Can North America Do Train Stations Right?
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- One great advantage of train travel is - or should be - that, unlike an airport, a train station can (and should) be located in the densest part of your city. But...North American cities are all over the map (literally) when it comes to station locations. Let's check it out.
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Previous CityNerd videos referenced:
- High Speed Rail Playlist: • High Speed Rail
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Resources:
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- www.amtrak.com...
- www.fastcompan...
- spectrumlocaln...
- www.lmtonline....
- nationalpost.c...
- canadarail.ca/...
- www.trenmaya.g...
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Before you leave a comment regarding my tenuous grasp of US city name pronunciation (or English language pronunciation in general), just know that it isn't going to change anything. I'm too far gone. Also, if you were really that smart, you'd be watching this video ad-free and (thankfully) comment section-free on Nebula, where it came out four days ago. Using my custom link gets you 40% off an annual subscription, and really helps the channel! go.nebula.tv/citynerd
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WONDER what THE new towns are doing.. And Wtf is Microtransit LIKE a old van Service from 1993
No comments section on Nebula?! Where will i get my sick entertainment? 😎😎
@@CityNerd 🤣
I wish to leave a comment about your regarding my tenuous grasp of Canadian city name pronunciation 🙂
And Québec City is never compared to New Orleans. It is more akin to a small city in France.
BTW, the New Orleans train station is in one of the most inshospitable location possible for a city. Surrounded by ramps to highways and pedestrian-hostile boulevard that lead or come off highways.
Are you saying your channel is aimed exclusively at people who may afford $300 for a Nebula subscription? As a retiree with MS on a fixed income, that automatically excludes me. So I'm unsubcribing and leaving your channel to the wealthy elite. 😢
I'm a simple man. I see a video with the word "Train"
I click
Only one of my click words, but City Nerd plus Train = CLICK
I, too, have a touch of ‘pergers.
Same, idk where my obsession came from.
As one should.
The fate of this channel depends on it
At 6:00: Winnipeg also has 3 times per week, train service to Churchill on the coast of Hudson's Bay, a distance of nearly 1,700 km.
Home of the future Manitoba Riviera as climate change intensifies 🥵🏝️
I see you started with Edmonton's Via Rail station, infamously a kilometre from the nearest *sidewalk*. My office right downtown is in the building that used to be the passenger rail station until 1998, when they removed the rail lines downtown and moved the station to the worst location they could find. The lower floor of the office building, that used to have the train station waiting room, now has a gym, bike parking, and a lot of miscellaneous storage rooms and janitors' closets.
There's actually a second disused centrally located passenger train station in Edmonton, on the south side of the river - it was the north end of the passenger service from Edmonton to Calgary, which was shut down in 1985. That station building has a restaurant in it now.
I am still mad that the city and CN didn't bother to keep at least the basic downtown train loop available for some sort of service when they allowed regeneration of the downtown CN rail yards. If I had my way I'd restore it with a downtown tunnel running under 104 or 105 Avenue from 121 St and the CN ROW to CN Tower itself... Even if you use the metric of a phantom multi-model station at Government Centre Station which was planned in the 2000's the city does well... It just needs more modes brought together... Personally either site would work be it the CN Stationlands/Tower complex OR Government Centre at 109th and 97th with all buses using the relatively abandoned Government Centre transit centre on the East side of the ledge grounds connected with a pedway tunnel... Just get it built! There should already be an airport express hydrogen or EMU service running from GC or Old Strathcona Station to the airport now much less after Edmonton adds another 1 million people in 20 years like is forecast! Heck the city added 100K in 2 already! And that was during the pandemic!
PS, I wondered what happened to the CN Platform level... Good to know!
@@muppetistit be better if they build a train station north of high level, that parking space by government centre would be good connection to Light Rail and intercity or regional trains
@@stickynorth I didn't know there was such a plan. That could be really useful alright - especially if the high level bridge could be eventually replaced with a bridge that could still carry train traffic to link downtown Edmonton to Calgary.
Ottawa had a great station right by the Houses of Parliament and across from Chateau Laurier, but ripped up the rails and turned the beautiful station into a convention center. Had it been maintained as a rail terminal, one could travel by train right to the heart of Ottawa. Now, one is on the outskirts.
BTW, Grand Central is sort of inter-city, with trains to Stamford and New Haven, up the Hudson to Poughkeepsie.
Trains shine when they travel city center to city center, whether it be housing or offices. Ideally, there's lots of people within walking distance of the station.
While not downtown, I’d hardly call the Ottawa train station as being on the “outskirts”.
It's surrounded by industrial buildings and a Walmart. As City Nerd says, unlike an airport, you can have a train station right in the heart of your city. Ottawa had this, and threw it away. If the station had remained where it was, I could take VIA and then walk to a hotel, museums, or government offices. As it is, if I I take VIA, I need to take a taxi to get anywhere, which isn't any different than flying in. In contrast, in DC, NYC, and Boston, there's a ton of stuff within walking distance of the train stations. That proximity is a major reason for the popularity of the NEC. In NYC terms, the Ottawa station is like Jamaica Station, far from the city in distant Queens.
@@peter7936there’s an O Train LRT that connects directly from the Via rail station to parliament hill. Taken it on several visits and it works really well.
Today, I learned a new word, "Amshack", which is so apropos, as Amtrak has just finally begun the replacement of my town's "basement of the tiny local art museum" station house with a completely new station house with level boarding platform, the first in my state. It is overdue, but it was delayed by the COVID pandemic.
Love that Toronto is also updating Union to make it even bigger and better! And that it actually gets proper utilization from all forms of trains. It's obviously not perfect but the fact that it's doing so much better than the rest of north America gives me a bit of pride
Vancouver has (had?) two "main" train stations. Pacific Central (the one depicted here) was the terminus for the Canadian Northern/National Railway, and Waterfront Station which was the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Both had trans-Canadian passenger service until the 1970s. Pacific Central now has the inter-city trains (and a Skytrain stop across the street) whereas Waterfront, the far busier station, only has local service.
I mean Waterfront is in the heart of downtown and the waterfront area with two skytrain lines and the West Coast Express. Though if they have another West Coast Express line and increased Amtrak services probably would get more ridership + TOD plans for Transit hubs
Champaign-Urbana at over 25%! I know under the 500k threshold, but still, an incredible number.
As well placed as Chicago’s station is, it’s placement at 5th makes sense. It’s an incredibly dense area, but a vast majority of that area is office or industrial space, not a ton of residential zoning (most of that is out in the neighborhoods). That being said, it is shifting, with office buildings being converted and the meteoric densification of the near west side. Here’s hoping that trend continues
There's so much to talk about with Phoenix. The light real is pretty cool but then you realize it's basically one line for a top ten metro, and even then they're considering linking that slow line to brt instead of the generally supported (outside of snobsdale) expansions of that ...one line.
For those not familiar Scottsdale is the place with don't feed the homeless signs and a belief that homelessness spreads via public transit.
Thanks so much for the link to the population density website.... or maybe not, because I can't stop playing with it.
Nice to hear someone say something nice about brussels. Gets way too much hate online. Super interesting and misunderstood city!
may i ask where there is brussels hate? i havent seen many people praise it but i also havent seen anyone hate one it.
@@tcniatcniatcnia A lot of people online I see put it on lists of cities they were disappointed by or would never visit again. and the whole NJB community loathes Brussels because the angry Canadian who lived there for a few years owned a car and rants against it very often. This one is funny to me because he often talks about how when you own a car you use it more than you need, then rants about how car dependent Brussels is, a place he had a car...This attitude has permeated a lot of people in the online urbanist sphere because he is (in my opinion a bit too) influential.
Haha! I just visited Providence via Amtrak this week. Saw the Cheesecake Factory + PF Chang's mall-duo and thought of your channel!
The Tren Maya stations are indeed very far from the cities they serve, but Mexico also has intercity rail service on the Chihuahua - Pacífico and Interoceánico lines. With those, you get stations like Chihuahua (150k in < 3km) and Coatzacoalcos (148k).
Can you do a video on the great city halls of the country? I’m sure you can think of an epic spin with data and such to tie it to urbanism
Ottawa mentioned !!!!!!!!!!
In the case of Chicago the bulk of the catchment area around Union station is commercial buildings not residential, hence the lower population density, Chicago is a poster child for western US cities where the population mainly lives in the suburbs but commutes into the city center to work (for all the hate Metra gets, it still has very high ridership, the busiest commuter railroad outside of the NYC metro area). Denver is another example that didn't make the list, Union station is very well situated in the center of Denver, but the city center of Denver is still more commercial buildings than residential ones, though a lot of medium density and some residential high rises are going up in the core of Denver. Though RTD still has its hilarious commuter trams that go way out into the south suburbs haha, though the system does see pretty high ridership (and an awesome commuter rail system that really needs to be expanded).
Played around with the tool. Amused by the fact that Utica NY has a higher pop in the catchment area than Buffalo, Syracuse, or Albany.
Also Indianapolis lmao.
Great video! I think you may have missed one station though…
While I don’t want to look for stats to back this up, I’m fairly confident that New Haven Union Station is the busiest passenger train station in Connecticut (both in terms of passengers and trains), and it’s got around 82k people living within a 3km radius. New Haven County is coterminous with the city’s metropolitan area, clocking in at ca. 862k ≈ 9.5% of the metro. pop. living within 3km of the station.
As a side note, I’m somewhat skeptical about the validity of using NHV’s “metro population”, as the county includes Waterbury and other smaller cities and towns along the Naugatuck Valley that very much feel like their own thing from a cultural, economic, political, and urban perspective. Additionally, since 2022, Connecticut’s ceremonial counties have been replaced by what the state calls “councils of governments” as the county-equivalent for census purposes (Connecticut’s county-level powers were all devolved and the county governments dissolved in 1960). The South Central CT COG which centers around NHV excludes the Naugutuck Valley, and has a population of ~568k, and if that’s used as the basis of NHV’s metro pop (as will likely be done from the 2030 census onwards), then Union Station’s 3km catchment area covers ~14.5% of the metro’s population.
In addition to Union Station, NHV also has State Street Station closer in to downtown. Its service is lower, but it is serviced by some Metro North trains as well as CT rail, so it’s definitely got inter-city connections. Its 3km catchment area has a population of 95k, so roughly 16.8% of the (COG-calculated) metro population.
If Calgary Canada had retained its train station downtown it would have easily made the top ten. There's talk of finally getting trains back, so we may get off the dishonorable list
SANTA ANA, ORANGE COUNTY, CA -------- 156,000 w/in 3km catchment. The county seat of the quintessential post-war "suburb". I've been telling people for years that OC is far more dense than most pointy-head "Urbanists" would otherwise believe.
Ah, so GO trains aren't going to count... Hamilton has 124 000 around its main station, but it only gets GO trains these days. (Hopefully West Habour can pick up some Via/Amtrak service. It at least has 89 000.)
Providence! One of the best midsize cities on every score I've looked at...
If we're giving minuses for connectivity, Montreal's Gare Central should also be docked for being over a mile away from Gare d'autocars, the intercity bus terminal.
But with the REM eventually going to the airport and stopping at Gare Centrale, it's a game changer. Merci.
Lancaster PA mentioned 🗣️🗣️
LAND VALUE TAX
Jacksonville represent!!!
We’re also wondering about the catchment area around Back Bay.
Much larger - about 200,000
Kenmore is 250000!
The first and only time our fair city of Edmonton made a video, as an example of a terrible location for a train station 🎉
Columbus is the biggest damn shame
I'm so glad this video taught me the word "Amshack."
The term has been around since the 1970's. It originally referred to the stations Amtrak built as part of their standardized stations plan. At the time Amtrak could ill afford to maintain the giant old stations with the amount of passenger traffic or lack thereof at the time. Most were already neglected before Amtrak came about. Fortunately now a lot of cities realize the value of their train stations and have been renovating the old stations or building newer ones to replace the Amshacks.
It's underused
Ha. St. Louis absolutely had an Amshack downtown but it has been replaced by a somewhat decent multi-modal station that includes Amtrack, metro trains, and local bus lines. Still we have our absolutely beautiful Union Station that is used for everything BUT trains. Maybe someday.
@@mattb1270At least a lot of the Amshack buildings, have been replaced with nicer station house buildings. Normal, IL being one place that replaced their Amshack with a newer building. Although there are a few Amshack buildings still in use like Hammond-Whiting(IN).
The Sound Bend Amshack looks like something out of Africa before they started to get flashy stations.
Toronto Union deserves a high rating due to it being a terminal station for VIA, Amtrack, GO and the TTC. International to local.
There is also a bus terminal attached to the station
Unfortunately for TO, Union station catchment is handicapped, between half the catchment area being just Lake Ontario and the business district, which is notorious for not having many people living there since most people live outside the 1km radius of Union. If all the offices around it were turned into housing (since a lot of them went empty during covid) it would probably have knocked out NYC for #1. Toronto has a really weird sprawl pattern where I almost feel like I'm insulting it by calling it sprawl, since it's all streetcar/subway/regional-rail connected suburbs. It's definitely a cool station, and honestly I'm happy that MTLX is capitalizing on rail-station real estate by turning the station into a mall, a la Shinjuku Station.
Don't forget the UP train!
Just such a shame that there are so few intercity trains. Toronto-Montreal/Detroit trains should be measured hourly, not daily.
@@andrewmackie5110 That’s part of GO Transit, IMO
If anything, the catchment for those cities next to water means the density in actual land/square kilometer is higher. It means both NYC and Toronto are more impressive in their main stations. This was a very cool and informative video! Thank you.
Yeah I think there's a lot to be said about how proximity to large bodies of water affects land value in coastal cities
@@peabody1976 Yes, though merpeople live in Toronto's harbour, which skews the results. But we don't talk about the merpeople here.
Since Union Station is very close to the waterfront and the Toronto islands are essentially uninhibited, it is crazy that Toronto finishes #2 on this list and uses barely more than half of the area of the circle provided by this metric.
US downtowns seem dominated by office buildings, while Canadian downtowns are more mixed and have more housing. Lots of people work near Chicago Union, but not many people live there. A lot of those office-dominated downtowns have really struggled post-covid, so hopefully they build more housing.
Canadian downtowns during the "White Flight" area were regenerated into high rise housing districts for the most part instead of being left to crumble or flattened just for parking. That's why places like Winnipeg, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto dominate the list while Edmonton and Calgary COULD if they revived inter-city train service between the two like has been planned for decades in some form or other..
@samuellush Thanks for the comment. I was going to say the same for Washington, D.C. It rates fairly high, but most of the buildings surrounding it are government and lobbyist/lawyer office buildings. In other words, it looks dense, but it’s a false picture of what it’s like on the ground.
@@SkipGole it’s interesting though because those govt buildings and offices are massive trip generators. The overwhelming majority of trips at any major North American station are commuters, so having the station near the middle of the biggest employment cluster makes sense. Even Midtown Manhattan near Penn Station is much more of an employment hub than a residential one.
It’s just interesting how this list implicitly shows a huge difference between US and Canadian downtown development.
@@stickynorth much fewer of the disproportionately higher in violent crime group living in Canada.
chicago has a lot of housing around the loop. i used to live a few blocks from union station.
Interestingly, Back Bay station in Boston has a catchment area of 205,239, which is higher than the catchment area of “central” South Station (~170k)
South Station isn't really any more central than Back Bay, and it's located in an industrial waterfront area, while Back Bay is located in a high density residential area
Think Back Bay is generally the busier station on NE regional trains
all 3 boston inter-city trains stop there so im surprised he didn't mention it
@@joefitz531not Downeaster which goes to the north only
@@joefitz531He also overlooked Hynes Convention Center in his walkable/transport score convention video, so I can’t say I’m surprised Back Bay Station was overlooked here, too. I don’t think @CityNerd gets Boston.
Love the cat at the end of the video pointedly ignoring you as only a cat can.
I would have thought it was a still image, except for the scroll of names.
I would have liked to have ignored this video. Poor content and analysis. The cat knows best.
It's the only job they have
Washington Union Station is low on the list because it's surrounded on the south and west by federal government buildings and parks. People don't live there but it's a huge employment center.
a lake of Federal Land you could say...... 🙂
@@pjohnson21211 I was going to say something like that 😏
I'm going to go out on a limb and fact check this as true
And hotels, too
It's also low because Washington forbids dense building. Nothing taller than the Capitol dome can be built in the District, so the city center, and the entire district, remains low density both for housing and employment. Compare NYC.
The wildest thing about Penn Station is that Midtown is very much not a typical "residential" neighborhood of NYC. In a way I think a population count underrates its utility as a central rail hub. Of course having Grand Central and Newark Penn (and PABT) so close by helps.
I've definitely worked with spatial employment data before but there's weird confidentiality stuff around it so it's hard to access. Point definitely taken, though
@@CityNerd You could do one of these for just NYC. There are at least 5 train stations that match your criteria for 'intercity' and have catchment area's above 500,000 within 3KM. The little city I live in has a 50,000 person catchment. Check out, Grand Central, Jamaica Station, PABT, Atlantic Terminal and Yonkers Train Station. You don't get a huge central rail station without half a dozen medium sized ones feeding it.
@@thebizzle413 But NY Penn, Newark Penn, New Rochelle and Croton Harmon are the only stations in the NYC metro area where Amtrak stops. NJT, LIRR and MNR are commuter lines, and you could theoretically call NJT an interurban on its electrified lines (though 9 car double deckers hauled by electric locomotives are not what you'd normally see on an interurban).
You picked the wrong station for Miami. Amtrak now goes to MiamiCentral in downtown Miami, which also serves Brightline and has 138k within its catchment basin.
This is also the historic location of the FEC station that the city was built around in its founding.
If anyone is curious about the 3km radius population around other Toronto/GTA stations:
• Yonge-Bloor = 301,988
• Dundas West / Bloor GO = 243,858
• Union = 238,761
• Pape-Danforth = 234,551
• Yonge-Eglinton = 192,482
• Exhibition GO = 173,152
• Yonge-Sheppard = 160,780
• Cooksville Station = 160,167
• Kennedy Station = 126,399
• Hamilton Centre GO = 124,390
And since Hamilton is technically a separate metro area, maybe it should have made the list or honorables!
man i had no idea pape and danforth would be so high considering most of the current surroundings are single family homes, that's really suprising and i'm curious how that'll skyrocket considering the future development planned for the area
@@ant8504there's a lot of sneaky density there like on Cosburn Ave and also the 3km radius is just enough to pick up St. James Town which is the densest neighborhood in Canada! Pape and Danforth is going to be a super desirable location once the Ontario Line is built too!
Hamilton's train station is in Aldershot... GO Transit isn't intercity rail
After playing around with it a bit, I believe the optimal point for maximum population in Toronto is at Spadina and Harbord, with a population of 345,890
@@AnthonyZabrovskywow I think that might be the highest 3km radius population in Canada, since the highest I can find in Montreal is at Papineau and Rue Mason at 343k and the highest I can find in Vancouver is at Cambie and 7th which gives 260k
LOL, Cheesecake Factory, the stroad of restaurants.
6:08 "Find me a US metro area under a million that has height like this"
Honolulu? It's under a million as of the 2023 estimate, but was above a million as of the 2020 census.
Please discuss Buenos Aires as well! Arguably the best regional rail system in the Americas, with only NYC on par. It has 6 termini (three next to each other) with services that extend way beyond the province of Buenos Aires. It also has some of the most beautiful termini I’ve seen, rivalling Estação Luz, Grand Central, Union Station (DC and Toronto), and other notable North/South American terminals.
Thank you for sending me down a rabbit trail of looking up the Argentinian rail network! lol. Some really interesting stations in Bueno Aires that I had no idea existed.
@@mdhazeldine Haha I’m glad! They were mostly built by British companies back in the late 19th/early 20th century. The Buenos Aires Subte (metro system) has attempted to connect all of the termini together to facilitate one seat rides. The work they’ve done is remarkable for the metro, but the regional rail system is truly their pot of gold. If they wanted to, they could bore under the metro line that connects Retiro and Constitución to create a through running rail system, much like Philly!
I also recommend you check out Santiago in Chile and São Paulo in Brazil. These two cities have metro systems that can be deemed “world-class”, with automated lines, platform screen doors, and a decent commuter rail system (nothing like Buenos Aires, but still good).
Argentinian railways are such a sad story. It was the most dense railway network per capita in the world. But every government since 1940s has systematically destroyed it. It's incomprehensible to me why some governments intentionally destroy their own transportation system. But it happened as well in my home country Serbia.
Ville de Québec is not a little new orleans... It might be smaller, but its 110 years older. Nouvelle-Orléans is a "little" Québec.
Justin Trudeau just spoke about how they need to prioritize building dense housing around transit. I wish national Democrats here would talk a lot more about building more dense housing and good urbanism in general. I'm pretty sure housing affordability is a huge issue for voters, yet our national politicians don't talk much about the policies needed to address the housing shortage.
Yep, it's a bit of a disgrace that I have NEVER heard any politician (aside from the Sec of Transportation) say TOD.
It is pretty sad that while urbanism is a growing grassroots movement in the US, its been utterly ignored by all federal politicians. I've seen a ton of local progress but NOTHING on the federal level. To the dems, its probably just another potentially "controversial" subject that they would rather not have to argue over if they added it to their platform
For a lot of the urban poor (a huge voter base for democrats), TOD has unfortunately become a code word for gentrification.
@@jonathanstensbergI would hope there is a way to incorporate TOD responsibly to minimize the impact of gentrification (perhaps by building good housing for a variety of income levels), but everything has so many complicated externalities that if there is a way that satisfies the need of all parties involved, it is beyond my ability to understand.
I-83 really is a huge eyesore cutting through Baltimore. It's also a pain in the ass to catch the light rail at Mount Royal Station in the summer if you have any kind of luggage. It's a beautiful station though and is currently undergoing renovation and expansion.
Unfortunately, the alternative to there ever being an I-83 would be to have a well-organized traffic timing system like DC has, which Baltimore DOT would find to be a challenge several orders of magnitude beyond "impossible."
Could they take down the downtown elevated part, at this point, yeah, I think the actual traffic load would allow them to do it one side first then the other (if, again, they achieve a minimal level of proficiency in moving traffic along)... lot of money for a mere demolition though, over land that is in flood zone...
I'm at the point where I don't even try to use Penn Station, I just get the train at BWI. Barely takes longer to get there and the parking would take about 10 days to exceed the price of a cab.
Surprised Cleveland didn't make the dishonorable mentions. Went from beautiful 700 foot tall beaux arts terminal tower to pathetic little shack shoved between the rails on one side and the 8 lane shoreway on the other
Wow that tower is gorgeous. Just imagine a well serviced rust belt intercity rail with Cleveland as the hub. Connections to the ohio cities, detroit, indy, Pittsburgh.
Add St. Louis to the list too. The St. Louis Union Station was the biggest and busiest train station in the world when it opened. Now it’s been converted into a tourist trap. The Amtrak station that replaced it is one of the bleakest environments I’ve ever been to. Its only saving grace is being in close proximity to some downtown destinations.
Toronto Union Station is a must visit, it’s freshly renovated and probably the best train station on the continent now.
Regional trains, national and international trains, subway and streetcar connection, brand new bus terminal (regional/national/international), and connection to underground pedestrian network.
Too bad it got flooded recently
I'd say wait a while. They haven't really finished the shopping/eating areas yet.
@@tristanridley1601 They're pretty much done now, I think. There's really nothing in either concourse that's under construction anymore.
Don’t forget the airport train! And you can take a shuttle bus or streetcar to the other airport.
Actually there is a south concourse going in. It will apparently be more of a pedestrian passage than a retail zone though.
I think they will be rearranging the tracks and platforms above to accommodate electrification and new service patterns.
The retail is filling out. Lots more eating places, including my new favourite Jamaican beef patty place. Which I hope didn’t get flooded out last week. (Seriously, a month’s worth of rain in three hours?!!)
I lived in Toronto from 2017-2019 while Union Station was under construction and just visited again recently and was so impressed. I felt like I had wandered into Europe or something. the retail options and vibe are great. Now we just have to get rid of the stupid historic train shed and modernize the platform layout so that the GO trains lines each have their own platform and people can wait there instead of underneath.
Tren maya has the dumbest stations locations in the world, all in the name of not disturbing anyone, that's why the stations got built literally in the middle of nowhere
I could agree with you but could be a similar case to China where they build stations in the middle of nowhere and later develop. It is easier than already developed place and tried to fit a train there making it more expensive.
Note that Vancouver is currently working to build out the rather dead area of the False Creek Flats around Pacific Central station with more dense housing, as well as Concord Pacific finishing their False Creek buildout, the Saint Paul's Hospital being rebuilt just North of Pacific Central, Main Street being developed into high-rise towers, and a complete full buildout of Olympic village. There's also a TOD initiative to basically extend downtown density down the Broadway corridor, which would double or triple the high density nature of the CBD. There's actually a new provincial law legislating 20+ story towers within 200m of a station, 12+ story towers within 400m of a station, and 8+ story towers within 800m of a station, making each skytrain station a dense urban center, or mini-downtown. So long story short, within a decade or two, Pacific Central Station is going to rival Penn Station in terms of population. Greater Vancouver has decided to go the Hong Kong route along the entire Skytrain network in order to solve the housing crisis, so it's not like this kind of density is going to be confined to the COV. Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, Coquitlam, and New West are all developing urban centers with similar density.
Vancouver’s 2024 Transit Oriented Area bylaw change is extraordinary and is one of the most progressive zoning and bylaw changes in North America as of today. This will change the face of greater Vancouver area cities in the years to come with a lot more density to come:
Rapid Transit (SkyTrain) Station: Within 200 metres, up to 20 storeys; within 400 metres, up to 12 storeys; within 800 metres, up to 8 storeys.
Bus Exchange: Within 200 metres, up to 12 storeys; within 400 metres, up to 8 storeys.
Also: Minimum Parking Requirements for all land-uses eliminated city-wide in greater Vancouver.
Nice! I just left 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, PA and arrived at Union Station in Washington, DC. The ability to connect between these cities and hop on the subways or bikeshare is soooooo much faster, convenient, and more relaxing than those who choose to drive I-95.
But there's still one major transit gap in that corridor. There's no meeting point between SEPTA and MARC, which means Amtrak is the only transit link between those two systems, aside from a couple of small bus services. Otherwise you have no gaps between SEPTA, NJT, MTA (LIRR, MNR, Subway), and CTRail where Amtrak is the only rail service. And like down south the gap between CTRail and MBTA is only served by Amtrak and a small bus service.
Happy about a politics-free video this week!
You should check out Shinjuku station in Tokyo. It’s even denser than Tokyo station having around 480,000 within 3km on that site, and it is reported to serve about 3.6 million passengers through the station every day!
I agree. Tokyo Station is not a "union" station. Not only is Shinjuku busier and more centrally located, but I believe Shibuya and Shinagawa in Tokyo and even Yokohama Station are also busier than Tokyo Station. Tokyo doesn't really have a downtown like North American cities. It has several centers.
You can find even higher ones on the Yamanote line. Mejiro has about 580,000.
His rule was to look at the main intercity rail station. And that's exactly what Tokyo does. Shinjuku is a local hub. (What a local hub, though.)
@@tristanridley1601 Ueno is also a big intercity station right beside Tokyo and has 500k people in the 3km radius: all northbound intercity trains from Tokyo will stop at Ueno. Shinjuku is also a major intercity rail station for the Chuo line. Tokyo being a "main" station in the sense of "most connected" is an artifact of Shinkansen not being able to through run through Tokyo. For people traveling to/from Tokyo, Tokyo station itself is frequently not the first choice - Shinagawa, Shinjuku, and Ueno are often better "intercity" stations depending on your origin/destination.
The big issue with train travel between cities in Canada is that almost everything is either so far apart that air travel is a reasonable option or so close together that it's hard to compete with driving. The two areas offhand I can think of where there's any interest in resurrecting a proper rail service is the St. Lawrence corridor through to Toronto and the Calgary-Edmonton corridor. Bringing the Calgary - Banff passenger line back from the dead is also getting chatter right now, which'd be really cool; Banff is a very small town to be a rail terminus but it gets an *extraordinary* amount of tourist traffic, and also because it's in a national park you can't just make the town bigger.
It's also extremely hindered by the age of the rails. A lot of the train lines are from the founding of the country so they only link up the older cities that are far apart and don't connect to newer suburban clusters / towns. That and the fact that a lot of them are single-rail and dominated by freight.
That would change overnight if you had high speed rail on the TCH route. The real problem is that it's hard to pay for it with a massive land area populated with a tax base of only 40 million.
@@matthewhall5571Alberta is ridiculously oil rich. We could easily build these trains with government funds. But we currently have a wasteful conservative government that likes to waste money on Turkish Tylenol and hockey arenas instead of actual infrastructure that we desperately need
I was wondering if I'd see Winnipeg on this list, and was really surprised!
Sucks that our very nice station gets effectively zero service though, especially when we have so much rail in and around the city that could be used for commuter style services.
As long as you're so freaking far away from everywhere else, you're going to lag other intercity in Canada. And the rest of us are really flopping.
@@tristanridley1601 oh yeah, we're gonna suffer intercity wise for a while. I was more talking about regional rail using all of the freight ROW in the city.
An American recently informed me that restoring service to Winnipeg is part of Minnesota's state rail plan, in that it is one of the corridors that is being looked at. That would be huge
@@YoungThos oh totally! MSP is basically the only (major) population center close enough to Winnipeg for intercity rail to be viable, so it would be great to have.
11:24 Calgary Mentioned!!! The future station in Calgary will be further east on the large empty land east of the 4 St SE underpass which will have a lower catchment area than the original station, but with it being closer to the new arena and Stampede grounds, it can help Calgary spread out the infrastructure (hotels, etc) of hosting major events. You could stay at a hotel in Airdrie or Red Deer and hop on the train for a quick ride to a Flames game or the Stampede! I'd love to see the province of Alberta host a joint olympic bid between Calgary, Edmonton, and Banff, all connected via high speed rail and using existing or being built facilities.
The CABR project mentioned the original tower station as to why they decided to go hydrogen instead of electrification. I had thought they were going to use the tower station, but it makes sense building brand new
Dishonorable mention: Palm Springs. Station out in the middle of nowhere by the freeway and gets buried in sand all the time :(
or when the Whitewater Wash floods and Indian gets closed. In case anyone is wondering the number is: 782. BTW - in pre-AMTRAK days it was closer to the 10/111 merge.
The septa regional rail station in ambler is taking out most of its parking lot (which is already tiny compared to other septa stations with similar ridership) and re developing.
Fresno finally makes it onto a list! Fresno “five-letter-word that ends with: **cks”… Rocks!
Ottawa's main rail station used to be right downtown, a stone's throw from Parliament Hill and across the street from the Rideau Centre. The tracks themselves used to hug the east side of the Rideau Canal and continue into Quebec via the Alexandra Bridge (which is due to get replaced soon, as it's falling apart).
The old Ottawa Union Station building still exists, and was used for conferences and whatnot for decades, and is now the temporary home of the Senate of Canada.
Just for fun, Population Around A Point says the old Ottawa station has 125,000 and change within its 3km radius.
It's the same with Saskatoon and Edmonton.
Saskatoon's former rail station was right on the edge of downtown. The population within 3 km of the heritage building that now houses a restaurant is about 75,000, or 27% of Saskatoon's population.
Edmonton had two - one downtown for the east-west CN service (current 3 km population around the office building that no longer has a train station on its main floor: 119,000, about 11% of Edmonton's population), and one on the south side of the river not far from the university, for the defunct Edmonton-Calgary service (current 3 km population around the heritage building that now houses a restaurant: 93,000, about 8.5% of Edmonton's population).
The current Edmonton train station has 78,000 people in the 3 km circle - but none of those people will ever walk to the station, because the station is literally a 1 km walk *from the nearest sidewalk*.
They should really reconnect it if you ask me! Ottawa deserves better than a train shed even if it's a cool modernist one!
@@muppetist There's also no bus service by the train station, save for the few times the now-defunct route 12 was detoured due to construction on 127 St NW.
While no longer downtown, the light rail across the street has frequent service to and from downtown, which presumably connects with multiple bus routes. Not nearly as convenient as QC’s (walkable to town) but preferable to the brutalist architecture way finding challenge after arriving MTL’s GC.
@@stickynorth Agreed, but I think the time to do that would have been with the LRT going in. Ripping up part of Colonel By Drive for it is a big ask today.
Re what Canada is doing, I rode one of those new trains again on Sunday, and will again this week. The new trains are a nice step up from what we had. I'm passing through the Ottawa station using that LRT connection and express bus to the airport.
Canada isn't doing that much but individual provinces are doing a lot. the service increases on GO trains have been a palpable sense of "oh, the government finally gets that driving up and down highways every day is unsustainable and trips from suburb to toronto and suburb to suburb need to be by train whenever possible", and i hear there's lots happening in BC.
@@famitory The $30B Canadian Transit Fund is something but I agree. Not nearly enough. We need a proper upgrade of VIA Rail networks besides just new trains... And bring back the Edmonton-Calgary service. It's the fastest growing region of Canada and is already train-obsessed. It just needs its service restored and it would do gangbusters... Just like the LRT in Edmonton and Calgary are some of the most well ridden LRT systems on Earth with numbers that exceed most American subway networks...
@@famitory I think the provincial and federal governments should really consider more cooperation for creating the infrastructure to run more services, like a recent example that confuses me is that via plans to build hfr through peterborough and metrolinx wants to expand go service there too but there doesn't seem to be any cooperation between them like splitting the bill to create a corridor dedicated to operating both services
@@ant8504 Honestly surprising that Doug Ford’s Conservatives are playing ball with Transit with so much expansions and proposals underway, Western provinces are selfish on trying to build up their own transport system of their own. hence Alberta Regional Rail proposals, all through PPP (if they didn’t even learn from problematic projects all over Canada)
@@TheRandCrews Why is Alberta selfish ? What should they wait for ? Ontario is expanding rail with THEIR dirty oil money ! They ain't gonna see much back of that money.
If they have rail plans , they better start now ! You should laud those 'northern texas' cowboys to want to build rail ! Calgary-Edmonton higher speed rail is a no brainer.
Or are you pissed they want to go north-south in stead of east-west ?! lmao. You still want everything to go via Ontario/Toronto... Ik makes little sense to want passenger rail from Toronto/Ottawa to Winnipeg anyway . 2000km with only mooseheads along the line .. Let alone to Alberta !
Winnipeg!!!
I've been waiting for the day that my hometown of Winnipeg finally becomes an official part of a CityNerd list and not just an honourable mention, and of course it only happens on a video where it's a top 16 instead of top 10 😂
Winnipeg was built as a train hub so it does make sense
Maybe but it's really out there though
Winnipeg was a much larger train hub and the city itself was absolutely booming before the Panama Canal opened and freight traffic declined.
It’s the Chicago of Canada
Holy shit I actually laughed out loud when you cut Philly short like that 🫡🫶
It's true though. As a Philadelphian don't listen to a word he said, it's terrible don't move here 😉😉. Let's keep it undervalued lol.
No one likes us and we don’t care
Yep. People should really avoid Philadelphia. Nothing to see here folks. Move along. Move along.
For those wondering, Saint Paul Union Depot has about 65,000+ people in that 3km circle. Minneapolis Target Field interestingly has 98,000+ people in the same 3km circle size though.
Makes sense with how much area the river displaces around there. Factor in the vast parks, airport, highways, and industrial zones and it's kinda crazy how much area around downtown is just empty.
Though, come back in 10-15 years and I think you'll see a very different story. Downtown will have to shift from offices to housing. The river flats area is starting to grow, and the west 7th Corridor will also be adding more infill over the next decade.
Not true. I just did it and it's showing 174,793
@@MichaelBearfoot I think you missed the part where he said the radius was set to 3km, not the 5km it defaults to when it first loads
@@IamHenryK I set it up 3km
Topic suggestion:
Best intermodal stations.
My own city, Stockholm, built a intercity bus terminal above the tracks of the central rail station in the 1980s. Only mode that's really missing now is ferries, but that's because the lake is a bit far away (about where all the mainline tracks narrow down to just 2 tracks, but with a couple of travellators it could be done if the will was there).
And pretty much all station re-modelling in Sweden sine the 90s have been trying to convert rail stations to "travel centers" i.e. integrate intercity, regional, and local bus lines into the rail stations.
Awesome I got a pickup truck commercial on your channel. Great video by the way, as always.
I have never ever ever heard the term "Canadian New Orleans" to describe Québec.
Ray is confused. Other than some French heritage, the two cities have not much in common.
There seems to be a need for some people to describe everything Canadian by some kind of US equivalent. Why that is, I have no idea.
@@paulkoza8652tourism, historical preservation, more walkability than most of the country, decreasing economic importance, the French language*
* no longer available in New Orleans
The future Calgary Central Station is going to be located right in the heart of the growing downtown East Village, close to apartments, museums, art galleries, stadiums, and the Stampede grounds. Based on "Population around a Point" it currently has 106, 395 people within 3km. If it's done right (and that's not a guarantee with our current government), and properly connects the future Airport rail line, intercity passenger rail, LRT, and bus rapid transit, it has the potential to completely transform the way people get around the city.
If it happens, it'd be amazing. Although the Stampede grounds might not be a plus -- last time he mentioned 'em it was a dishonourable mention of the area around the Saddledome, which in the one sense, yeah, fair, but in the other sense, even if you only fully use it ten days in a year, if the event is *big* enough it can justify the space it needs :v
@@foamyesque But just by being in close proximity to so many high-traffic destinations, the future Calgary Station is going to punch way above it's weight in terms of passenger-volume (tourist, locals, and commuters).
Providence finally mentioned on this channel!!
So I'll give you a big compliment. Sheldon Whitehouse is the bomb!
I just want to say how much I appreciate the way you think outside of the box for these videos, making each one different but still substantial.
Was proud and surprised to see Baltimore Penn and DC Union have the same radius population. I also love the love you've been throwing at Lancaster recently.
Impressive showing for Ottawa. It's definitely in a suburb but it's still fairly close to downtown, and it's now connected to our LRT system. The station also looks pretty great IMO
We really need to get you to Pennsylvania. 30th Street is a spectacular station in addition to serving a large nearby population, and there's relatively high speed service to Lancaster!
what i find really interesting is, that my hometown of Stuttgart Germany with a pop. of 620.000 would rank 4th on this list just after Vancouver. And Stuttgart is located in a Valley and does not have a lot of Skyscrapers (like any german city apart from Frankfurt). In Stuttgart 34,7% live within 3Km of the Station, while in Vancouver it is 33,7% (if you only look at the City pop, wich is 662,248) so the NA City is on par with the EU City on density. But appx. 1200 Trains serve Stuttgart Main Station everyday, while only appx. 2-4 Trains serve Vancouver every day. So there is some work to do
I live in Québec City; calling it "Canadian New Orleans" is insulting
Quite. New Orleans should be called the Québec wannabe.
Why are you so afraid of the truth?
if the catchment area is meant to reflect people who live in walking distance, than having a lake in your circle should get you "punished"; it isn't like people can walk from the middle of lake ontario to the train station to get on board! and I do think it highlights how much more dense those cities are in the buildable area
i also love this as a way of comparing cities by standardized density since so many "population" metrics are wrecked by city area or what the census calls an "statistical area"
Buffalo's amshack (although finally redone recently) is still lightyears behind what we used to have in the first half the 20th century. Its bones still lie in an underdeveloped neighborhood on the east side. :(
Populationaroundapoint makes me very happy as an autistic person
I’m not ready to live car-free. My townhouse is 2.8 miles (4.5 km) from the local Amtrak station. Too bad the train service isn’t better.
Yay, my favourite topic. Trains! I know it may not count as "intercity", but I'm surprised you didn't mention Grand Central Terminal, which has a 3km catchment of 607,000. Must be the highest in North America? Certainly higher than Penn. Honourable mention is Hoboken Terminal, with 323k
ottawa mentioned!!!!!!!! Old ottawa union would definitley be on the list if it still existed
10:19 "Amshacks" - I love it!
A train leaves Chicago at 2pm, heading east at 70mph. Another leaves NYC at 10pm, heading west at 65mph.
Which town has the better bike lanes leading to The Cheesecake Factory?
Philadelphia.
Chicago. Because there isn't a CCF in the Penn part of Manhattan. Which isn't surprising really. Because why would anybody ever go there with how many far superior bakeries exist all over Manhattan and the other boroughs?
as a pennsylvania transplant, i would kindly like to inform you that the locals pronounce the city of Lancaster as Lan-kuh-stir, not Lan-kah-stir. great vid, ray
Nice, I used Population Around a Point for a grad school research paper on North American HSR viability last year. I believe we used 15 km as the catchment area for HSR because that was the distance a research paper on the Spanish network used. We then used the population numbers and plugged them into a formula that factored in the quality of local public transit networks for each city on our proposed lines.
Let’s just say that the numbers did not support a lot of HSR lines being viable in the US currently lol.
What were the most viable HSR lines?
I recently visited Melbourne CBD (by regional train) and found Uber is often cost-competitive with local public transport for short journeys (eg within 15km). HSR travellers differ from regular commuters in that they carry larger bags, travel in groups more often, have higher disposable income, and don't make the journey as often as the commuters. So HSR in the US could work with Uber for last-mile connectivity.
I'd take any train service at all.
4:50 uhh I can think of *at least* a few reasons why you might not be easily able to utilise the El Paso central station as a citizen of Juarez…
1.4 million within 3km of Mumbai Lokmanya Tilak. (CST is the "main" one but it is surrounded by water on two sides so picked the next best one).
Or Dadar, for that matter...
Sealdah (Kolkata) that he showed at 04:05 is the 2nd station, not the main intercity station - that would be Howrah.
Similar figures for other Indian metro cities - one point is that our CBDs still have large residential population nearby.
But very few cities worldwide will rival the densities seen in India (and South Asia) and China.
Pleasantly surprised at Milwaukee’s inclusion in this video! More residential development downtown is incoming too
Halifax, NS is too small for your list, but has 48k in the radius despite having a bunch of water in the area. Decent percentage of population.
That’s all? Interesting for Regina with the Union station being a Casino at the moment has a catchment area of 73k and has half the pop of Halifax 1/3 of the metro area
@@TheRandCrews The Halifax train station is on the southern edge of downtown and on the waterfront, so almost all of the population would be in the northwest quadrant from the station. The 3 km radius includes a lot of water, some serious port land, and a 190 acre park.
I don’t know what we’re doing up here in Canada either Ray. I mean, I do - and it doesn’t really help.
It’s basically the slowest, most unambiguous non-plan ever. Toss in a bit of semi-covert privatization, and voila. High-Frequency Rail. 🙄
But HFR is already partially funded ($500 mil by federal government) and is moving along. It’s the most realistic proposal towards high(er) speed and higher frequency intercity rail that could get built within the next 5-10 years. Also, HFR is also open to 250-300 kph services.
@@kiddo817thanks for the added details. What I am confused about is why Via hasn’t worked in the past few years on upgrading Ottawa to Montreal to high-speed given they own the tracks between the cities (most of the way, until the junction west of Montreal). There would be a lot of roads that would have to be closed and many bridges would have to be built, possibly new track laid, and maybe some track upgrades to allow for higher speeds (i.e. geometry).
Not sure what the top speed is with the brand new trains are they purchased, but I thought it was ~200km/h - which would honestly be “high-speed for North America” if we can accomplish it 😂.
If Via did that first, between Ottawa and Montreal, to turn it into an every quick 30ish minute journey - it would eliminate all flights between the cities overnight (with or without government intervention, France-styles). From there, they can gradually widen the network as they purchase more rights of way west, and east, towards Toronto and Quebec City, the Provincial Capitals.
lasting 10 seconds on tik tok before calling it quits is a testament to your strength
VANCOUVER RAHHHHHHH
I'm not sure how LAN - kuh - ster PA keeps coming up as an urbanist model, but as a Harrisburg PA resident I'd welcome you visit this area. Living as close to Lancaster as I do, I appreciate many of its positive qualities. That said, I don't think of it as a place where many people live car-free or car light.
The Amish maybe?
@@johnmccarthy-y5z Ah yes, the original urbanists -- Pennsylvania Amish
Curious why you rate Lancaster Pennsylvania so high on urbanism
Correction: There are two intercity train routes in Winnipeg that each operate twice a week. So in total 6 trains depart the station per week (2 WB, 2 EB, and 2 NB)
There is the Canadian, which runs twice a week, WB to Vancouver via Saskatoon, Edmonton, Jasper, and Kamloops and EB to Toronto via Sioux Lookout, the remote parts of Northern Ontario between Highways 17 & 11, and Sudbury.
There is also the Hudson Bay which runs twice a week NB to Churchill via The Pas and Thompson. It is a remote services train
Let’s go! Hartford CT got a mention. Hope you can stop by
The Ottawa station (10:00) is wild. It's literally hugging a so called "Power Center", which was named "Trainyards" for obvious reasons. I've tried to take the train to Manhattan once, it was torture.
It's a shame. I love the station building, but it's in such an awful location.
For what it's worth, the population around it's old Union Station is about 125k.
My favourite part is that there's no good way to get to Trainyards from the train station. Even though you can see into it from the platform, you have to walk like a kilometre and a half around on terrible industrial roads.
It's not so bad now because you can take the LRT directly from the station to come right downtown now. It's still a massive automobile hellscape right around it, though.
@@canadave87 There's a tunnel it's just not open to the public :(
@@canadave87 its so sad, trainyards was developed just like 10 years too soon. Modern development practices and knowledge of the LRT being constructed would have likely resulted in a proper mixed use community being built. Maybe some day...