The very best 2 years of my working life were when I commuted by bicycle nearly every workday. It was a bit over 10 miles each way with around half down into a river valley and the other half back out the other side. In summer that ride was around 35-40 minutes each way and winter rides were 45-55 minutes. Oh, and I was 48 years old when that started.
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Yes, and the other thing it skimmed over is that Toronto proper might have decent public transit, there’s an awful lot of sprawl beyond Steeles that doesn’t have that same level of transit provision.
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or the next landfill…
I have lived in L.A. for 40 years. There is an extensive public transportation system (and the light rail has made it a little better) but you have to allow a lot of time to get anywhere and can never assume that things will run as scheduled. And in some areas the parallel routes are about a mile apart, so you might have to walk a good distance to or from a bus stop. To me, the many billions that have been spent in the last 30 years or so building the rail system would have been better invested making the busses better, but I suppose the bus system seems old fashioned compared to brand new electric trains.
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If you just look at total costs… environmental, labor,accidents,maintainanace, fuel, … all of it- mass transit is obviously much cheaper than private cars. The only way private cars can be made to seem cheaper, is to hide the true accounting. Subsidize the oil wars, make public alternatives as political and as painful as possible. Oh, and get kids started on car culture as early as possible, with pixar movies and lego sets and hot wheels, etc.
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If you look at the public transport network of the Amsterdam city center you see it’s basis is like the (bad) examples from the posted movie: a lot of lines (mostly trams, but also light rail and buses) radiating out from Central Station. But what makes it great is that all these lines are connected at different places, making it look like a spider web.
(Of course getting around by bike is always very well supported).
I live in a city not far from Amsterdam, and recently they finished something they call a bicycle highway, allowing me to bike the ‘strenuous’ 12 km to work in a pretty direct route (I have to take 1 ferry). Takes me about 45 minutes, which beats the public transport option taking about 50 minutes.
Sure, by car I could be there in half an hour, but parking costs (a lot of) money, if there would be a place to park, and if I’m not stuck in traffic jams (which buses are almost never stuck in, because of separate bus lanes in the right places).
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There’s the underused, and not well thought out Sheppard Stubway and the LRT cancelled by Ford, for Scarborough, as well, which would have helped people in the burbs move around. In other words; putting in expensive transit where it’s not needed, and not putting it where it IS needed.
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But you also have the GO Trains which are by any account, freakin’ awesome compared to what most American cities have (or rather not have).
ETA: I’m so glad Toronto finally added the train to/from the airport. I used to have to rent a car every visit.
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Cambridge, UK, has that too- though I think the only trams that ever ran on those rails were horse-drawn.
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This. I’m not particularly fit but in the before-times would cycle the 20km to work twice a week on an ebike (and everyday in the school holidays). Takes about the same time as driving and paid for itself in saved car parking costs alone after six months.
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The GO trains are great, but they only run every half hour (used to be every hour on weekends), and are really only for getting in and out of the city; I wouldn’t use them to travel within the city. The connections are not always great with the local transit. We need more of them; more regional trains like they have in the U.K. and Europe, but I don’t see that happening.
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I feel that. We live 3km as the crow flies from my wife’s office, but transit options are so terrible that Google Transit literally tells her to walk.
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This is a very big reason as to why I remain in Munich. My native USA just doesn’t grok public transportation like the Germans do, and Munich has one of the best networks. It’s a mix of light commuter rail (the S-Bahn net), underground (the U-Bahn), a tram network and of course lots of buses. My commute to work is 40 minutes by public transportation, an hour by car.
Honestly, I hate the idea of returning to the States by now.
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My wife was very intimidated by a 10 mile bike ride. Until I finally dragged her on one. It was fine at the end of the day, she just took it easy.
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I used to bicycle commute 10km each way through inner Sydney. It took about half an hour; if I’d done it by car, it would’ve taken over an hour thanks to the bumper-to-bumper peak hour traffic. Not hard to do, although it was helpful to have a quick shower at each end to avoid sweatiness.
OTOH, these days I’m sufficiently unhealthy that I can barely manage to wobble around the block.
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That’s not “real history”, that’s real conspiracy theory. Which bears as much resemblance to real history as most conspiracy theories.
It’s about as non-factual as Toon Town.
Here’s an account of the real history of the real conspiracy theory, as explained by a real historian:
–Martha J. Bianco, Portland State University
I can recommend a whole bunch of other enlightening reading on the history and decline of the PE Red Cars. if you’re interested
It’s not a simple tale, but it’s nothing at all like the oft-repeated conspiracy theory. 
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Angelinos love to tell the story of how “LA used to have streetcars everywhere and GM bought them all out and closed them down because something something conspiracy”
Except none of that story is really true. LA did briefly have the Red Car lines, but it was a private system built entirely as a loss leader marketing scheme to inflate property values in suburbs. The cars weren’t profitable and as soon as all the land in an area was sold off, the developer shut down the line serving it. It was never real public transportation infrastructure the way people imagine it was.
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