Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "American Reacts to How Australia Might Have the Solution to Suburban Transit" video.
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Worth noting the huge difference in terminology - regional versus suburban. Our suburban networks cover a fair amount of interurban network. NSW runs "suburban" trains from Newcastle to Kiama which is about 100 miles north of Sydney to 75 miles south, through Wollongong. QLD runs trains even further north from Brisbane to Gympie North as far south as Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast, about 110 miles north to 55 miles south.
For us, "regions" suggest areas far removed from the capital city, not the nearby area to it. It's a huge difference in interpretation.
So are these suburban rail or interurban rail? It depends on where you call an end to your cities, I guess. At 5.3 Million Sydney is a big city, but that means Newcastle and the Wollongong regions are classified as interurban rail, not suburban. So is Sydney well over 6 million people? Are these suburban or interurban commutes?
Likewise, it's pretty hard to call Brisbane small. At a metro population of 2.5 million (sorry Ipswich and Logan lol) WITHOUT including the urban conurbations to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba it's nominally bigger than Dallas, Texas, San Jose, California or Jacksonville, Florida. Of course it all depends on how you break up your "statistical areas". If you include the areas with at least nominal "suburban" train access then Brisbane is probably a city of over 4 million.
Of course, San Jose is part of a big conurbation too, and the Bay Area puts the SEQ (South East Queensland) area to shame with more than double the total population.
We may not have the population density that the US does, as you can tell with California having way more population than all of Australia, but we have enough to support reasonable transport infrastructure.
The US could and should do better, however.
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