Successful countries make public transit a national priority. The world’s great capital cities–Paris, Berlin, Rome, London, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing—all have excellent urban transportation systems. Canada’s are embarrassingly poor. Canada is the only G7 country lacking national public transit policy or legislation.

Urban sprawl, car-centric planning, scarce infrastructure funding, and fragmented governance are some of the reasons that public transport is so bad in Canada. Another main cause is the myth that private sector competition alone can provide efficient and affordable transport—a myth enshrined 60 years ago in Canada’s national transportation act and perpetuated by government actions ever since.

The result is a playing field where private companies compete for transport infrastructure funds from multiple government sources and there is little coordinated planning, oversight or accountability.

Ottawa’s six-year-old light rail line, Confederation Line 1, is a real-world example of what you get when you assume that private sector competition will magically produce world-class public transit. Line 1 was co-funded by Infrastructure........

© rabble