That's just a Canadian problem. Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries and once you travel you realize that even some developing countries are now better than that. The smugness and the sense of superiority they have at not being the US is delusional.
The US is like this too. Almost no American cities have reliable public transit, and even in those that do, like NYC or Chicago, the stations are pretty filthy in my experience.
Also, I feel like this is an unusually hostile comment.
Not just hostile, but an ironically delusional comment considering what you're correct in stating about the U.S, but also that Ottawa is a newsworthy exception among cities in Canada with municipal trains, save for perhaps the first week after Montreal's recent build.
To anyone who's "started travelling" (how smug), they'd realize that Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, maybe even Calgary and Edmonton to lesser extents have viable or great municipal train systems. They aren't Tokyo great, or Paris great, but they are pretty good and usually clean.
Among developed countries, I can think of a few that since visiting, while novel, I've actively chose Vancouver over; other cities in Canada would probably not win out, but that's why broad statements about countries shouldn't be taken seriously.
Definitely. I live in Vancouver and it's quite good for North America.
There's also a decent amount of anti-public transit people here that tend to make their job a bit harder. I live in a part of town where almost everyone except me drives and I remember chatting to my neighbors when we had a transit funding referendum. The details are a bit hazy because I think it was around 2016 but in my area people were more or less unanimous when it came to preventing public transit funding.
I do have a few personal gripes about the new skytrain line being full at rush hour but for what it's worth I had the same issue with the main circle line in Tokyo. Rush-hour is rush-hour no matter what your method of transport.
Agreed on all fronts. Those Tokyo lines are insane at rush hour, and almost dead silent at every other time; it's kind of the nature of homogenous commute types, it's just hella more efficient to do it with trains than anything else we have. Thankfully, the new subway extension should help distribute people a little more evenly, and I believe TransLink is looking start running longer trains, which should provide a little more capacity at peak times.
DC has an advantage in newness and in materials selection (tiny tiles with lots of grout looks cool for 5 minutes), as well as having relatively fewer station layouts.
It was specifically a Great Society program meant to contrast with Soviet metros and their ornate architecture. NYC and London have the issue where they were first generation systems trying to figure out what worked and what did not.
DC’s general height limits in conjunction with typical American SFH friendly zoning also do not help utilization.
That’s america in a nutshell. We can’t infringe on people’s precious individual expression and self actualization after all. That said in the DC system, expense was traded off in favor of cleanliness and lack of crowding—the stations are enormous (and very costly).
As a newly-minted Canadian I've noticed that as well. I moved to Toronto from Istanbul five years ago and while I was away, Istanbul added 75 kilometers to its metro. That's longer than the entire Toronto Subway.
All this talk about being a world-class city, while nobody knows when Eglinton Crosstown, a "subway" line using streetcar ("LRT") tech that's been "in progress" since 2011, will open. Don't even get me started on SmartTrack :)
The term "World class city" is meaningless to people who aren't politicians or consultants pitching to the International Olympic Committee.
NYC and Chicago are dream cities for many, some Torontonians included. Does that mean that their transit stations aren't teeming with capybara-size rats? That they don't have problems with homelessness and poverty?
And I say this as someone who lives in the 'burbs and is upset that the LRT delays have continued as long as they have.
It isn't just a "Canadian" problem. You see that all over the USA too.
Also, why the hostility? I've never met a Canadian that expressed a sense superiority about not being part of the USA. I've met plenty who are proud of their national identity, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's quite admirable too, in my opinion. Nation-building isn't easy.
I am not the parent but the comment does have some merit (and I say this as a Canadian). For a lot of things we simply gloat that we’re better than the US and then end up thinking that our work is done.
Classic case is health care (‘look, we spend less than the US and have free healthcare’) where instead of looking up to countries with better healthcare outcomes than us, we look down on America and act smug. Other cases include our climate record, and post secondary education.
I am yet to meet a fellow Canadian who hasn’t complained about our health care system. It seems to be one of the main discussions around provincial elections.
> Classic case is health care (‘look, we spend less than the US and have free healthcare’)
Who is saying this, other than low-information Americans on social media hung up on the word 'free'? Every Canadian knows that the reality is much more complicated with capacity shortages since Covid, and an opportunistic provincial government in Ontario doing its very best to push further privatization.
A very large part of Canada's national identity is "not being the US". The two countries are so similar, that Canadians hold on with their fingernails any marginal difference and any criticism is responded to with "it could be worse, we could be like the US".
I don't know. I heard this narrative a lot more during the trump era, and I rarely hear it now. I have a pet theory that it comes up in popular Canadian culture when a republican is in office and dies down when a democrat is there.
Maybe it’s changed, but the “Canadian identity” has long been this amorphous thing many Canadians quietly fret over because nobody is quite sure what it is but they're sure it exists.
Since US and Canada are so similar, a lot of the discussion of identity are around the differences, which to me is a weird way to talk about a national identity.
It also comes up a lot when someone mentions something positive about the US that Canada struggles with, say economic growth - then it becomes a common refrain of “yes, but at least X is better in Canada than the US”.
It’s also used commonly in discussions in healthcare - any change is described as “Amerification” of the healthcare system even those the change would just make Canada more like European systems.
Maybe it’s unavoidable being right next door to the US, I don't know.
Bashing Canada is like hitting Mickey in Disneyworld. Having said that, just google 'an honorary member of the Third World' to find the answer is (was actually) Canada.
I was in Montreal recently and the metro is one of the nicest I’ve used. It was on time, reliable and well designed. The stations are all architecturally interesting, and some of them even “beautiful”. The trains are very comfortable and unlike most metro’s, the lighting is soft and doesn’t overwhelm your senses when taking at night. Also for anyone interested in trains, the rubber tires on an interesting touch, albeit limiting if they wanted to expand the metro above ground.
