Also, I feel like this is an unusually hostile comment.
To anyone who's "started travelling" (how smug), they'd realize that Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, maybe even Calgary and Edmonton to lesser extents have viable or great municipal train systems. They aren't Tokyo great, or Paris great, but they are pretty good and usually clean.
Among developed countries, I can think of a few that since visiting, while novel, I've actively chose Vancouver over; other cities in Canada would probably not win out, but that's why broad statements about countries shouldn't be taken seriously.
There's also a decent amount of anti-public transit people here that tend to make their job a bit harder. I live in a part of town where almost everyone except me drives and I remember chatting to my neighbors when we had a transit funding referendum. The details are a bit hazy because I think it was around 2016 but in my area people were more or less unanimous when it came to preventing public transit funding.
I do have a few personal gripes about the new skytrain line being full at rush hour but for what it's worth I had the same issue with the main circle line in Tokyo. Rush-hour is rush-hour no matter what your method of transport.
t. former NoVa resident
DC’s general height limits in conjunction with typical American SFH friendly zoning also do not help utilization.
2) It's not uncivil, it's illegal.
What is so astonishing, and what is your alternative to this specific issue?
All this talk about being a world-class city, while nobody knows when Eglinton Crosstown, a "subway" line using streetcar ("LRT") tech that's been "in progress" since 2011, will open. Don't even get me started on SmartTrack :)
NYC and Chicago are dream cities for many, some Torontonians included. Does that mean that their transit stations aren't teeming with capybara-size rats? That they don't have problems with homelessness and poverty?
And I say this as someone who lives in the 'burbs and is upset that the LRT delays have continued as long as they have.
Also, why the hostility? I've never met a Canadian that expressed a sense superiority about not being part of the USA. I've met plenty who are proud of their national identity, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's quite admirable too, in my opinion. Nation-building isn't easy.
Classic case is health care (‘look, we spend less than the US and have free healthcare’) where instead of looking up to countries with better healthcare outcomes than us, we look down on America and act smug. Other cases include our climate record, and post secondary education.
Who is saying this, other than low-information Americans on social media hung up on the word 'free'? Every Canadian knows that the reality is much more complicated with capacity shortages since Covid, and an opportunistic provincial government in Ontario doing its very best to push further privatization.
Anecdotally it's usually used when someone starts to criticize our healthcare system.
Since US and Canada are so similar, a lot of the discussion of identity are around the differences, which to me is a weird way to talk about a national identity.
It also comes up a lot when someone mentions something positive about the US that Canada struggles with, say economic growth - then it becomes a common refrain of “yes, but at least X is better in Canada than the US”.
It’s also used commonly in discussions in healthcare - any change is described as “Amerification” of the healthcare system even those the change would just make Canada more like European systems.
Maybe it’s unavoidable being right next door to the US, I don't know.
I’ve seen this a few times, only on HN, so it’s either a particular HN meme, or it’s you posting it every so often
Outside of HN, I haven't even heard this smugness since the early years of the invasion of Iraq.