That's quite a generalization you're making. Most of Montreal is served by 10 minut buses - that is, most time between two buses is 10 minutes. And there are buses 24/7 on big streets. And there's the metro. And there's the train if you want to go on either shore.
I never spoke about the transit system in Canada. I am Calgary at the moment, and even though there is definite room for improvement, it's fairly reasonable. (avg bus time here is >20min though)
Lahore has four levels of transit system available. There is a cross-city Metro bus system (which has a dedicated overhead road for itself so effectively a train). There are big buses which run long routes. There are shorter vans which run shorter routes. There are 'route'-rickshaws which even run even shorter routes. And if you are rich, there is a fifth option of getting a taxi-rickshaw at 10x price.
All this makes the system extremely robust (if bus is late you can eg. take a two van combo), and because all 4 systems compete with each other the transit system is time efficient and cheap.
1 USD ~ 100 PKR. Minimum wage is 10k PKR and typical college educated people earn 20k on their first job.
So minimum bus/van/route-rickshaw fare is 15 PKR. Might have gone up to 20 PKR since I was home. Max goes up to about 50-60 PKR. (you pay for how far you want to go).
taxi-rickshaws can cost anywhere from 30 PRK (1 km) to 600 PKR cross city (20-30). Depends on from where to where you are going, time of the day, and your ability to haggle.
