While I don’t necessarily talk about the organizational problems of North American transit agencies a lot (I will let Alon Levy do that), one issue I am acutely aware of is the lack of willingness for transit agencies in Canada (and of course also the US) to compare and benchmark themselves against international systems. Let me give you three examples:
Smart Payment
London introduced contactless credit and debit card payment a decade ago, making it easier for locals and tourists alike to ride trains, buses, and trams. And yet, there are still many major cities that do not accept this almost universal type of payment right at the fare gate/fare box. I get that this isn’t necessarily trivially easy, but there are cities that have gotten smart cards in the time since London enabled contactless debit and credit and still don’t have it.
Paige Saunders (https://masto.canadiancivil.com/@paige) has complained a lot about Montreal being slow on this, and it’s a very rational complaint. Given how little the city’s transit agencies have delivered in terms of new infrastructure and new service in the last decade, it’s kind of amazing they also couldn’t manage to adopt the now almost-standard fare system for global cities.
At the end of the day, when a very good transit policy in a city like London (not one that exactly flies under the radar), and it’s as transferable as “what card can I use to pay for the bus”, it’s frankly embarrassing that our North American agencies can’t universally adopt it, even given 10 years to do so!
Construction Costs
A totally different issue is construction costs. Transit agencies in some places in the Anglosphere (which, for the purposes of this article, Montreal is part of) have started to reflect on the fact that politicians and citizens might care about how much they spend on things. But far too often, cost comparisons being given by agencies just compare against other poorly-performing North American agencies: “Well, we are cheaper than these guys who can’t build very efficiently!”
I hear comparisons with places around the world being dismissed because of various perceived or ridiculous differences — “Europe doesn’t have accessibility laws, or Unions!” — and almost no attention is given to all the reasons we should compare. I can learn some things from a professional athlete even if I can never train like them in their environment. But unfortunately, learning and trying to get better by placing ourselves in a state of humility just doesn’t seem like common practice. And it is true that there seems to be a lot more self-congratulation than self-reflection.
Industry Groups
North American transit agencies even tend to participate in their own industry groups, which, while perhaps effective to an extent in… dealing with austerity, don’t provide a ton of aspirational comparisons for agencies. While it is helpful to know that Chicago is only moving a few hundred thousand people per day on its 8-line metro network and that Vancouver is smoking it, that doesn’t actually help Vancouver get better. While yes, some international benchmarking happens, and some agencies are at least UITP members, the amount of participation is limited, and it seems highly siloed. While I believe that some fairly technical teams in certain areas (often high-performing ones unsurprisingly!) do partake, just looking at things like the wayfinding and ticketing still in use in 2024 in some cities — I’m looking at you Toronto and Montreal — highlight that a lot of comparing isn’t going on.
The takeaway here is that structurally and across a wide range of issues, North American transit agencies struggle to improve because they for one often don’t see how far behind they are, and for two aren’t regularly exposed to different, and indeed better ways of operating. This insularity and lack of desire to see what’s out there is a big problem if we want our transit systems to be better, and it’s part of why complaints that public transit is bad “because it lacks funding” miss the mark in my opinion. I have no doubt that more funding could do wonders, mainly on the operating side, but even with transit agencies that operate at impressive scales and do have a lot of money for operations things just aren’t as good as in other parts of the world.
Now, I would never deny that all of America having transit that is more like New York’s and all of Canada having transit like Vancouver or Toronto’s would be game changing for the continent, but there is a lot of space between the transit of a Tokyo or Paris or even a city like Copenhagen and that of Toronto and New York. We shouldn’t just ask for more transit, we desperately also need better.
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