The size in itself of is a meaningless metric. I'm baffled that comment like this still get made even on HN. I guess this must be that American just have such a fundamentally distorted view of public transport.

The area of Greater Toronto Area has far denser population then Switzerland with far worse public transport. So by any rational metric it should dominate Switzerland in public transport modal shares and convenience. But it doesn't. So when looking for explanations, we need to look deeper.

Looking at BC, Vancouver is a city of 675,218 people. The Metro area is 2.463 million. Calgary metro is 1.4 million. Edmonton is another metro area of 1.3 million. And the distance between Edmonton and Calgary isn't even very far. Those are 3 cities that are bigger or comparable to Zürich.

I'm not suggesting the population of 'Liard River' of 100 people in the north of BC should have a high speed train to Vancouver. Of course BC as a whole will never have Swiss like public Transit. But if you actually look at where people live, take into account the particular details of the location, you can design a public transport system that is useful for people.

But the comment said '200km' from Vancouver. And he also said there was highway 5 miles from the parents house. So somehow they seemed to think it was reasonable to able to build a highway. Highways are expensive infrastructure, and usually you don't built them the middle of nowhere. So it seems from the comment we are not talking about some place that is at least between two places the somebody connected with a highway. If you have enough money for a highway, you can finance a bus route along it. Most people do live reasonable close together and not just a single house in the wilderness.

If we look at the density map:

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97...

It seems to me that Vancouver is perfectly placed to have an amazing transport system connecting its city to its metro and its metro to the more outlining towns and villages. There is no reason the great Vancouver area couldn't have Swiss like public transport very every village

Then you have a higher speed train connecting Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton and all the larger towns in between. Then have regional trains or buses going out from that trunk connecting smaller towns and villages. I suspect these town were all originally built because there was railroad there.

So yes, BC as a whole is big and densely populated. But that metric alone is meaningless when designing a public transport system that can meaningfully serve the population. Even if you think 'cars are the best option', that's no reason not have have decent public transport. Switzerland, has lots of people in cars and its a very viable option. But despite that, it also has other good types of transport. Sometimes its nice not to have only one option, specially for people who for many reasons can't simply drive.

This reoccurring attitude of well its a big country so why even try is so damaging. As if Canada being big had anything to do with why Toronto street cars are a abomination of planning and operations. You have a bit more of a point in regards to BC but even then its wrong for the majority of people.