Newsgroups: tor.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!snow.white.toronto.edu!price
From: price@white.toronto.edu (Blaine A. Price)
Subject: Re: European subway systems vs. TTC
Message-ID: <88Nov27.205223est.15498@snow.white.toronto.edu>
Summary: TTC isn't that bad
Keywords: TTC,subway,Europe
Reply-To: price@white.toronto.edu (Blaine A. Price)
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
References: <8811252311.AA05323@wilson.csri.toronto.edu> <1988Nov27.120631.4151@sq.uucp>
Distribution: tor
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 88 20:52:13 EST

In article <1988Nov27.120631.4151@sq.uucp> ludo@sq.com (Ludo VanVooren) writes:
>
>In article <8811252311.AA05323@wilson.csri.toronto.edu>
>hofbauer@csri.toronto.edu (John Hofbauer) writes :
>
>>...You must go to Europe or Japan to see how a real transit system 
>>works.
>
>I disagree. I am French and I know the transit systems of most of the big
>European Cities. It is not better than the TTC.

I have to agree with Ludo.  I spent last summer using the public 
transportation systems in most of the major cities in Eastern and 
Western Europe, and overall the TTC wins in most categories.  Munich 
is probably the only city that embarrasses Toronto in terms of public 
transit since it has a fraction of the population and the entire city 
is honeycombed with a fast, clean, efficient U-Bahn (subway).  I think 
that the TTC loses in terms of understandability for non-English 
speakers, but it certainly allows you get closer to an arbitrary x,y 
coordinate in the city than most of the European systems.  It is 
definately cleaner than all but the German system and the cost is 
reasonable when compared with those in (North) Western Europe.

As for Japan, I haven't been there either, but when you consider the 
population difference I don't think that there is a valid comparison.
It's like comparing the TTC with Bramptom Transit.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blaine Price      (416) 978-5182                 price@white.utoronto.ca  
Department of Computer Science                   price@white.toronto.edu
Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4     {allegra,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!price
"If it can't be expressed in figures it is not science, it is opinion."