are including bike lanes. I just went to a public consultation for some new bike lanes in my neighbourhood today, and there is some hope.
You guys should start up some construction companies that do engineered hardwood, and get a school focused on teaching that trade, and start specializing in mass timber buildings. They're the future of construction honestly. And you guys have a unique bonus if being very central in Canada, so shipping the finished buildings outwards isn't very hard for you logistically. It would also give the Feds a kick in the pants to make our national railway better finally. Lastly you'd also want to get some specialized reforestry folks there so you can sustainably harvest the lumber for the construction - but that's a good thing anyway as it ultimately sequesters a ton of c02 rather than emitting it from all the concrete used in traditional buildings. That would make Winnipeg into a blue collar supertown honestly lol
A lot of American small towns had their own streetcar systems back in the early 20th century. For example, in Bakersfield, California, the Bakersfield & Kern Electric Railway operated streetcar lines from 1888 to 1942. At its height in 1915, it had a total of five streetcar lines, and an annual ridership of 1.4 million, all while serving a town with a population of 15,000. Nowadays, Bakersfield is a considerably large city with a population of 403,455 residents, yet is extremely car-centric, unwalkable, and has no real good transit besides a series of infrequent bus lines and downright poor-quality bus stops. If a town of 15,000 could do it, why can’t anybody else do the same? And if the city would grow so large, why didn’t they have the foresight to make productive use of their public transit and living space?
Idk why the hell they got rid of all them 😭 In Toronto, they kept them, and just replced the old streetcars with Bombardier LRT vehicles. All cities could have done this instead of tearing down their systems…
@@andrewisvrycool Toronto had way more streetcar tracks back then. and a major thing to consider is there were tracks north of bloor back then, which today there is only one non-active track along Bathurst to St. Clair. There were neighbourhoods where streetcar tracks would navigate through the 7 metre wide roads, such as in The Annex (north of bloor, west of Spadina area) Look at a Transit Toronto archive streetcar trackage map. Back in 1945 the city was so small and the streetcar tracks were EVERYWHERE. You wouldn’t be more than half a kilometre away from a streetcar line back than. (Less than 4 minute walk). Since the 1960s until the start of GO transit and the new era of transit in Toronto, more and more track would be removed or just not taken care of until the tracks are in horrible condition and get removed or disconnected. After the new era started, more streetcar lines appeared and better transit overall in Toronto did. Also the bombardier flexity outlook streetcars are super recent and were introduced in 2014 and the CLRVs and ALRVs got retired in December 2019. Those alone were new entering service in 1979 and 1988.
A metro of 1 million (as opposed to a city proper, such as San Francisco) is actually fairly quaint. Tulsa and Omaha, for instance have metro populations of around 1m. New Orleans and Honolulu also have 1m person metros, but they are tourist hubs.
My town inaugurated a bus service a few months ago, and it has fairly good reach, including an out of town stop that connects to another bus service. However, its frequency is atrocious, and I'm certain that it's the main reason why it has low patronage from the townspeople. That and the limited time, operating only on weekdays from 6:30am to 6:30pm. I think that if it had more frequency, people would use it more, and instill confidence in the bus service.
My company is actually working on providing transit in a rural small-town locale in Ontario. Your video is pretty good. The main issue though is political will. Even when the residents of an area want transit, the majority of the voters in rural areas are always CAR OWNERS 😮💨 So it is incredibly challenging to convince a cash-strapped rural area that a bus that serves 40 to 70 people a day is good value when most of the voters are complaining about potholes, dirt-roads and well-water. There is only so much money to go around. And regarding on-demand transit (especially in rural-areas), it's a failed concept, it's not a good operating model. Taxis are not public transit. You can't run variable cost operations with a fixed cost model. Fixed costs and scheduled operations are more palatable to everyone involved than a bus/van whose costs may vary by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and shows up kind of whenever it does. If you are working with a polycentric rural community, you have to link the population centres to service centres first with a linear fixed route. This gives the most people a chance to experiment with transit. Once the fixed-route operation is sustainable, THEN you might branch out to demand-oriented operations that use your fixed route as hub. But of course... as you mentioned, labour is the biggest cost after fuel. Insurance is actually by and far the biggest challenge as it is a dead-weight cost that doesn't generate income, ridership or operating metrics. Fix everything I noted above, and then more small towns would do this. Great video! 😀
Sir, thank you for sharing your views on providing rural service! I wonder if a hybrid of services could be created. For example, maybe less customization [fixed route, on-demand higher frequency] could be offered in summer, in exchange for more customization in winter [flexible route, on-demand lower frequency]. The idea is that in bad extreme weather, people should stay home, and most of their annual errands should be scheduled for the late spring, summer, and early fall. This could be coupled together with service to tourist destinations. In winter weather, rural roads can be problematic, so it makes sense to reduce travel. Also, maybe service could be coupled together with simple parcel delivery. Do any of my suggestions make sense?
My hometown (30,000 people) used to have a street car and a central business/housing downtown. Now most of the business is on the outskirts of town, often with no sidewalks. It has a bus service, but that service stops at 6PM and doesn't run on Sundays at all. I worked at a mall for years, which meant getting out of work at 10PM and walking along a multi-lane highway with no lights for a couple miles, even in a foot of snow. I also went to night school at a local college, which was also on the outskirts of town and also meant walking along an unlit highway when I got out of class at 8 or 10PM. The lack of transit wasn't THE reason I left. But it was A reason for leaving. Since I left, they've actually cut service for the bus even more.
Re waiting: having relied on many rural and semi-rural bus systems in the US and UK, I can definitively state that it's better for a bus to be 10 minutes late than leave 1 minute early.
I live in Toronto and even I see how useful good public transit is for smaller cities. I like to draw fantasy transit maps as a hobby and have drafted a few for the Waterloo region, London Ont, Hamilton, Halifax and Saskatoon, to name a few.
I wouldn't consider cities like Winnipeg or Quebec City as small cities; they SHOULD have big city transit and are not that far behind the larger cities (and are larger than Edmonton or Calgary when they got their LRT systems by a decent bit) - I would consider a smaller cities like under 200k or 100k - stuff like Red Deer or Lethbridge on the larger end; and stuff like Cold Lake or Brooks on the smaller end
Fair enough! I included some of the bigger cities with hogher population because a lot of arguments of "my city is too small for transit" actually came from the people who reside in those bigger cities! But your point is absolutely valid, all cities with a population higher than 300k should have decent, high quality transit!
@@morethantransitt as someone who used to live in a small town of 3k~ people in Nova Scotia, and in the Calgary suburb of Chestermere with around 30k~ people. I believe anything above 1k~ people would benefit from transit
Unfortunately, in the US public transit is looked down on and associated with riders that middle class people wouldn't want to be around! I doubt that this will ever change, making transit something that is not well funded.
@@1206-octo In my area (West Texas), routes and frequency have been cut to the point that I no longer use it! It's like that in my town and others in the area. I can't see my area changing anytime soon!
I live in northern Sweden and for a city of 28 000 we have 4 bus lines. 2 of them run every 20 minutes during peak hours and every 60 minutes during the off-peak, all days of the week except sundays. 1 line runs every 30 minutes during peak hours and every 60 minutes during the off-peak. 1 line runs during peak hours only, every 60 minutes, with no service at all on weekends. The other lines have service on saturdays but not sundays. No matter where you live there will not be a long walk to get to transit. Theres a problem tho. When the buses are busy, the bus lines are very unreliable and if you have a connection to another bus, youre most certainly gonna miss it. There are some smaller towns and the transit solution they have built in there that the regional buses can be used as local buses while traveling through towns but then make less stops and are faster when on the countryside. In the capital city, Stockholm, where they have metro and light rail and commuter rail and stuff, buses are mostly designed to shuttle passengers to a rail transit station, except for some routes in the downtown which are used for routes that arent already traversed by subway lines and some longer-distance routes in the suburbs that are used as shortcuts to not have to go that far to transfer to another line.
Yeah I hate transfers the most! You can leave your house early, but if your bus is late and you need to transfer you might still be late. Nothing is more desperate than seeing the bus you need to catch right in front of the bus you're riding on!
What a great and well researched video! It is interesting how a lot of these fixes are not just ways to improve transit in small cities, but to improve accessibility in general, regardless of how small your city is. For example, think of just how terrible the mono centric nature of the Chicago L has been for that city. Also people who don’t have data don’t exclusively live in small cities they can live in big towns too, so that would definitely help them a lot as well!
Text message based real time bus information is almost certainly a lot cheaper now, especially if a transit agency is already doing it for transit apps / Google Maps / etc. I'm quite sure that cost has a lot to do with setting up the system to track and respond based on basically zero preexisting infrastructure, but it's not 2006 anymore, and there are services like Twilio that make doing SMS services extremely easy
Yeah I figured! Now with the development of telecommunications I don't think it's that costly! But that was the only publicly available article that I could find for this video!
@@morethantransitt Yep, makes sense. It's not exactly the latest technology so probably the interest in studying how much it costs to deploy has disappeared. Just giving my two cents being in tech and having worked on SMS stuff :)
Odd so bus centric, but I guess that is a North American thing. My local city (Toulouse population is about 500,000 with about 1 million in the metro area depending what you count) probably fits your definition of a smaller city. It currently has 2 metro lines and is digging a 3rd, has a long tram line, brt services and an urban gondola along with extensive local buses and even a little heavy rail too. Look at what is possible for smaller cities outside of North America and you will be surprised!
Luckily I live in Europe. My city has only 140,000 inhabitants, but there are four tram lines that run every 6 minutes, further there are also three-section articulated buses. The network is completed by 10 regional train stations within the city limits plus one main station with long distance services.
There’s another benefit to small buses & cutaway buses. Not only can they be cheaper but they also might require easier to obtain licenses. In Ontario, a class C can drive a bus with up to 24 passengers. A cutaway bus might not have air brakes which negates the need for an air brake license (Z endorsement in Ontario). Cutaway buses also might not need special tools or equipment for servicing making a service garage cheaper to set up or not requiring one altogether if servicing is subcontracted to a local garage or dealer.
My city has about 1 million people in it but it’s dense enough that I can walk pretty much anywhere. We have two tram lines but they’re mostly useless. The thing that makes it work though is that we have great heavy rail connection. I think that’s how it is especially for small towns. If you can get out without a car and the city isn’t designed by idiots it doesn’t even need much transit.
When I was living in Hungary. I lived in a city with less than 30k people. It had a train line to the largest city nearby hourly. Buses to all the local villages/cites nearby every 10 mins during peak and long distance buses to the capital every two hours. The buses to the other cities were also used at local city buses with several stops within the city making it easy to get anywhere.
Some pretty interesting solutions but I was definitely caught off guard when you said cities below 1 million people. Like, there's only one city in my whole country of Denmark which has over 1 million people, and a small city here is typically considered one with around 50.000 people or less. Of which i am from one, Hillerød, with 36.000 residents and close proximity to the capital city Copenhagen. We do actually have one of the best bus systems in Denmark for a town our size with 2 urban routes running every 20 minutes during the day and once per hour on evenings and sundays. Alongside several once per hour bus routes to other smaller towns in the municipality. Plus 4 different regional bus routes that run between every 15 minutes and once per hour depending on the route and 5 different passenger rail lines. All the buses generally run until 10pm and until 11pm on friday and saturday nights. Though we're far better off than a lot of the country which have no evening bus service at all and their towns bus routes shut down completely by 6pm. Though it aint perfect. Tickets here and in Denmark as a whole are generally integrated nationwide and cross compatible across buses and trains, even our state railways. But this also leads to a crazy conveluted ticketting system with tonnes of zones that many struggle to navigate. And this is on top of having super high prices, about twice the prices for transit as in Vancouver Canada for a comparable example. We also struggle a ton with having nice and inviting bus terminals and train stations here as our officials are high on micromanaging economics for efficiency gains. The bus station here in Hillerød is one of the few nationwide which has a roof at all, but its also from 1980, run down, heavily vandalised, the bolts holding benches onto wooden wall collumns are in such bad shape the benches lean forward just by sitting on them, and moss grows through the roofs and makes rainwater leak through. We do also have a text service for departure times but nobody uses it. It runs with a user charge of 5 DKK or 1 Canadian dollar per time its used. By comparison, Data plans are dirt cheap here, like 50gb a month and unlimited calls and text for something like 20 CAD a month. Not to mention we have a whole thing with phone dependency. The bus stops here dont even have schedules anymore as officials thought they were a needless waste cause "According to our studies, majority of passengers plan their journey in advance with the journey planner website or app anyway". We technically also have a nationwide Dial-a-ride service but it is really bad. It uses an entirely separate and very expensive fare system from the rest of transit, it needs to be booked at least 2 hours in advance, it is very unreliable (All times Ive used it, I've had to wait between 20 and 40 minutes after the scheduled pickup time, causing me to miss the connections I were booked to reach), and the vehicles arent particularly accessible. It really is just a bad taxi. Thankfully one of the transit agencies in Denmark are trialling a more modern version of demand responsive transit in a small town called Haslev. Theirs uses an app and call center to book journeys, which are fixed to going between bus stops, but which uses actual minibuses with accessibility, and can be booked on a very short notice. I've tried it and all my trips had just between 8 and 22 minutes between I booked the bus and the bus came. I will say though that while I wish our transit here could improve, and I know it can, it won't happen. Our government has one of the tigthest economic laws in the EU which puts a stranglehold on municipal and regional budgets. And our Liberatarian minister for transport has commissioned an "expert committee" that he himself put together to look at reforming and improving public transit. Sounds good, but the catch is that it must not cost any more to operate than the current transit nationwide (which is already cash strapped). So all the reports so far are suggesting are to basically replace rural small town bus lines with carpooling and ubers and *maybe* those improved dial a rides that can be booked spontaniously for "High demand periods".... not looking very bright.
1) Your dial a ride service makes a lot of sense. It incentivizes short turning when there is low demand. 2) I think that I figured out the best system for most places! The prices increase first, by short time span or short distance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!tance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!tance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!
@@eugenetswong A dial a ride service on Flextrafik (the bad one) usually costs between 6 CAD and 22 CAD depending on the length and it also varies from municipality to municipality. Transit fares in Denmark are very expensive already, usually at least twice that of North American transit systems and getting progressively more expensive over longer distances, but the new dial a ride system called Nærbus, at least uses bus fares so a trip on it would usually only cost 3-4 CAD or about 2-3 USD and be included in the zonal fares of whichever transit mode you'd continue on like a regional train.
I am from a medium-sized city in Chile called Copiapo and there is a project to turn it into the first city in America with its entire bus fleet 100% electric. The buses have already been purchased and they are waiting for them to arrive in the city. I find it curious that a city as small as mine would be the one to undertake a project of this caliber.
Alas London only has *two* LRT lines (Tramlink and DLR). I think there are 11 Underground lines and six Overground lines. London, Ontario, however has a very limited bus to the airport.
There is a city of 300k in western Norway called Bergen that has it's own (and constantly expanding!!) light rail system, called the Bybanen, super cool imo. From what I understand, they currently fund it through road tolls (and state funding ofc). Super cool thing, might wanna check it out :)
If small town can’t have small then why is there a Planned High Speed Rail In California Which i support that project and before you ask, no it’s not failed, it’s good actually, because they should at least connect to their local transit in small cities are Palmdale, Madera, Fresno, Merced, Stockton, Modesto And Gilroy, it could bring Buses and Light Rail to their small town too where the high speed rail station is located, Subway is good but it’s too expensive to build it, So not only the public transit is good to small cities in California but also in America and International countries.
I grew up in the suburbs of Halifax, NS, and the transit was frankly terrible. Taking transit took 2-3 times as long a driving, non peak service was hourly and ended too early at night. Things have improved slightly since the 80's and 90's. They are finally bringing in an electronic fair option and there are a handful of bus lanes on a few busy streets. However, the line near my mother's apartment building is rush hour only! She is considering giving up her car, but she can only take a bus in rush hour? Ridiculous.
The North American way of classifying big and small cities as well as the mentality of "my city is too small for transit" while having five-digit populations is just so insane to me. If your city has hundreds of thousands of people in it, it is far from small, and it shouldn't just have transit, it should need transit, good transit! A city that size should not exist in a way where it is so car-centric and sprawly that transit is an inherently inferior and ineffective option. Unfortunately, way too many do, and it shows in their dead downtowns and deserted sidewalks. At the end of the day, it's more about density and available things to do and places to be, than size alone. For context, I live in a city at the southern end of the Rhineland conurbation in western Germany, with a population in the immediate surrounding metro area of about 500k. We have both light rail and tram lines and extensive urban and regional bus networks, as well as good access to regional and long-distance rail with many departures every hour from multiple stations on multiple railway lines. And it really couldn't work any other way. The light rail runs every 5 minutes in its core section and trains get packed during rush hours, especially when schools finish too. Light rail and buses to surrounding towns (yes, we have interurban light rail) run up to every 10 minutes, carrying thousands of commuters every day while taking up a miniscule amount of space compares to the equivalent in cars and while being less polluting. There are some definite flaws in our system, like cancellations, infrequent orbital connections or bus delays, but the bones are good, and every city with a bit of density of at least 300k needs those bones. It needs light rail or good trams, it needs regional connections of good frequency and scope, it needs a viable alternative to driving, because there is nothing freeing about being forced to drive. I don't have a driver's license, and I never want to give up the ability to have options, options for taking good transit.
There's a reason the microtransit zone that supplements an hourly bus that doesn't run for 12 hours or the day stops at Capistrano - Moss Beach and Montara are smaller and richer
True. If only cities of a population of 1 million or higher were big enough for good public transport there would only be one city left in my country. I know cities of 30,000 people and fewer with decent public transit though, so size is really a bad
I mean it's viable for going somewhere within a small town. The issue is connecting these town to cities. Their not going to make a 40mile long bus line connection to a city. Nor will they run a train line through a mountainous area. Town and City municipalities don't get along in the first place. The Government won't pay for the bus infrastructure. An entrepreneur won't take the risk. Unless there's a considerably amount of change I doubt it would happen.
It's all about mindset. There is literally nothing preventing a 40-mile-bus line from being implemented, other than lack of political will. You can run coach-like buses on it, give it an express service pattern with few stops, maybe even park-and-rides and it can work.
A feel like a lot of small cities would be wanting self-driving buses when there’s a shortage of people to drive the buses. Especially if you’re trying to improve transit in a declining city.
Self driving is still far away from reliable safe use. Prague for example is planing to start on demand minibuses, it will allow better services in remote part of cities and cut cost cause minibuses can be operated with regular car dřívím license.
Public transit doesn't cover its own costs which requires public subsidies (taxpayer support). The travel patterns have changed as noticed but still add time and inconvenience to almost all trips. Overall, a decent video.
Completely disagree, busses drastically slow down transit, it would create a huge problem and many inconveniences for smaller cities and towns. They make sense in large cities where there is already large amounts of traffic, but not in small ones
it's a trade-off between efficiency and coverage. You can have only one not both. Transit is slow in small cities sometimes due to the heavier focus on coverage creating circuitous routes that aren't direct.
@@morethantransitt Sure, I go to University in a smallish city that borders a much larger city. When using public transit it takes me about 20 minuets to cover a little under 2 miles. However when utilizing my car in the small town I actually live in I cover greater distances faster. Not only that but in my small town whenever school busses operate it slows my travel time down significantly. Now I know school buses make constant individual stops and public transport makes regular stops, however public transport in my small town operates until around 9pm, and essentially fills the area with slow moving vehicles that make a lot of stops. Not only that but in small towns or cities, they aren’t even that useful because you are still going to have to walk at least a mile after getting dropped off to get to a destination. In my college city I walk an average of 3 miles a day even while utilizing public transport, in my home town that would be much greater. So Public transport in towns that don’t need it will slow down traffic, make people walk greater distances (even the elderly or infirm) and probably be a waste of money since greatest of all, no one likes public transport
Hello! I really enjoyed your video. You make really good points, and I'd like to expand on what you said that might apply better to some cities.
You mentioned that small cities should switch from hub-and-spoke to direct suburb to suburb. In smaller cities and towns, the reason why hub-and-spoke models exist is not to serve downtown commuters. In a polycentric small city, there isn't a large job concentration downtown anyways. The reason why this model is used is to provide a central transfer point that can provide amenities to riders (washrooms, shelters for people waiting to transfer, ticketing and customer service). It also allows for you to design a network centred around a takt (clockface timed transfers). Takts are basically the only way to do transfers in a network that only runs 30-60 min freq. or worse, as a rider will be unwilling or unable to wait 30 minutes or longer at a random suburban intersection waiting to make a transfer to an hourly bus in a grid network. Minimising transfers is good, but direct destination to destination routes are very hard to serve with a one seat ride in a small polycentric city because you usually end up with a high number of route deviations, which makes a route indirect, which makes it slow.
On your point of on-demand transit: There certainly is a use case for on-demand transit, but know that if you switch to it from a fix route service, only the most desperate will continue to use it (captive riders), and for those who continue to use it it's almost always a downgrade. On-demand transit often needs to be booked in advance, isn't particularly flexible to a rider's schedule, often it will have erratic pickup times and travel times because it may need to serve other riders along the way. It might not even be able to provide a ride at all if a vehicle isn't available at that time. It's exorbitantly expensive to run and impossible to scale. You'll basically be operating a really shitty taxpayer funded uber. Ironically, the success of on demand transit depends on as little people as possible using it, otherwise ops cost skyrocket past fixed route service. Again, this is a tradeoff that might be worthwhile to make. There's a balance to be struck between coverage and service.
On your point about adjusting service standards: I'd say this is a really bad idea because it lowers accountability from the transit agency. A route can be really unreliable but the agency can still claim it is on time by shifting the goal post. If you want to make life easier for drivers, then pad schedules. Schedule padding trades travel time for travel time consistency.
Finally, I'd like to say that the small city context between Canada and the US is very different (which I understand you're primarily addressing the Canadian context here). Built form and small city typology vary drastically across the border. Vancouver (our big city) would be a very small city in the US (San Antonio sized). Could you imagine a San Antonio sized city having the most successful metro system by ridership of any American city sans NYC? Ottawa (a city with an entire light metro system!) is a little bit bigger than Louisville KY. Kitchener-Waterloo and Winnipeg have no comparison to a US city for how small they are yet how much transit success they've achieved.
Sorry for the long comment! I hope it's good food for thought. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for your insightful points!! I appreciate them!!
@@morethantransitt 1) Please pin Chloe's comment to the top! This is an actual informed comment. Most people don't know what they are talking about. Transit [private or public] has been around for over 100 years. Things are the way they are due to legitimate constraints.
2) That pulse and hub increase the frequency from place to places, when there is not enough frequency. Building a route from
A to B, and A to C, and B to C, reduces the frequency between each route, while having a higher total frequency. On the other hand, having 2 routes go to B, and then out again, and then removing A to C, allows us to increase the service of the 2 routes with the same budget and total frequency! Frequency is king! Frequent transit service allows transit users to avoid consulting schedules, which increases usage. It really snowballs.
3) Once demand increases, then it makes sense to bring back service to A to C, because that's basically a grid. Passengers can begin to ride the end of C or A and take the short cut to the other. This reduces demand on the first 2 routes, which improves the service for everybody.
4) Pulse & hub service, and grid network, are both good, but have tradeoffs, and are ideal for different amounts of demand. The 3 constraints are budget, frequency, physical shape. Connections/transfers are a cost to the rider, but should also be seen as an opportunity.
5) Custom/on-demand service is probably the worst of all, and should be used only, when it can be cheaper than an alternative: no transit; expensive transit. I think that the way forward is to find a rich or upper middle class person, who will pay for the service to have time to work and read, or sleep, and won't mind the pickups of a few disabled passengers. Most of the disabled passengers should have been picked up before hand, and then the rich person can get on near the end, unless requested otherwise. The goal of this service is to find that balance between people, who are willing to pay more, while serving the captive riders.
6) Custom/on-demand service could be improved by getting commitments from the amenities in the community, like senior citizens all being served in a medical clinic on Tue. 10a-noon, and 1p-2p...or something like that. The idea is that the van has only 1 destination to drop off to, which saves time, and the first person off can be served first, while the rest of the passengers are being unloaded. This saves time, if the process of unloading is long, because if the first person is ready to go home, by time the unloading is complete, this saves money.
These days if you live in a small city, your proximity to all your needs is further than if you live in a big city. Because some of those needs are in another city.
I like how you call out Winnipeg then immediately show the exact same lines I use 😭
In my country, Greece, outside of Athens, many teenagers are sadly killed in motorcycle accidents. In Athens, due to the presence of public transport, teenagers needn't rely on motorcycles.
Mostly, if small towns like that are connected to the wider world with frequent trains and they have decent bike infrastructure, they will be okay. But some transit within the city would be nice.
Yes and it's best if those transit schedules can link up with the arrival/departure time of the train, allowing a smooth connection!
I like how some cities use it, they use the drivers and busses from the big cities and put them into small towns. Its nice for small towns because they only need a few routes and if all the routes connect to one place, they can have another route that connects them to bigger cities. Its also nice when small towns and big cities share a fare system, therefore making your transfer be valid once you get to the big city.
If you ask me, no city is TOO SMALL FOR TRANSIT, especially RAPID TRANSIT. Heck even Edmonton had 93 KM of streetcars when its population was less than 50,000. And even when it got modern RAPID TRANSIT-STYLE LRT, it had less then 500,000 and keep in mind that also included running a small subway section beneath downtown. In that respect I am glad that even Red Deer which ONLY has an urban population of 100,000 has plans for LRT in the future with even the map and station locations being pre-selected if you find the right document. I'm now looking to you Lethbridge! You also have 100,000 a huge university and campus across the river valley from downtown, an equally impressive community college and a busy airport that I can only see getting busier in the future... Make it so!
Yep!! No cities are "too small" to have good, reliable public transit!! A lot of Canadian cities had decent and widespread streetcars when they were barely at 100,000 population!
50,000 is pretty decend.
Still those streetcars were around before thr major adoption of the Automobil.
Those streetcars have long been replaced by bus services .
Town of Bridgewater, NS has just shy of 9k people. They made their transit pilot project permanent in 2019. Granted it's one bus, doing a one hour loop, six days a week. But if thats what it takes to get the ball rolling.
Does the route pass by a university, college, or high school?
4:29 My man. Thank you. That is LITERALLY what I keep telling *everyone* that this city is seriously needing. Well, I don't even advocate for 3, I'd settle with 2 lines. Also, ironically that image on screen showing the purple and orange lines, that highlights EXACTLY where one of my "dream" lines runs lol. Another Fun Fact, "fake" London is already larger in metropolitan population than Calgary was when they started their LRT lines. This city is seriously overdue.
Imagine that orange youtuber advocated for this instead of enjoying his privileged life and telling people to "give up and move to Amsterdam"
Canmore Alberta has a population of 16,000 and public transit. It also runs a regional transit bus over to Banff Alberta, which has a population of only 8300., The latter is in a national park so there was some funding to reduce car traffic there.
Always love Roam Transit! That can be an example of some small towns got transit done right, but thanks to tourism!
Now this makes me wonder what could the transit service in those two towns look like if they weren't tourist towns🤔
Banff is a major Tourism hub. How frequent are those services? 0:38
@@paxundpeace9970 my info comes with a grain of salt as I haven't lived there in approximately 12 years, but it WAS hourly at the time iirc, I used it living in Banff to head into Canmore for things on occasion lol
@@paxundpeace9970 depending on the routes, they can be every 20 to 45 minutes. I was in Banff 3 weeks ago and rode route 1 mostly (the touristy route), and it was every 20 minutes during day time from 9am to 3pm and every 30 minutes outside of those hours
Winnipeg is just about broke, so a lot of the road renewals are including bike lanes. I just went to a public consultation for some new bike lanes in my neighbourhood today, and there is some hope.
You guys should start up some construction companies that do engineered hardwood, and get a school focused on teaching that trade, and start specializing in mass timber buildings. They're the future of construction honestly. And you guys have a unique bonus if being very central in Canada, so shipping the finished buildings outwards isn't very hard for you logistically. It would also give the Feds a kick in the pants to make our national railway better finally. Lastly you'd also want to get some specialized reforestry folks there so you can sustainably harvest the lumber for the construction - but that's a good thing anyway as it ultimately sequesters a ton of c02 rather than emitting it from all the concrete used in traditional buildings. That would make Winnipeg into a blue collar supertown honestly lol
A lot of American small towns had their own streetcar systems back in the early 20th century. For example, in Bakersfield, California, the Bakersfield & Kern Electric Railway operated streetcar lines from 1888 to 1942. At its height in 1915, it had a total of five streetcar lines, and an annual ridership of 1.4 million, all while serving a town with a population of 15,000. Nowadays, Bakersfield is a considerably large city with a population of 403,455 residents, yet is extremely car-centric, unwalkable, and has no real good transit besides a series of infrequent bus lines and downright poor-quality bus stops. If a town of 15,000 could do it, why can’t anybody else do the same? And if the city would grow so large, why didn’t they have the foresight to make productive use of their public transit and living space?
it's the same in many Canadian towns and cities too! We definitely have to bring those streetcars back!
Idk why the hell they got rid of all them 😭 In Toronto, they kept them, and just replced the old streetcars with Bombardier LRT vehicles. All cities could have done this instead of tearing down their systems…
Give smaller cities monorail and bigger ones automated metro
True even little old Athens Georgia with a modern day population not even 200,000 in the metro area had a streetcar system
@@andrewisvrycool Toronto had way more streetcar tracks back then.
and a major thing to consider is there were tracks north of bloor back then, which today there is only one non-active track along Bathurst to St. Clair.
There were neighbourhoods where streetcar tracks would navigate through the 7 metre wide roads, such as in The Annex (north of bloor, west of Spadina area)
Look at a Transit Toronto archive streetcar trackage map. Back in 1945 the city was so small and the streetcar tracks were EVERYWHERE. You wouldn’t be more than half a kilometre away from a streetcar line back than. (Less than 4 minute walk).
Since the 1960s until the start of GO transit and the new era of transit in Toronto, more and more track would be removed or just not taken care of until the tracks are in horrible condition and get removed or disconnected. After the new era started, more streetcar lines appeared and better transit overall in Toronto did.
Also the bombardier flexity outlook streetcars are super recent and were introduced in 2014 and the CLRVs and ALRVs got retired in December 2019. Those alone were new entering service in 1979 and 1988.
TBF I was surprised at you setting the threshold for "small" at 1 million, rather than 100K.
I'm also attempting to erase the misconception that a city must be big (>1M population) to have fancy transit services
A metro of 1 million (as opposed to a city proper, such as San Francisco) is actually fairly quaint. Tulsa and Omaha, for instance have metro populations of around 1m.
New Orleans and Honolulu also have 1m person metros, but they are tourist hubs.
My town inaugurated a bus service a few months ago, and it has fairly good reach, including an out of town stop that connects to another bus service. However, its frequency is atrocious, and I'm certain that it's the main reason why it has low patronage from the townspeople. That and the limited time, operating only on weekdays from 6:30am to 6:30pm. I think that if it had more frequency, people would use it more, and instill confidence in the bus service.
Definitely! There are still activities after 6:30pm and on the weekends too, so I hope they establish at least demand-responsive services!
My company is actually working on providing transit in a rural small-town locale in Ontario. Your video is pretty good. The main issue though is political will. Even when the residents of an area want transit, the majority of the voters in rural areas are always CAR OWNERS 😮💨 So it is incredibly challenging to convince a cash-strapped rural area that a bus that serves 40 to 70 people a day is good value when most of the voters are complaining about potholes, dirt-roads and well-water. There is only so much money to go around. And regarding on-demand transit (especially in rural-areas), it's a failed concept, it's not a good operating model. Taxis are not public transit. You can't run variable cost operations with a fixed cost model. Fixed costs and scheduled operations are more palatable to everyone involved than a bus/van whose costs may vary by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and shows up kind of whenever it does. If you are working with a polycentric rural community, you have to link the population centres to service centres first with a linear fixed route. This gives the most people a chance to experiment with transit. Once the fixed-route operation is sustainable, THEN you might branch out to demand-oriented operations that use your fixed route as hub. But of course... as you mentioned, labour is the biggest cost after fuel. Insurance is actually by and far the biggest challenge as it is a dead-weight cost that doesn't generate income, ridership or operating metrics. Fix everything I noted above, and then more small towns would do this.
Great video! 😀
Thank you so much for the insights and suggestion!! I hope your project will go well!
Sir, thank you for sharing your views on providing rural service!
I wonder if a hybrid of services could be created. For example, maybe less customization [fixed route, on-demand higher frequency] could be offered in summer, in exchange for more customization in winter [flexible route, on-demand lower frequency]. The idea is that in bad extreme weather, people should stay home, and most of their annual errands should be scheduled for the late spring, summer, and early fall.
This could be coupled together with service to tourist destinations.
In winter weather, rural roads can be problematic, so it makes sense to reduce travel.
Also, maybe service could be coupled together with simple parcel delivery.
Do any of my suggestions make sense?
My hometown (30,000 people) used to have a street car and a central business/housing downtown. Now most of the business is on the outskirts of town, often with no sidewalks. It has a bus service, but that service stops at 6PM and doesn't run on Sundays at all. I worked at a mall for years, which meant getting out of work at 10PM and walking along a multi-lane highway with no lights for a couple miles, even in a foot of snow. I also went to night school at a local college, which was also on the outskirts of town and also meant walking along an unlit highway when I got out of class at 8 or 10PM.
The lack of transit wasn't THE reason I left. But it was A reason for leaving. Since I left, they've actually cut service for the bus even more.
I'm looking for places to rent in my city of 280,000 people, and all the cheapest places are in areas with no evening and weekend transit 🥲
Re waiting: having relied on many rural and semi-rural bus systems in the US and UK, I can definitively state that it's better for a bus to be 10 minutes late than leave 1 minute early.
I'd prefer late bus over early bus! But the waiting environment can be so much longer than reality without proper bus stop infrastructure!
I live in Toronto and even I see how useful good public transit is for smaller cities. I like to draw fantasy transit maps as a hobby and have drafted a few for the Waterloo region, London Ont, Hamilton, Halifax and Saskatoon, to name a few.
and it can be trivially easier to plan and construct compared to fancy projects like subways or skytrains or even LRTs!
I wouldn't consider cities like Winnipeg or Quebec City as small cities; they SHOULD have big city transit and are not that far behind the larger cities (and are larger than Edmonton or Calgary when they got their LRT systems by a decent bit) - I would consider a smaller cities like under 200k or 100k - stuff like Red Deer or Lethbridge on the larger end; and stuff like Cold Lake or Brooks on the smaller end
Fair enough! I included some of the bigger cities with hogher population because a lot of arguments of "my city is too small for transit" actually came from the people who reside in those bigger cities! But your point is absolutely valid, all cities with a population higher than 300k should have decent, high quality transit!
and yup, even small cities with 30-40k people deserve full-time transit services too, whether fixed route or demand-responsive!
@@morethantransitt as someone who used to live in a small town of 3k~ people in Nova Scotia, and in the Calgary suburb of Chestermere with around 30k~ people. I believe anything above 1k~ people would benefit from transit
Good thing Quebec City is getting their own tramway + a brt system soon!
@@CnekYT I agree about 1k~. I came down show support for somebody saying it.
Unfortunately, in the US public transit is looked down on and associated with riders that middle class people wouldn't want to be around! I doubt that this will ever change, making transit something that is not well funded.
Yeah, in Canada buses are more accepted then the USA
Yeah but I believe there's a way forward for US cities, a lot has changed lately from what I've seen
@@1206-octo In my area (West Texas), routes and frequency have been cut to the point that I no longer use it! It's like that in my town and others in the area. I can't see my area changing anytime soon!
Then how about I take charge as North America’s emperor and put in place a $6 trillion permanent transit fund and scrap all those pro-car zoning laws?
In the US, you have to move to a more "transit friendly" city if you want any form of reliability. Good luck fixing your local transit agency
I live in northern Sweden and for a city of 28 000 we have 4 bus lines. 2 of them run every 20 minutes during peak hours and every 60 minutes during the off-peak, all days of the week except sundays. 1 line runs every 30 minutes during peak hours and every 60 minutes during the off-peak. 1 line runs during peak hours only, every 60 minutes, with no service at all on weekends. The other lines have service on saturdays but not sundays. No matter where you live there will not be a long walk to get to transit. Theres a problem tho. When the buses are busy, the bus lines are very unreliable and if you have a connection to another bus, youre most certainly gonna miss it.
There are some smaller towns and the transit solution they have built in there that the regional buses can be used as local buses while traveling through towns but then make less stops and are faster when on the countryside.
In the capital city, Stockholm, where they have metro and light rail and commuter rail and stuff, buses are mostly designed to shuttle passengers to a rail transit station, except for some routes in the downtown which are used for routes that arent already traversed by subway lines and some longer-distance routes in the suburbs that are used as shortcuts to not have to go that far to transfer to another line.
Yeah I hate transfers the most! You can leave your house early, but if your bus is late and you need to transfer you might still be late. Nothing is more desperate than seeing the bus you need to catch right in front of the bus you're riding on!
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing about the approach of different towns and cities in Sweden!
What a great and well researched video! It is interesting how a lot of these fixes are not just ways to improve transit in small cities, but to improve accessibility in general, regardless of how small your city is. For example, think of just how terrible the mono centric nature of the Chicago L has been for that city. Also people who don’t have data don’t exclusively live in small cities they can live in big towns too, so that would definitely help them a lot as well!
For a good example look up trams in Jena
Text message based real time bus information is almost certainly a lot cheaper now, especially if a transit agency is already doing it for transit apps / Google Maps / etc.
I'm quite sure that cost has a lot to do with setting up the system to track and respond based on basically zero preexisting infrastructure, but it's not 2006 anymore, and there are services like Twilio that make doing SMS services extremely easy
Yeah I figured! Now with the development of telecommunications I don't think it's that costly! But that was the only publicly available article that I could find for this video!
@@morethantransitt Yep, makes sense. It's not exactly the latest technology so probably the interest in studying how much it costs to deploy has disappeared. Just giving my two cents being in tech and having worked on SMS stuff :)
Odd so bus centric, but I guess that is a North American thing. My local city (Toulouse population is about 500,000 with about 1 million in the metro area depending what you count) probably fits your definition of a smaller city. It currently has 2 metro lines and is digging a 3rd, has a long tram line, brt services and an urban gondola along with extensive local buses and even a little heavy rail too. Look at what is possible for smaller cities outside of North America and you will be surprised!
Luckily I live in Europe. My city has only 140,000 inhabitants, but there are four tram lines that run every 6 minutes, further there are also three-section articulated buses. The network is completed by 10 regional train stations within the city limits plus one main station with long distance services.
There’s another benefit to small buses & cutaway buses. Not only can they be cheaper but they also might require easier to obtain licenses. In Ontario, a class C can drive a bus with up to 24 passengers. A cutaway bus might not have air brakes which negates the need for an air brake license (Z endorsement in Ontario). Cutaway buses also might not need special tools or equipment for servicing making a service garage cheaper to set up or not requiring one altogether if servicing is subcontracted to a local garage or dealer.
great point! I did not think about it!
My city has about 1 million people in it but it’s dense enough that I can walk pretty much anywhere. We have two tram lines but they’re mostly useless. The thing that makes it work though is that we have great heavy rail connection. I think that’s how it is especially for small towns. If you can get out without a car and the city isn’t designed by idiots it doesn’t even need much transit.
Very true! If the proximity to your needs are within 15 minutes of walking from your home, you have a lot of option to reach conveniently!
I find it interesting how all of your shots for Strathcona County Transit were within Edmonton city limits.
When I was living in Hungary. I lived in a city with less than 30k people. It had a train line to the largest city nearby hourly. Buses to all the local villages/cites nearby every 10 mins during peak and long distance buses to the capital every two hours. The buses to the other cities were also used at local city buses with several stops within the city making it easy to get anywhere.
Amazing video - super clear and very good suggestions
Some pretty interesting solutions but I was definitely caught off guard when you said cities below 1 million people. Like, there's only one city in my whole country of Denmark which has over 1 million people, and a small city here is typically considered one with around 50.000 people or less. Of which i am from one, Hillerød, with 36.000 residents and close proximity to the capital city Copenhagen.
We do actually have one of the best bus systems in Denmark for a town our size with 2 urban routes running every 20 minutes during the day and once per hour on evenings and sundays. Alongside several once per hour bus routes to other smaller towns in the municipality. Plus 4 different regional bus routes that run between every 15 minutes and once per hour depending on the route and 5 different passenger rail lines. All the buses generally run until 10pm and until 11pm on friday and saturday nights. Though we're far better off than a lot of the country which have no evening bus service at all and their towns bus routes shut down completely by 6pm.
Though it aint perfect. Tickets here and in Denmark as a whole are generally integrated nationwide and cross compatible across buses and trains, even our state railways. But this also leads to a crazy conveluted ticketting system with tonnes of zones that many struggle to navigate. And this is on top of having super high prices, about twice the prices for transit as in Vancouver Canada for a comparable example. We also struggle a ton with having nice and inviting bus terminals and train stations here as our officials are high on micromanaging economics for efficiency gains. The bus station here in Hillerød is one of the few nationwide which has a roof at all, but its also from 1980, run down, heavily vandalised, the bolts holding benches onto wooden wall collumns are in such bad shape the benches lean forward just by sitting on them, and moss grows through the roofs and makes rainwater leak through.
We do also have a text service for departure times but nobody uses it. It runs with a user charge of 5 DKK or 1 Canadian dollar per time its used. By comparison, Data plans are dirt cheap here, like 50gb a month and unlimited calls and text for something like 20 CAD a month. Not to mention we have a whole thing with phone dependency. The bus stops here dont even have schedules anymore as officials thought they were a needless waste cause "According to our studies, majority of passengers plan their journey in advance with the journey planner website or app anyway".
We technically also have a nationwide Dial-a-ride service but it is really bad. It uses an entirely separate and very expensive fare system from the rest of transit, it needs to be booked at least 2 hours in advance, it is very unreliable (All times Ive used it, I've had to wait between 20 and 40 minutes after the scheduled pickup time, causing me to miss the connections I were booked to reach), and the vehicles arent particularly accessible. It really is just a bad taxi. Thankfully one of the transit agencies in Denmark are trialling a more modern version of demand responsive transit in a small town called Haslev. Theirs uses an app and call center to book journeys, which are fixed to going between bus stops, but which uses actual minibuses with accessibility, and can be booked on a very short notice. I've tried it and all my trips had just between 8 and 22 minutes between I booked the bus and the bus came.
I will say though that while I wish our transit here could improve, and I know it can, it won't happen. Our government has one of the tigthest economic laws in the EU which puts a stranglehold on municipal and regional budgets. And our Liberatarian minister for transport has commissioned an "expert committee" that he himself put together to look at reforming and improving public transit. Sounds good, but the catch is that it must not cost any more to operate than the current transit nationwide (which is already cash strapped). So all the reports so far are suggesting are to basically replace rural small town bus lines with carpooling and ubers and *maybe* those improved dial a rides that can be booked spontaniously for "High demand periods".... not looking very bright.
whoever living in North America can dream about that every-20-minute bus and the regional buses in your community!!
1) Your dial a ride service makes a lot of sense. It incentivizes short turning when there is low demand.
2) I think that I figured out the best system for most places! The prices increase first, by short time span or short distance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!tance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!tance. Maybe a distance of a few stops or a a few minutes can cost a few cents, and then after that, an hour of riding will cost the current price. After that, $1 more, or whatever price in your country, will be the price for a long ride into a new city. To me, that makes a lot of cents/sense!
@@eugenetswong A dial a ride service on Flextrafik (the bad one) usually costs between 6 CAD and 22 CAD depending on the length and it also varies from municipality to municipality.
Transit fares in Denmark are very expensive already, usually at least twice that of North American transit systems and getting progressively more expensive over longer distances, but the new dial a ride system called Nærbus, at least uses bus fares so a trip on it would usually only cost 3-4 CAD or about 2-3 USD and be included in the zonal fares of whichever transit mode you'd continue on like a regional train.
I am from a medium-sized city in Chile called Copiapo and there is a project to turn it into the first city in America with its entire bus fleet 100% electric. The buses have already been purchased and they are waiting for them to arrive in the city. I find it curious that a city as small as mine would be the one to undertake a project of this caliber.
Interesting! I'd love to see how their performance are compared to cities with colder winters in Canada!
Using batteries is a waste of funds. Why should transit companies be coerced into expensive innovation?
Using trollies and wires seems good, though.
This is why all the Portland suburbs outside of Portland should adopt a commuter train with double deck and add the weekends.
Alas London only has *two* LRT lines (Tramlink and DLR). I think there are 11 Underground lines and six Overground lines.
London, Ontario, however has a very limited bus to the airport.
There is a city of 300k in western Norway called Bergen that has it's own (and constantly expanding!!) light rail system, called the Bybanen, super cool imo. From what I understand, they currently fund it through road tolls (and state funding ofc). Super cool thing, might wanna check it out :)
Thanks for sharing! I will definitely look into that!
If small town can’t have small then why is there a Planned High Speed Rail In California Which i support that project and before you ask, no it’s not failed, it’s good actually, because they should at least connect to their local transit in small cities are Palmdale, Madera, Fresno, Merced, Stockton, Modesto And Gilroy, it could bring Buses and Light Rail to their small town too where the high speed rail station is located, Subway is good but it’s too expensive to build it, So not only the public transit is good to small cities in California but also in America and International countries.
Trolleybusses are better than battery-electric busses
Factos
I grew up in the suburbs of Halifax, NS, and the transit was frankly terrible. Taking transit took 2-3 times as long a driving, non peak service was hourly and ended too early at night. Things have improved slightly since the 80's and 90's. They are finally bringing in an electronic fair option and there are a handful of bus lanes on a few busy streets. However, the line near my mother's apartment building is rush hour only! She is considering giving up her car, but she can only take a bus in rush hour? Ridiculous.
I hope transit agencies understand that more supply of services means more people can travel between places!
saskatoon mentioned :DDDD
great point about minimum wage workers ad induced poverty due to lack of transit
thanks! I wish more people will be aware about it!
The North American way of classifying big and small cities as well as the mentality of "my city is too small for transit" while having five-digit populations is just so insane to me. If your city has hundreds of thousands of people in it, it is far from small, and it shouldn't just have transit, it should need transit, good transit! A city that size should not exist in a way where it is so car-centric and sprawly that transit is an inherently inferior and ineffective option. Unfortunately, way too many do, and it shows in their dead downtowns and deserted sidewalks.
At the end of the day, it's more about density and available things to do and places to be, than size alone. For context, I live in a city at the southern end of the Rhineland conurbation in western Germany, with a population in the immediate surrounding metro area of about 500k. We have both light rail and tram lines and extensive urban and regional bus networks, as well as good access to regional and long-distance rail with many departures every hour from multiple stations on multiple railway lines. And it really couldn't work any other way. The light rail runs every 5 minutes in its core section and trains get packed during rush hours, especially when schools finish too. Light rail and buses to surrounding towns (yes, we have interurban light rail) run up to every 10 minutes, carrying thousands of commuters every day while taking up a miniscule amount of space compares to the equivalent in cars and while being less polluting.
There are some definite flaws in our system, like cancellations, infrequent orbital connections or bus delays, but the bones are good, and every city with a bit of density of at least 300k needs those bones. It needs light rail or good trams, it needs regional connections of good frequency and scope, it needs a viable alternative to driving, because there is nothing freeing about being forced to drive.
I don't have a driver's license, and I never want to give up the ability to have options, options for taking good transit.
There's a reason the microtransit zone that supplements an hourly bus that doesn't run for 12 hours or the day stops at Capistrano - Moss Beach and Montara are smaller and richer
Yep!! I hope a lot of people will realize their cities are not "too small" for good transit!
True. If only cities of a population of 1 million or higher were big enough for good public transport there would only be one city left in my country. I know cities of 30,000 people and fewer with decent public transit though, so size is really a bad
a bad excuse.
My phone won't let me edit my comment...
Real
I mean it's viable for going somewhere within a small town. The issue is connecting these town to cities. Their not going to make a 40mile long bus line connection to a city. Nor will they run a train line through a mountainous area. Town and City municipalities don't get along in the first place. The Government won't pay for the bus infrastructure. An entrepreneur won't take the risk. Unless there's a considerably amount of change I doubt it would happen.
Yep, we are losing a lot of regional/inter city connection, or the price for those services become more expensive!
It's all about mindset. There is literally nothing preventing a 40-mile-bus line from being implemented, other than lack of political will. You can run coach-like buses on it, give it an express service pattern with few stops, maybe even park-and-rides and it can work.
A feel like a lot of small cities would be wanting self-driving buses when there’s a shortage of people to drive the buses. Especially if you’re trying to improve transit in a declining city.
and training bus drivers take a lot of time and resources as well
Self driving is still far away from reliable safe use. Prague for example is planing to start on demand minibuses, it will allow better services in remote part of cities and cut cost cause minibuses can be operated with regular car dřívím license.
Public transit doesn't cover its own costs which requires public subsidies (taxpayer support). The travel patterns have changed as noticed but still add time and inconvenience to almost all trips. Overall, a decent video.
Roads also don't make money. Even toll roads don't cover their own cost.
On demand service is almost always a terrible idea! 😤
Completely disagree, busses drastically slow down transit, it would create a huge problem and many inconveniences for smaller cities and towns. They make sense in large cities where there is already large amounts of traffic, but not in small ones
How so? Can you elaborate more on the "buses slow down transit" part?
it's a trade-off between efficiency and coverage. You can have only one not both. Transit is slow in small cities sometimes due to the heavier focus on coverage creating circuitous routes that aren't direct.
@@morethantransitt Sure, I go to University in a smallish city that borders a much larger city. When using public transit it takes me about 20 minuets to cover a little under 2 miles. However when utilizing my car in the small town I actually live in I cover greater distances faster. Not only that but in my small town whenever school busses operate it slows my travel time down significantly. Now I know school buses make constant individual stops and public transport makes regular stops, however public transport in my small town operates until around 9pm, and essentially fills the area with slow moving vehicles that make a lot of stops. Not only that but in small towns or cities, they aren’t even that useful because you are still going to have to walk at least a mile after getting dropped off to get to a destination. In my college city I walk an average of 3 miles a day even while utilizing public transport, in my home town that would be much greater.
So Public transport in towns that don’t need it will slow down traffic, make people walk greater distances (even the elderly or infirm) and probably be a waste of money since greatest of all, no one likes public transport
Buslined don't slow traffic a lot when they are well planned and stopps are well positioned.
@@paxundpeace9970 whoa my comment got deleted