From Oh The Urbanity!!
Calgary C-Train Carries More Riders Than the Rail Transit of Bart, Muni Metro and Caltrain
DiscussionIts what happens when you build a rail system for one purpose, then that purpose vanishes.
Curious: what was that purpose in the case of SF?
Move people from the suburbs into downtown SF for work. Pre pandemic, most bay area transit users were 9-5 office workers, but most are remote now.
Wasn't the CTrain also built for commuters though?
Yeah, the Bay Area already has its shit together. Just Muni alone beats all of Calgary transit ridership, and the C-train specifically by about 2x.
BART and Caltrain are regional rail. They have lower ridership than city transit by definition. It’s the same everywhere.
Calgary Transit had > 2 million more riders than SF Muni.
Calgary Transit: 144,385,200
SF Muni: 142,168,200
So the point still stands.
Yeah, while SF has only about 850k residents to Calgary's 1.8 million. SF has a transit mode share that's more than 2x higher than Calgary's, more on par with London and other European cities than anything in Canada.
How about we compare like to like instead of trying to do cheap posturing? Compare Calgary's regional rail to Caltrain and BART and Calgary transit to Muni? Why is the picture flipped compared to your original narrative? What does the evidence tell you?
Yeah, while SF has only about 850k residents
Ohh yeh let's include ridership numbers for Oakland, Berkeley, etc. then only use the population of SF proper. Great logic!
SF Muni only runs in SF, so your comment is incorrect.
(BART also runs to Oakland, Berkeley etc while Caltrain serves other suburbs, but they are not part of Muni.)
Compare like to like. Compare Calgary's transit, all of it, to just Muni. Why does Muni have the same transit ridership as all of Calgary's transit?
Calgary is 1.3 million, not 1.8 million. Calgary's Metro is ~1.4million.
Calgary is almost 8x the size of SF, and is insanely sprawled with Single Family homes, yet ecks out more ridership than the dense small SF city isn't the slam dunk you think it is. SF should be much higher given its metro's population.
SF has a transit mode share that's more than 2x higher than Calgary's, more on par with London and other European cities than anything in Canada
Old Toronto alone, with narrow concession issues has a higher ridership in the Old City than SF. York Mills Station, which is in a literal golf course, has more daily riders per km than the majority of SF stations.
North American cities are nowhere close to that of Europe, and I cannot believe you made that comparison (maybe New York City is an outlier).
You can be a fan of your local transit agency, but c'mon, you can't be deluded to the point of dismissing criticism. I love the TTC, but it has a lot of issues that I don't ignore.
This is nonsense. We have objective data. SF has a 31% transit mode share which is indeed higher than London's at only 30%. Meanwhile Calgary hovers around a puny 8%.
You can try to spin this any way you like, but that won't change reality.
Meanwhile Old Toronto has a mode share of 46.6%, see what happens when you cherry pick data?
London is significantly larger than San Francisco, and Calgary, and has far, far better public transportation than anything North America has. Compare 1,572km² of land in the San Francisco area, and you'll see that percentage drop significantly.
Better yet, compare 828km² of land with Calgary; A sprawling city ecking out more ridership than a dense city is not good.
Old Toronto is not even all of Toronto, bud. Do you want to compare Old Toronto to SF's historic core where 80% of residents are reliant on transit? Be my guest! Let's see that comparison
Meanwhile all of Toronto has barely a 20% transit mode share to SF's 31%. You can try to cherry pick the data all you want. But that won't change the reality that about 2x more San Franciscans take transit that Vancouverites (16% transit mode share). Literally no city in Canada matches SF's transit mode share as don't a large percentage of European cities.
Do you want to compare Old Toronto to SF's historic core where 80% of residents are reliant on transit? Be my guest!
Regent Park already had that mode share almost 20 years ago
You can try to cherry pick the data all you want
You missed the point of my comment entirely; you deliberately cherry pick and omit data to push a narrative that San Francisco is on par with European cities like London when the latter is > 10x larger than San Francisco. If you want to compare SF to London, you need to scale SF in order to make a proper comparison. If you want to compare Calgary to SF, you need to scale SF.
I deliberately chose Old Toronto instead of amalgamated Toronto as an example because that's what you're essentially doing with your comparisons. I was illustrating to you the issues with cherry picking smaller municipalities, and comparing it with the larger cities without scaling.
You can't argue otherwise; if you can't see what you're doing then this comment thread is done. San Francisco is not on par with Europe, and if a sprawled city like Calgary is matching San Francisco, then it's a problem that the SF Metro needs to fix. It's not good.
I'm sure Cali High Speed Rail will help a lot, but more needs to be done.
Edit: grammar
SF, you need to scale SF.
Ok, great. So you agree that the arbitrary metro area boundaries that are not even determined in the same way in the US vs Canada or the UK make no sense.
So let's take the same Netherlands chunk of land that is the Bay around Calgary and London and see who does transit better on those areas.
But what does that even have to do with comparing transit in the city of San Francisco and the cities of Calgary and London? Who mentioned metro areas? What do they have to do with dedicated city transit like Muni and C-train?
How exactly does it make sense to compare an (ultimately arbitrarily) administratively defined city at the heart of a much larger contiguous urban/metro area, to the entirety of another urban/metro area? Surely the logical comparison is the whole Bay Area vs Greater London vs metro Calgary (which largely coincides with the administratively defined City of Calgary)?
How does it make sense to compare even more arbitrarily defined metro areas that don't even follow the same rules for what a metro area is?
In the US, metro areas are defined by the census and include entire counties. You cannot have fractional counties inside metro areas. How does it make sense to compare measures that aren't comparable in any way at all? The Bay Area metro includes regional and state parks in it on an area the size of about half a Netherlands.
Let's take the exact same measure for Calgary and London. How do you define a comparable area for Calgary and London?
How does it make sense to compare even more arbitrarily defined metro areas
Because they are not more arbitrarily defined. Yes, there is no single methodology for determining what a metro area is, but at least there is an attempt at an objective methodology that reflects some real criteria of importance. Meanwhile, there's no real methodology for administratively defined city areas, some will encompass almost the entirety of their contiguous urban/built-up areas (Greater London, City of Calgary), some will encompass only the old core of their urban areas (City of Paris, Tokyo Metropolis), some will be one core in a multi-core continuous urban area (City of San Francisco, City of Gdansk, City of Essen), etc - it's just a product of history and politics (and a bit of raw geography).
You also don't have to just go by official definitions/numbers/borders - just look at a map and use some common sense (and if you're inclined, look up the population data for the smaller units and add them up yourself). It's clear that "Calgary" and "London" encompass all or most of their urban "blobs", while "San Francisco" is just one small part of a much much bigger "blob".
The Bay Area metro includes regional and state parks in it on an area the size of about half a Netherlands.
I'm not sure how that matters. Population size is the key here, not territory.
I do think that comparing Calgary with SF/Bay Area isn't the most logical choice though, their urban geographies (which inevitably impact how transit works and is organized) are just really different. Better comparisons would be, say, LA, Denver, Portland.
Oh cool! So you agree that arbitrary city boundaries are not a reliable to define a metro area, but the even more random US census definitions that go by county borders are somehow OK?
Explain this to me. How does a county border account for what is and isn't inside a metro area? And why use census metro area definitions at all? This is not what they're built for at all. If anything, they're trying to measure as much land area that is related to a city as possible. So wouldn't you get a ton of empty land and far flung suburbs in any US metro area definition by default?
It is nonsensical to say that you don't like city borders because they're "random administrative borders" and then pretend like the same random administrative borders of counties are in any way better.
Either use one for all of your metro areas or the other. So let's see what the equivalent is for the US Census-style 'Calgary metro area" with all the land up to all the county borders included! And let's do the same for London. And then you can compare "the Bay Area" metro to the other cities.
As things stand, SF is a separate city and county with its separate transit system. If you live in SF, you can get to more places in your city faster than you can in either Calgary or London. Which is why the transit mode share for SF is better than both other cities mentioned. No one who lives in SF cares how people in Sonoma county, half way up to Oregon, gets to work!
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats!
31
+ 30
+ 8
= 69
[Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme to have me scan all your future comments.) \ Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.
The CTrain is Calgary’s regional rail.. it’s a hybrid suburban railway and light metro. It’s just that calgary isn’t a trillion municipalities like the Bay Area. We amalgamated as we went. Most of the suburban enclaves are just part of Calgary now. Calgary’s transit mode share is certainly lower than specifically SF’s, but astronomically higher than the Bay Area. SF proper is more comparable to inner city YYC whereas whereas our more suburban areas (Symons Valley, Mackenzie, Westridge) would be more typically understood as separate municipalities in traditional American urban planning, such as San Jose etc
Wrong again. The Bay Area metro and the Calgary metro have comparable transit mode shares. Only metro areas in the US go by counties, so the nine-county Bay Area metro includes about the same amount of land area as half of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Canadian metro areas are legislated according to Whatever the provincial governments wants to include in the "metro" designation.
With the Government of Alberta's establishment of the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) in 2017, the CMR's boundaries were legislated to include the City of Calgary, Foothills County to the south, Rocky View County to the west, north, and east, and a western portion of Wheatland County further to the east.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Metropolitan_Region
But even with the Bay Area metro including completely empty regional and state parks, including a rugged coastline, somehow the Bay still manages to do better on transit.
I’m not even going to argue this. I’m a transit planner. I have been since I moved to Toronto 26 years ago. I am sitting looking at the document that proves that the PCMA (Populated Calgary Metro Area) transit mode share is higher than the PSFMA. Even if I do the math on my own, if you consider all the cities that make up the primary portion of the Bay Area - ie: cities that people commute to and from with SF as a hub, it is still significantly lower than looking at Calgary/Chestermere/Cochrane/Airdrie. On top of that, the per capita usage blows SF out of the water.
Please come bark at me again when you have your urban studies degree, or your masters in urban public transit design.
Who cares that you're a "transit planner", random guy on the internet? And why should anyone go by your made up measures to determine transit performance?
SF is SF. The Bay Area is the Bay Area. Metro areas aren't even defined in the same way between the US and Canada. So how are you going to pretend like any comparison is at all valid, Mr. "transit planner".
If this is the quality of transit planning that you do in Torronto then no wonder you barely crest a 20% transit market share!
First off, I live in calgary. Second off, it takes very minimal amounts of common sense to understand why metro areas are defined differently…? Because cities are designed differently…? Like everyone has now pointed out how many times…? SF proper is in no way equivalent to the city of Calgary proper..? I’ve already explained a couple times that no matter how I do the math our per capita usage is higher than SF proper, PSFMA, and the Bay Area.
The fact that you lack this very minimal part of critical thinking hindering your point goes to show how exactly how and why you’ve massively embarrassed yourself here.
made up measures
oh boy who’s gonna tell him
Ok, and how is the census-defined nine-county Bay Area in any way a similar measure to the Calgary metro measure? They’re not defined in even remotely the sane way. That Bay Area measure has an area about the size of the Netherlands!
You’re trying to compare apples to dinosaurs while you’re criticizing me for comparing apples to pears??
1.4 million
without any exoburbs connected by regional transit.
with only 2 lines.
Yes, and Calgary has about an 8% transit mode share while SF has a 31% transit mode share. Which by the way is 1% higher than London's and 2x higher than Vancouver's 16%
get back to us when youre counting more than the tiniest tip on the peninsula
Lol, that's the city of San Francisco! Do you want me to move the Bay and the Pacific ocean out of the way just so that any Canadian cities have a shot at getting to SF's transit quality?
When you say "Toronto has better transit than San Francisco" that's what you are comparing! Be accurate with your words if you don't want to be called out when you're wrong.
you seem pretty desperate, maybe you should tie your ego to something that doesnt suck as hard as SF
By this logic Paris has a 64.8% transit mode share and its transit is more than twice as good as London's or SF's. It's just not a very meaningful statistic. I'm almost certain you know this is not a meaningful comparison as well, which is why I'm a little bit confused as to why you push it so often on this board.
Paris has a 36% transit mode share,
Paris offers a wide variety of mobility services, with a balanced modal share between cars (43%), public transit (36%), walking (16%), and other modes. Mobility demand is robust, as 66 billion kilometers (41 billion miles) were traveled in 2022, generating 4.8 MtCO2e.
You all keep trying to pretend like the completely random, county-based census metro areas actually represent how a metro area is set up. SF is a separate administrative unit within its own county. With it's discreet transit system that only serves SF an no other city. Yes, it is located in a megaregion with three other major cities. But you can't pretend that anyone saying that they live in SF lives in San Jose or Oakland.
So if you want to talk about the Bay Area then talk about the Bay Area. SF is not the Bay Area. SF is SF.
Did you even read the link you sent? Your source is using data that goes far beyond Paris, considering it states Paris has a population of 7.1 million and a surface area of 2300km2 when the city has a population of 2.15 million and a surface area of 105.4km2. You're literally doing the exact same thing you're complaining about by picking and choosing a boundary that goes well beyond city limits.
You all keep trying to pretend like the completely random, département-based census metro areas actually represent how a metro area is set up. Paris is a separate administrative unit within its own département.
So if you want to talk about the Paris then talk about the Paris. Paris is not Île-de-France. Paris is Paris.
The city of Paris had a transit mode share of 64.8% for commutes in 2015:
From figure 1:
https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2555642
For that matter, I'm not sure where your source gets 36% from considering all of Île-de-France had a commute transit mode share of 43.2%.
This is literally the first paragraph from the link that I sent!
Introduction
Paris has a well-balanced mobility network, offering a variety of options Paris offers a wide variety of mobility services, with a balanced modal share between cars (43%), public transit (36%), walking (16%), and other modes. Mobility demand is robust, as 66 billion kilometers (41 billion miles) were traveled in 2022, generating 4.8 MtCO2e.
And while personal cars account for less than half of trips made through Paris, they produce 86% of the city’s mobility emissions. Parisians should take advantage of new car-free zones, hundreds of kilometers of bike lanes, and a high density of metro stations.
So tell me, why are you pretending like SF and the Bay Area are somehow the same thing?
If I had a nickel for every urbanist video about Alberta in the past few days, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened twice
I would assume influence rather than coincidence.
I seriously doubt it. RMTransit posted a day before Oh the Urbanity! (2 days early on Nebula), and OTU! actually visited Calgary and Edmonton for their video. There's no way for that to happen
The influence was the biking conference in Edmonton. They all got their footage and had vaguely similar video turn around time
Ahh, that makes a lot more sense
I feel like every other repost I see here nowadays is about Calgary transit.
This is mad considering the C-Train only has two lines, covers a much less populated metro area, and actually has some depressing ass looking lines that parallel stroads or highways.
Now just imagine the numbers if Calgary converts all those R1 and parking lots surrounding their existing stations into mixed used TOD style developments. The daily ridership numbers could easily climb by another 100k per day.
it'll climb with the new line.
the current 2 are at capacity during peak.
That's what you get if you make transit not go where people want to go
I couldn’t easily find the data to verify this, but a different YouTuber argued that high ridership in Australian and Canadian cities has a lot to do with job density in the city centers.
I would have explained this the other way, that the reason why Bay Area developed with the job market in the suburbs is that the transit is so awful.
silicon valley businesses are inspired by university campuses, the largest companies founded by college students who had no concept of commuting to an office tower.
NYU and Columbia does not look like Stanford. Transportation dictate the city.
They're using 2023 Q4 from the APTA https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2023-Q4-Ridership-APTA.pdf
The ridership numbers are easy to find lol. I’m talking about the claim that “Canadian and Australian have higher job density downtown than American cities.” Anecdotally, the Bay Area is famous for their huge tech campuses in the burbs, but I’ve no idea how the job distribution is in similarly sized places to Calgary and Edmonton like Nashville, Jacksonville, Raleigh, etc.
Ops misread what you wrote. Yeah, Calgary main Oil and gas headquarters are located in downtown.
Yeah, I don't really buy that quote that much. An issue right now, at least in Toronto, is that office vacancies are at an all time high.
After the pandemic, transit culture shifted from a "job commuting" service, into more of a leisure/going out type of service. It gets busy during the evenings, Friday nights, and the weekends. Anecdotally speaking, the train gets sorta crowded at midnight.
Rush Hour still exists, and the job commuting is still alive, but it hasn't recovered into pre-pandemic levels, while Friday night & weekend ridership increased significantly.
I think the U.S' main cities has more job commuters than many Canadian cities today, but that's mostly in part of a culture change rather than transit failing.
Canadians are also poorer. This leads to more reliance on public transport.
We also have quite expensive fuel. Gasoline goes up to $2CAD/liter($5.57USD/liter) in Vancouver and $1.50CAD/liter($4.18USD/liter) in Toronto.
Idk if poorer = more transit use is necessarily true. If you look at NYC, average salaries are much higher than most other US cities but transit use is also very high. It’s more about urban planning and density IMO.
Think about the poorest places in the US. They're not ones with high transit ridership or even any transit system of note.
Considering BART and CalTrain were developed as commuter services, and the Bay Area probably had the highest quantity of hybrid/remote jobs in the world - I’m not surprised.
I’d put the blame not on the quality of the transit but the city itself. Ottawa’s arguably totally incomplete 18(?)km light rail line nearly beats out BARTs 5 line 211km system in terms of ridership (and miles ahead in ridership/capita I believe), not because it’s any better, but because loads of people still work in gov offices downtown, while I can imagine the grand majority of the jobs in the Bay Area are mostly remote or hybrid jobs post pandemic. Although it’s unfair to compare commuter/regional services like BART and CalTrain to an LRT, but still
It just goes to show how grim the post-pandemic recovery has been for SF. Even with major projects like Central Subway and Geary / Van Ness BRTs coming online, overall system ridership is two-thirds that pre-COVID. Compare to Calgary which is at 85%.
It correlates closely with downtown health -- Calgary has rebounded with strong back-to-office policies and a commercial-to-residential conversion programme to revitalise their CBD, while SF is struggling with crime and urban decay.
SF downtown was all tech companies, and they went remote. They need to either attract new industries or push for residential conversions to start to fix things.
Given that I live in the Bay but visit Calgary these numbers are depressing
But the comparison is a bit odd, Canada cities consistently beat out American ones for transit, and the Bay Area is still reeling from post pandemic transitions in service. Id be more curious of similar metro networks in the US and their related networks like SEPTA or MBTA
To put this even further into context: Calgary’s metro population is only 1.48 Million. Roughly the size of Oklahoma City or Richmond, VA.
It’s a nonsense comparison of urban core transit and regional rail. Just Muni has 2x higher ridership than all of Calgary’s transit while SF is half the size in terms of population.
Okay, so you wanna compare just Muni Metro vs. Calgary C-train? Looks even worse for San Fransisco then. 65.6k/day vs. 264k/day.
No, SF relies on the largest trolley bus network to carry the bulk of the transit riders. Let's compare all of Calgary's transit to just Muni.
Tell me why does SF have the same ridership while having under half the population of Calgary? And why does SF have a higher transit mode share than London while Calgary's is low even for a US city?
Then make your own post comparing overall transit, this was about rail transit in those cities and can clearly see Calgary barely needs two half-assed LRT lines to kick your precious San Fransisco's ass lmfao.
Yeah, literally all of Calgary's transit isn't enough to come close to SF's 31% transit mode share, bud.
And why shouldn't I call out a post if it's obvious bullshit? Should we just let this community degrade into pure misinformation? Who does that help in any way?
Because it's not bullshit at all, it's perfectly factual, it just doesn't say what you want to hear.
The C-Train is wildly more successful than the Muni Metro, despite them having almost identical route length, and both being primarily urban and inner suburban transit systems.
Rail transit is an important and often expensive investment, and comparisons like this help to better identify how to prioritise expansion of rail transit.
Of course, if you decide to view the post as saying "San Francisco sucks, Calgary is amazing" then yes, that would be a very inaccurate depiction. But the post doesn't say that San Francisco sucks. It just presents the raw statistics.
Lol, SF Muni carries the same number of riders as all of Calgary's transit while SF is about half the population and nearly 4x the transit mode share. Tell me how exactly is Calgary transit "wildly more successful" that Muni?
And why does SF have a higher transit mode share than London
Because London has a 40% mode share for ped+bike. London's automobile mode share is only 33%, much lower than that of SF.
So why does SF have a higher transit mode share than London? Wasn't that what we were talking about?
Tbh I feel like sf is way more of a bus city. I’m not sure Calgary’s bus numbers.
Calgary Transit overall had a 2023 annual ridership of 144 million, which is a bit over half of the 268 million of Muni + BART + VTA + AC Transit + Caltrain + Samtrans, so there's a lot more bus riders in SF.
That said, SF isn't exactly a bus city. It's a car city, and to a greater extent than Calgary.
Then Why does SF have 2x the transit mode share of Calgary? No matter which way you spin it, SF is more on par with European cities than with any city in Canada. SF has a a slightly higher transit mode share than London. I don't see Calgary on any other city in Canada even approaching that any time this century.
SF is more on par with European cities
Ohh really now, based on your previous rants on this sub I though it was the uniquely greatest transit place on earth! Keep coping, lmfao.
Lol, what do you want me to say? It's true. SF has, for example, a higher transit mode share than London, and a higher mode share than any Canadian city.
Why don't you just look this up real quick and tell me what you find? SF does indeed have incredible transit. Come visit if you don't believe me or any of the other people who have used it.
Where are you getting this mode share data? You seem to be comparing SF only numbers to cities that include outer suburbs inside their city limits. This is definitely the case for Calgary and even for London where the area covered by city limits is huge compared to SF. If you look at mode share data for the peninsula or the Bay Area at large, the transit share shrinks considerably.
Yes, SF is a small city. How does that change the fact that is has excellent transit? And why exactly do you think that the near-empty suburbs around Calgary don't need to be included in that measure but somehow suburbs in a different county than SF need to?
You do realize that by moving the borders of what you consider "SF" and "Calgary" you can gerrymander literally any number you like? So why should the entire Bay Area need to be included in "SF"? Let's include a bunch of random empty fields into your "Calgary" and "London" measures too then!
Because the fact that most cities in North America amalgamated their suburbs and SF didn’t is entirely arbitrary. So you have to properly normalize the data you’re looking at when making comparisons. All core cities have much better transit mode share than their surrounding suburbs so SF being the same isn’t particularly remarkable.
So do that then! Come up with a methodology on which areas outside of SF and the other cities need to be included in the "commute-shed". Don't try to quote arbitrary census-defined metro area metrics that go by county borders.
SF is a separate entity with a separate transit system, just like those other systems that serve the other cities. It is perfectly reasonable to compare how well Muni does with the riders in its territory vs how well TfL and Calgary transit serve their populations.
SF does a better job than TfL and Calgary transit at convincing them to use transit. This is the unvarnished reality. No one forced Calgary and London to swallow up a bunch of suburbs and then fail to serve them with high-quality transit!
Wow! Baby area trains connect to two major airports, and have so many lines, and have less ridership than a single line in Calgary?
Calgary’s system is two lines, but the point still stands.
And Calgary has not got around to building a line out to its airport yet. The C-Train ridership numbers would jump seriously when that happens.
Nope. Muni schlongs Calgary ridership alone by 2x. This guy compared regional rail ridership to urban core transit ridership. Commuter services always have much lower ridership than inner city transit. That’s pretty much a law of nature.
Okay, so you wanna compare just Muni Metro vs. Calgary C-train? Looks even worse for San Fransisco then. 65.6k/day vs. 264k/day. The guy did you a huge favour by adding regional rail lol.
How about the fact that just Muni in SF has the same transit ridership as all of Calgary's transit while Calgary has twice the population of SF? Why does SF have over 2x the transit mode share compared to Calgary?
Let's also compare BART+Caltrain to Calgary's regional rail while we're at it? No? Why not?
Let's also compare BART+Caltrain to Calgary's regional rail while we're at it? No? Why not?
Sure, let's do that. 174k vs. 0 so San Fransisco wins this one. Calgary has zero regional rail so it sucks for that. I don't think anyone has problem admitting that, I haven't seen any hardcore "Calgary best in the world fuck yeh!" people in this sub unlike you for San Fransisco lmfao.
Similarly, Calgary is beating Muni metro for urban rail no matter how much you deny it.
Calgary has twice the population of SF
Again, if you want to just use population of SF proper then please feel free to also reduce the ridership numbers by removing people who are from Oakland, Berkeley, etc.
So what's the point in pretending like Calgary, or any other Canadian city for that matter has anything even close to SFs transit mode share? Objectively, about 3x more San Franciscans take transit than Calgarians.
Calgary has a single light rail system and busses. Very few people use it compared to SF, but since that's all there is it absorbs all the existing ridership. SF has a light rail/light metro, the largest trolley bus network in North America, busses, streetcars+cable cars, and two regional S-bahns. Is it not natural that the ridership will be split since there's so much more transit in SF compared to Calgary?
No one is pretending anything, OP just made a post pointing out how Calgary's two half-assed LRT lines is carrying more people than Muni Metro + BART + Caltrain combined (I personally think he should have left out the latter two, since like you said, regional rail). It's not that deep. You are the one who got your California pride all worked up.
Is it not natural that the ridership will be split since there's so much more transit in SF compared to Calgary?
Yes of course but that wasn't the post was it, it was just rail I'll be happy to see you post about different modal shares in SF vs. Calgary, instead of seeing you go "nooo! SF bestttt! California fuck yeh! Sun may rise in the east at least...."
So you concede that comparing SF's pretty excellent regional rail to Calgary's non-existent regional rail was a pretty silly idea to begin with? Ok.
SF has a 31% transit mode share. That's, like I mentioned 1% better than London's, and about 2x better than Vancouver's. It's almost 4x better than Calgary's!
It was a ridiculous and misleading comparison. Why are you upset that I called out an obviously misleading post?
This wasn’t true pre-Covid but it sadly is now. Bay Area ridership - especially Caltrain collapsed post Covid and never recovered. Caltrain went from 70k avg weekday riders in 2019 to 20k in 2024. Source: https://caltrainridership.com/
Green line when?
once theres 3 lines we'll get some decent numbers...
Daily train rider here, both lines are packed during peak hours. This surprised a lot of my American family when they came to visit
common frisco L
frisco
please do not ever say this again
When SF gets its act together we’ll start adhering to its nickname preferences.
Real
It cracks me up that the nickname Frisco exists but San Francisco people famously hate it. Like wtf, how did that happen?
please do not ever say this again
I don't even live in the bay and never have I just particularly dislike this nickname. strictly gatekeeping for gatekeeping's sake
How about San Fran then
noooooooo
"Awww, look at cute little Calgary" -Vancouver
This is an extremely misleading post. Comparing regional rail ridership to inner city transit is asinine. Just Muni, not counting the rest of the Bay Area transit, has about 2x higher ridership than the C-train. That's only in San Francisco which is literally half the population of Calgary.
Why don't you compare Bay Area's regional rail ridership with Calgary's regional rail ridership, and SF's urban transit to Calgary's transit, and let's see who wins there.
There's a reason why SF has higher transit mode share than London, and higher than any city in Canada. Cherry picking some numbers by mismatching different types of systems won't make Calgary look any better in the real world.
Which one has more open drug use and petty crime?
Edmonton hands down.
Well now, ya. No thanks to tech bros that work from home!
BART and SF as a whole has big time crime problems contributing to lack of ridership
Get your act together, Bay Area. Lol.