How to Turbo-Charge Your Public Transit 

Yeah the visual for commuter level station coverage is interesting.

In a way, it does. But it also stresses how poorly designed a lot of cities are, with strings of pearls as zones is wide cloth of unreachable.

There’s luxury condos on the corner of taschereau and Rome going up and I expect more will be developed especially in the dead strip malls between Rome and Matte. The only thing is the price. I’d love to buy a condo in a TOD like Du Quartier but it’s $$$$! Great for those who can afford it I guess 😊

What are the tools and do they work in R?

DC and the DC metro is pretty good compared to other American cities like Houston, but the massive parking lots next to stations and the lack of pedestrian and bike accessibility needs to be improved.

A lot of times it ends up being another means to express anti-bike sentiment, trying to find something that sounds logical enough to convince people (and themselves), without really analysing their own arguments. Two reasons I've seen most often are "money should be spent on other things than bike lanes" (bike infrastructure is very cheap, and often doesn't detract from public transit funds), or "not everyone can bike" (bike lanes work for mobility devices, and don't prevent disabled people from getting places by transit) People often view cyclists as a stereotype (e.g. MAMILs, or entitled commuters...) that conflicts with their priorities, instead of how most have common causes (reduced traffic, streets safer for kids, accessible ammenities nearby)

Why not just remove lanes for moving cars. Then the parking can act as protection for the cyclists. But, yeah. In some cases there can be a cost argument. One city I lived in before tried putting a bike path completely separate from the roads... That didn't go anywhere that people cared about. And, it also cost a decent chunk of money. And in some cases I would rather they just make the road safer and not a stroad that put in a bicycle gutter or something. But if you can afford "real transit" at all then bike infrastructure is a drop in the bucket.

@@jonathanlochridge9462 Yes, building bike lanes that go nowhere is missing the point. So many people still think of bicycling as only a leisure activity. They can't imagine someone going to the bank, grocery shopping, work, or visiting a friend downtown, on a bicycle. In other words, every place and activity that a "normal" car driver would go to and engage in.

The Montreal Olympic Stadium: www.google.com/maps/@45.556868,-73.5542456,3a,75y,61.44h,100.02t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slGGHoo645GfynBVehGod7w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DlGGHoo645GfynBVehGod7w%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D155.8261%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

I guess that's why NJB calls GO "Car-Dependent Transit." But maybe those industrial wastelands were where land was available and affordable for those stations to be built in the first place?

If it was affordable to build giant parking lots ut was affordable to build mixed use neighorhoods.

The multiplier is always going to exist regardless of how dense the land use around the stations is. It just will change from, for example, 10,000 within waking distance and 60,000 within biking distance to, say, 40,000 within walking distance and 240,000 within biking distance. Unless you only want to increase density within walking distance of the station and no where else, but even then there will still always be more people within biking distance than walking distance unless literally no one lives in the too-long-to walk but short enough to bike radius.

Overlap with census data, analyzed in R

@@OhTheUrbanity Interesting, thanks. Don't know much about that, need to learn how to do this myself.

It's Rockridge Station station in Oakland, looking east. Orinda is just a bit further

Thats one solution but personally i dont like them. Rather i rent a Bike at my Stop or i get a bicycle there in Advance and use it at my stop

Yes, but they talked about alternatives to that in the video, using two different bicycles. Use your own bike on the home end and use a bike share on the far end. Or if you have some kind of secure parking for overnight you can have a second bicycle that just lives at the far end of your commute, but that seems less efficient than just using a bike share if it's available. It's a workable model because it's far more likely for bike share to exist at the work end of the trip than at the home end.

@@AlRoderickThere's a lot of concerns about bike sharing due to potential for theft and the fact you have to manually readjust the bike to fit your body size. I still say a folding bike is the best answer, since with a folding bike you don't (mostly) have to deal with finding a parking spot for the bike and and it can be carried on board commuter trains/subways easily.

Are you suggesting we should avoid that area even on a relatively empty train car with no wheelchair users needing to use it?

@@OhTheUrbanityYes, and I'm surprised you don't see the issue with what you're doing. I'm suggesting that the regular usage of the handicap reserved space by able bodied folks will lead to a situation where wheelchair users don't take transit, so transit doesn't accommodate disabilities, so wheelchair users don't take transit... You see where I'm going with this? You're unwittingly making the same argument that many NIMBY's make that it's pointless to build bicycle infrastructure & transit because nobody will use it because it doesn't exist because nobody will use it, where circular logic prevents a situation from ever improving. It's not just about who is on the train right now -- it's about who might get on the train. You've now created a situation where if a person in a powered wheelchair gets on the train, you're delaying everybody while they get to the one place in the train they can safely exist.

​@@MaxwellWilliams42 I don't think the problem is as bad as that. There are priority seats on buses and trains for the elderly or pregnant people. If none of them are around I will sit in them. But as soon as an elderly person shows up I stand and offer them my seat instantly. Why can't the wheelchair area on a train be used similarly?

@@kb_100 my experience taking buses & metros suggests that people who actually stand up and get out of the way for elderly folks / disabled folks are the exception. And on a crowded enough bus, nobody wants to give up their spot. But at least people *can* stand and move to make room. Bikes, however, cannot stand or get out of the way. And when a train car/bus is sufficiently crowded, moving a bike out of the way is another unnecessary barrier to disability access that becomes a serious safety issue. People took decades to learn (and, IMO, are still learning -- especially delivery drivers) that taking a handicapped parking spot is unacceptable. So why treat transit any differently?

⁠​⁠@@MaxwellWilliams42you’re pinning a lot of worst-case scenario thinking on 1) a shot of an empty car where the bikes could be easily moved for a disabled person and 2) assumed irresponsibility on the part of Oh The Urbanity folks and other cyclists, that they wouldn’t move their bikes. I’ll match your anecdote with mine: on the transit I ride, people reliably clear out of the priority seating for the elderly and wheelchairs. Occasionally, someone is absorbed in their headphones and needs to be tapped on the shoulder, but then they move. Also, direct comparison to handicap parking is a bit of a stretch. In one case, you have a two-ton, locked machine where the owner is out of sight. In the bike transit case, the owner is in sight and earshot, and the load is light enough that the owner, a transit employee, or any bystander could make the necessary shift on short notice.

Except that if you're in the US, medical costs from almost any cycling accident (from being hit by a car or otherwise) instantly wipes out all that savings. I can't afford that risk, so I'll keep driving a car, even though my current worksite is less than 15 minutes away by bike.

That is fair, but the flip side of that is that bicycling is also the most exclusionary form of transit. Cycling is great exercise, but only if you are a fundamentally healthy working age adult. If you have a disability (even a temporary one, like a broken leg), or are elderly, or you have multiple small children to care for, you can be locked out of it, in a way that you aren't for public transit, and are much less likely to for cars. Therefor, you have to be careful when building spaces that rely on bikes (as opposed to having cycling as an option), because there is a large fraction of the populace who simply cannot use them.

@@boosterh1113 That has the caveat that cars are also exclusionary, yet so much is built around it exclusively. Bike infra is also not as exclusionary as you think, since mobility scooters, escooters, etc can use them just fine

@@Zalis116 No one is talking about your personal finances.

@@boosterh1113 Same can be applied to roads for cars. Not everyone can drive a car so we must be careful "because there is a large fraction of the populace who simply cannot use them."

Eh, in new builds, sure, but in any sort of existing community, the space for a connected network of bike lanes and paths has to be bought/reallocated from other uses. Trains are relatively compact relative to the volume of people they serve, and buses can use existing car infrastructure without meaningfully reducing its capacity, but every metre of bike path comes at the cost someone else losing that space, beyond the price of the asphalt itself.

@@boosterh1113 yeah as I was saying: cheap

few people use the bike to go to transit stations because in N.America most commute stations are 'Park+Ride' placed outside the suburb, reachable by car, rather than by bike !! It is not safe to use a bike to a station. This happens everywhere in US and Canada. And also with the new REM in Montreal . It is placed in between a 8-10 lane highway and walking/biking you need to cross a car dependent stripmall hellscape. (unbelievable, we talk about a metro system !) ! In the Netherlands 40% of train travellers come by bike to the railway station. Therefore major rail stations have 1000s of bike park spaces (covered and some underground). Even small, rural towns will have several hundred bike parks spots. 2/3 of Dutch live within 5km of a train station. And they are available with good bike paths. . Ofcourse in rural areas a higher % will come by transit or chauffeured by car ('relatives;'). But one can come by bike to the station in 15-20 min. (comparable with a bus..) ! I live in a city 3km from the main station. Although I have a bus and a commute station nearby, yest I often choose the bike, because it leaves me independent from transit on my return journey ! (and it saves some money too..) In Dutch cities (with anything transit) you won't find many (free) parking spots. The cost that a city saves with good bike and transit routes, is that the most valuable plots around the stations can be used for tax generation housing, offices or retail, instead of unproductive parking fields. Go Transit is the biggest parking provider in Ontario with 77k idle parking spots ! Mostly free and some even in expensive parking garages. They yield almost nothing. In Berlin the (alternative) value that can be generated by an average parking spot is €5000 per year. This will be similar for Toronto, I reckon. Apply that to Toronto it means that those Go Transit Parking spots represent a 77 000 x $5000 = $385 million per year ! If they could be used for revenue/tax generating functions. And I am not even talking about the massive costs that need to be made to make those spots accesible by road (extra car lanes, more complicate highway junctions ..etc).

Yes, people are just trying to get to a destination. The more options or combination of options the better. We know which forms are the most sustainable and affordable. There are many factors that determine which one(s) we use. 1. Walk = short distance 2. Bicycle = moderate/longer distance 3. Buss/Tram/Subway = longer distance 4. High Speed Train = up to 600mls (1000km) 5. Airplane = over 600mls (1000km) (consider a train) 6. Car = only when needed and preferably electric (consider renting) Boats/ferries may also be an option (or necessary)

Completely agree. This is my favorite urbanist channel, by a good measure. (CityNerd is also good, but a bit more wonky, which is less my style.)

@@barryrobbins7694 Though since 3h is the generally estimated threashhold to take HSR, 1000km is quite far and it's much more typical to have a max threashhold of 500 to 800 km (depending on the existing services and infrastructure). That being said, sleeping trains can fill in the nieche of longer routes (especially of more conventional rail).

@@MarioFanGamer659 Yes, it is a matter of individual time sensitivity. A lot of different factors are involved. I would encourage the very upper limit.

@@barryrobbins7694 Train is more environmental than car, but I would say consider a car instead of a plane if multiple people are traveling, for environmental and cost reasons.

will SAY car style park and ride is ONLY good out at the END of line station to "capture" the NON local commuters in the country / next town over ETC any "urban area" should NOT be park and ride focused

If you use efficient ways of parking bikes (double stacked bike parking), I'm willing to bet that you can fit way more than 10x as many bikes in the same areas as cars. Especially if you use a parking garage with multiple levels, which coincidentally can be built a lot cheaper since it only has to hold the weight of bikes and not cars.

Not to mention the fact that you can't take your car on transit. So you only get the range extension from cars on one end, whereas bikes can give you range extension on both ends.

@@alex2143 True. Bike parking varies. Cambridge and Somerville MA had bike racks they would put in some curbside car parking spaces in the summer. Cambridge figured 14 bikes could be parked in one, though they end up being very cosy bikes and conflicting if they have baskets. 7 bikes would be pretty easy -- 7 things to chain a bike to, maybe a couple more to the outer frame. OTOH secure bike cages take more space; I don't know how much, though I would guess still at least 4 bikes per parking space.

@@allanjmcpherson definitely. Also, it's pretty easy to create a bike share or bike rental program so you have access to bikes at every station. Try doing that for cars. Sounds cost effective to have a train station with several thousand cars just waiting for a train commuter to hop in. That's even before taking into account that a lot of people can't drive.

BUT THAT IS COMMUNISM!!!!!! 👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿👿 Sometimes I think if the car had been invented by a communist, the USA would have the best public transport system in the world.

I did not expect to see you here.

@@adorabell4253 The Great Leader is everywhere, especially in our hearts!

@@steemlenn8797 Watch Yeonmi Park. Many people live in terrible conditions in NK. Why do you watch Oh the Urbanity complaining about the government if you're ok with bad government in NK?

Fact check: True!

It makes the video understandable by most ppl on the planet hence more people will watch it, so it's a win-win for everyone even small channels.

Hear hear! (I guess that’s kind of ironic to say, actually)

I saw a couple of guys coming into Montreal with bikes getting off the REM in central station. I didn't see where they exited tho.

I'm not a canadian, but does this help? rem.info/sites/default/files/Stations_du_reseau/Gare_Centrale/Gare_Centrale-Cartes_acces/EN/Fiche_Carte_Gare_Centrale_WEB_EN.pdf

In Québec, you can always bend the rules as long as you say "J'ai l'doua" while doing it. Pretty sure you can enter by the entrance on De la Gauchetière street.

Get a foldable bike that you can carry like luggage.

Maybe you could lobby for a lockable inside bike storage

I'd rather Have a low jack sevice.. But I love my bike soo you know

I think a "one card" system for ALL mobility solutions would be great it be Metro OR a bike share

Good point! Should be able to tap the transit card to unlock a bike. But bike sharing docks are often full at destinations, and empty at starting locations.

In Warsaw first 20 minutes of bike sharing is free. And up to 1 hour from there it costs 1zł which is about 1/4 usd.

In Montréal, if you link your Opus card to your Bixi account, then you can use an electronic bus ticket to unlock a Bixi for a ride. Also, I am pretty sure that when buying the yearly Bixi membership at the start of the season, that I've seen discounts for having train or bus/metro passes.

Isn't that only if you do transit oriented development in the Canadian way of condo towers around the stations surrounded by normal North American suburbia though? If the city was planned for bike+transit, and the higher density development (maybe not condo towers, but at least "medium" or "upper medium" density) extended as far as it was practical to bike, there would be significantly more people living the "practical to bike" area than the "practical to walk" area, just because of how much larger it is

Not really. Shoebox apartments are not appropriate for everyone, and if every family with 2+ children or self employed worker who needs a workshop in their home is forced into using cars because there is little to no low-medium density housing within reach of transit station, then you are back to a having a large (and generally well off) segment of the population being car dependant, and demanding that politicians and business owners make the services they need car-accessible. If transit-centric urbanism is going to succeed it needs to be able to accommodate those people. Second, remember, every starting point is also a destination. That shopping centre near Panama Station in the video is probably a significant pull factor for a number of people who travel to Panama Station. Get rid of it, and you may well have less usage of the station (and definitely less balanced usage of the station).

@@simonkemfors agreed, but I’m our current cities, high density on top of the station and tapering off density to the edge of the zone would give the best mix of density without overhauling all neighbourhoods. Maybe within a few decades we can get more infill!

@@boosterh1113 IMO we must build diverse housing types. 3 bed condos and townhomes for families, small bachelor units for starting properties, and of course mixing in significant commercial vendors. That way you house more ppl without losing the draw factor.

Actually if land use wasn’t messed the multiplier would be 11.11 if we use the 750m/2.5km radius as the walkable/bikable ratio from the video

Ottawa is where dreams go to die

Well, here in Stockholm, we don't have that great integration between bikes and other transport (although with intercity rail it's different). But I think that's largely due to how the bus network covers pretty much the entire city, which means you can always take the bus if the metro isn't enough, so you don't really need bikes as much. On the other hand, the city isn't that large (counting the city of Stockholm, rather than the county), so if you want to use a bike, you can most of the time head directly to your destination, which increases the acceptable range by quite a lot since there are no transfers.

Thank you!

As an inhabitant of almost-Twin Cities (Stillwater, MN) I second this! I'm just beginning to explore my state from a transit-bike-pedestrian point of view, and I'd love more new urbanist perspectives!

Some people just dont like the look of giant steel and glass blocks (8:03) .

I don't understand how RTL hasn't set up multiple feeder bus routes to the REM yet. Also if you're willing to use studded tires and install pogies on your handlebars. Winter cycling is very doable except for during heavy snowstorms. I tried it last year and it wasn't so bad.

Because rtl sucks. Their idea of frequency is once an hour on weekends.😛

E-scooters and other PEVs are rapidly growing for personal transport, and represent a huge improvement over traditional bikes. They can be much smaller (solving issues like fitting onto transit), they can help you go farther, haul more cargo, and they help people tolerate hills and hot weather much better. They clearly fit on bike infrastructure and "bike lanes", which really should just be the infrastructure for moderate-speed personal vehicles. Some super-scooters will be ridden at 30mph+ and belong on the road like a motorcycle, but that's a small percent of an already niche group. It's pretty fair to set a speed limit for "bike" lanes, and frankly for sidewalks too. That's how you can differentiate if a mobility scooter should be on a sidewalk or bikelane, if a scooter should be in the bike lane or street, etc. You're not the only "traditional" cyclist who has a knee-jerk reaction against PEVs, but the benefits are huge and there's really not much adaption required to incorporate them. Don't resist change just for the sake of it. PEVs can enable way more people to live car free.

I only ever ride e-scooters while drunk, so I bet that's why.

There is currently a 3 year project in Quebec allowing the use of e-scooters and unicycles on both bike paths and roads (as long as the road has a speed limit of 70 km/h or less). They are forbidden on sidewalks. The rider must be 14 or over, and must wear a helmet. Also they aren't allowed to go faster than 25 km/h.

I've done the same in Vancouver, since Evos are strangely unavailable in my neighbourhood half the time I'm looking for one. 5 minutes walking and 5 minutes on a Mobi instead of a 15 to 20 minute walk to the closest Evo. Or when I've wanted a particular car from Modo, I have a lot more options available within a reasonable biking distance.