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kEiThZ said:
.... Delving deeper I would define a subway as:

1) Using rail technology - No BRT but Montreal's rubber tired metro would count.
2) Fully grade separated - Yes, this would leave room to define the Eglinton tunnel as a subway.
3) Frequent service. You can define 'frequent' in many ways. But I would exclude anything where the wait time is longer than 5 minutes.
4) All day service. A rush hour service is not a subway system.
5) Mid-sized stop intervals. Somewhere between 600m and 2km would be acceptable...
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Be careful with that wait time. Looking at New York subway timetable or Atlanta's Marta timetable, you will see longer wait times than the TTC's.
 
^ Meh, there's exceptions to every rule. I doubt anybody would say though that those lines are not subways. My definitions serve more to draw boundaries in that squishy area between LRT and subways and between regional or commuter services and metros.
 
doady said:
There is no 'subway' in Montreal. If you ask someone in Montreal for directions to the nearest subway station, they probably wouldn't know what you are talking about. They might direct you to a mall food court instead, or something.
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That's just being pedantic. If you ask someone in Toronto for the directions to the nearest Metro, they'll likely direct you to a former Dominion ... but that doesn't mean that the BD, YUS, and Sheppard lines aren't Metro lines.

SimonP said:
Montreal has about 10,000 more subway riders per day.
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Having lived in both cities, I find that hard to believe. The Toronto trains are wider, more congested, more frequent, and run later. I'd be highly suspect of any document that suggests that of the two systems (of almost identical length and number of stations), that Montreal is longer.
 
nfitz said:
Having lived in both cities, I find that hard to believe. The Toronto trains are wider, more congested, more frequent, and run later.
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http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/riderep/documents/08q2can.pdf

TTC Heavy Rail: 864,000 daily
Montreal Heavy Rail: 987,000 daily

TTC SRT: 44,500
TTC Streetcar: 238,400

I would imagine that trip distance is the bulk of the difference. Torontonians will take a bus for an hour and subway for 45 minutes. Montrealers tend to take shorter trips.

BTW:

GO Rail: 160,900
AMT Rail: 59,400

Note, in those numbers Toronto shows a significant decline (4% to 10% year over year depending on mode) and Montreal shows a ~2.5% increase. That makes the gap larger than normal.
 
The really interesting number to me is that MTA in New York City represents 1/3rd of the total transit ridership is the United States.

That other 2/3rds includes other New York based systems (Jersy Path, Long Island RailRoad, Staten Island Railway, Metro-North Railroad, etc.)

New Yorks population is ~6% of the US.
 
rbt said:
The really interesting number to me is that MTA in New York City represents 1/3rd of the total transit ridership is the United States.

That other 2/3rds includes other New York based systems (Jersy Path, Long Island RailRoad, Staten Island Railway, Metro-North Railroad, etc.)

New Yorks population is ~6% of the US.
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To be more precise, 30% of total ridership. So together with the other systems in the New York-Newark-Bridgeport CSA (7% of the national pop, 8% of the urban pop) - MNRR, LIRR, SIR, PATH and NJT - it comes to just around 1/3. But if you crunch the numbers it isn't all that surprising, given that the practicality of good transit service varies almost geometrically with pop density. The pop density of the urban areas in the NNB CSA (NYC, Newark, Hudson County, Long Island) range from 5-20K/km^2, by far the highest in the US and Canada. In the US it is comparable really only by the cities in the Boston area (4-7K/km^2) and the cities of SF and Chicago themselves (7K/km^2 and 5K/km^2), which incidentally have monthly riderships of 35M, 25M and 50M respectively. Using Boston as an example, the core area served by the MBTA has a pop 10-15% that of the "transit area" of NNB and 1/2-1/3 its density, but it still has more than 1/10 of NNB's ridership, still very respectable and the ratio is comparable. Chicago, with 1/3 the pop but 1/4 the density, has only 1/6 of the ridership. Los Angeles County has more than half of NNB's population, but with density only about 1/6, its ridership ends up being less than 15%. With much of the rest of the population living in suburbs around Californian or Midwestern cities with minimal pop density, it's not unreasonable to expect that transit ridership is concentrated in the dense urban areas.

A problem with counting the NYC subway separately from the commuter/suburban railways, though, is that it significantly double-counts, because the points where those services terminate in NYC - Grand Central (to a lesser extent), Staten Island Ferry Terminal, and especially Penn Station - are relatively far from employment hubs and most passengers must transfer to the subway, so most of the trips on the outer system would also have been counted in the subway ridership already.
 
SimonP said:
It makes sense that Montreal would have a somewhat more developed mass transit network, as it's geography is much more confined. This leads to higher population densities, and more transit users.
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Not by much. A couple years ago some SSP forumers calculated the population density of the central 25 square miles (~65 sq km) of a bunch of cities. I imagine it was a tedious process but they came up with quite the list. Montreal had 9790 people per km while Toronto had 8679 - lower, but not by much. Plus that doesn't include employment.

Density is only one piece of the equation. Three American cities had numbers in the same ballpark - Chicago, LA, and San Francisco - and they all have lower subway ridership.
 
In the end, I guess we'll just have to wait and see if what the Eglinton line looks like ends up looking like a subway or not. Personally, I'd rather just go for the known factor. We're building a subway-sized tunnel from Keele to Laird, right? So why not just, I dunno, run a SUBWAY through it? Honestly the rest of the line you may as well just run buses there. That's what Torontonians are used to.

Secondly, I do see the rationale for comparing Montreal and Toronto. If Montreal is even close to Toronto in terms of subway length or usage, something is seriously WRONG. It's just intuitive. If we're not building subways, we're stagnating. Then people will point out that we are indeed building subways--to Vaughan and Richmond Hill. Because, you know, 905ers are people too. Call me old-fashioned but I'd rather the subway network conecentrate on the core first. DRL should be FIRST priority, no ifs, ands or buts. Not Spadina. Not Yonge. Not Eglinton. Not even my perennial favourites, Sheppard and Danforth to STC. Once the DRL is built and how it effects travel patterns, then we can more accurately plan out the rest of the system. The DRL would be like a second backbone, for both the BD and YUS lines.
 
rbt said:
TTC Heavy Rail: 864,000 daily
Montreal Heavy Rail: 987,000 daily
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That just defies reality. The Montreal trains have a lower capacity than the Toronto ones; and the Toronto ones are 2-3 times more frequent. Something is wrong with those numbers.
 
nfitz said:
That just defies reality. The Montreal trains have a lower capacity than the Toronto ones; and the Toronto ones are 2-3 times more frequent. Something is wrong with those numbers.
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Hmm.. Both Green and Orange run 2 minute frequencies during peak. The capacity of those two lines together is higher than the Yonge/University loop and serves roughly the same core area. Effectively 4 line segments feeding the core instead of our 2 line segments.

Churn can also have an impact. Lots of Finch riders remain onboard until south of Bloor. I wonder if Montreal has this issue as well or if ridership destinations are more spread out/shorter trips.


Once Yonge/University improvements come online (trains, signals, etc.) I wouldn't be surprised if ridership jumped to fill every bit of the new capacity.
As you said, Toronto's ridership is currently constrained by service levels in the core.
 
nfitz said:
That just defies reality. The Montreal trains have a lower capacity than the Toronto ones; and the Toronto ones are 2-3 times more frequent. Something is wrong with those numbers.
Click to expand...
I think it's also more to do with how "packed" the trains are overall rather than just the available capacity of the trains (I'm just suggesting, don't know if it actually is; I haven't been to Montreal in years).
 
rbt said:
Hmm.. Both Green and Orange run 2 minute frequencies during peak.
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Not according to STM's website. -

Line 1: http://www.stm.info/metro/inter1e.htm

Line 2: http://www.stm.info/metro/inter2n.htm

Both show a 3-minute frequency in rush-hour; and even then from only about 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM and from about 4 pm to 5 pm (Line 1) and only for about 30-minutes in the PM (Line 2). At 7 AM they are both running at 5-minute intervals, , at mid-day they are 5-6 minutes, at 7:30 PM they are at 6-minute and 7-minute intervals, and by 11 pm they are 10-minutes or slower frequencies. Compare to YUS which is less than 5-minutes from 6 AM to 1:30 AM, and 2.5 minute frequency during a much longer rush-hour period than in Toronto. And what about Weekend service; YUS is less than a 5-minute frequency all weekend; Montreal is 6-11 minute frequencies.

I've never observed as much crowding in Montreal; I've stood in station in Toronto and let 3 trains pass before I can get on (or even get close enough to the train to touch it!); I haven't had that experience in Montreal.

The point about longer trips in Toronto is good - and matches my experiences, but I'd still be surprised if the passenger load in Toronto is less than Montreal. A measure of passenger-kilometres would be a better measure!
 
I find Metro trains to be overcrowded, particularly in the downtown "loop".

I find the Metro fustrating for several reasons:
- Overbuilt and very deep stations: Place St-Henri or Lucien-L'Allier anyone?
- The Metro can be far from the main streets one wants to go to. The walk from St-Laurent to Berri (a block or two from even St-Denis) is long enough. It manages to just miss Westmount and does not serve NDG well.
- Downtown, the locations of the lines/stations can be fustrating as well. Try getting from Gare Centrale with baggage to the Metro. The most logical connection appears to be Bonaventure, but is a trek up and down stairs and escalators and halls.
- Frequencies can be bad, though they were improved somewhat a few years ago in off-peak periods. Cars are overcrowded and hot.
- How about some elevators? They still have yet to retrofit any stations!
 
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