Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Honestly I think the T, L, and Metro are all in the same league as far as second tier transit systems go in the US after MTA and PATH. Both the T and L are great systems especially considering how old they are.
Davis Street, stick to boosting LA because its clearly not working for Boston.
I'm not boosting Boston. I'm not even a big Boston fan. I'm just refuting the nonsense on this thread.
The claim was that Chicago's bus ridership is unusually high compared to other cities, because it's rail ridership low. If anything, Chicago's bus ridership is lower than those of other cities.
Here's the current APTA stats, as of 1Q 2012 (in thousands of trips)-
Chicago bus ridership- 78,487
LA bus ridership-125,002
Ok, so it isn't quite twice the ridership, but almost twice. The point is that Chicago doesn't have higher-than-average ridership for a city its size.
NYC has vastly higher per capita bus ridership than Chicago. SF Bay area and DC-Baltimore have about the same per capita bus ridership than Chicago. Those are the five largest metros.
Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco and Philly have significant suburban bus agencies. Chicago doesn't. CTA is, by far, the dominant bus agency in Chicagoland. In contrast, SF has Non-MUNI bus riders than MUNI bus riders. You can't compare the regions without comparing all the major bus agencies.
I'm including APTA stats, not Wikipedia stats. And I'm including all transit agencies, not only CTA vs. LA MTA; obviously that isn't a reasonable comparison when one agency has 95% of local bus riders and the other agency has 50% of local bus riders.
I'm also including unlinked transit trips only, so the numbers will be lower than reported by CTA or what-have-you.
I think it's reasonable to say that, relative to population, Chicago has low bus ridership, at least compared to the largest U.S. cities. Certainly NYC and LA have higher proportional bus ridership. The point of all this was that some forumers were saying that Chicago's low rail ridership was offset by high bus ridership.
You've made like 275 posts so far and I don't think I've ever seen one that isn't just discounting/downplaying or straight out bashing one place or another.
Regardless, Chicago has a suburban bus system, PACE with over 100,000 rides per weekday. As far as I know the others don't have significant suburban systems except for Washington DC (Ride-on has 89,000 and Fairfax 40,000 along with a few other minor systems), and then San Jose at 100,000 (which isn't really a suburb) and a few east bay areas. I'm pretty sure Boston and Philly's transit agencies cover a majority of the metro area. I can't think of any other significant agencies in those areas.
The four cities don't have major suburban bus systems that would discount Chicago as having "none" given the threshold of Chicago's pulling in ~110,000 rides a day. It's fine to be biased, but you go overboard more and more.
You've made like 275 posts so far and I don't think I've ever seen one that isn't just discounting/downplaying or straight out bashing one place or another. Don't you ever have anything positive to state instead of only focusing on everyone else's apparent problems?
I have plenty of positive things to say about cities. I just refuted a false claim.
The claim was that Chicago has higher bus ridership relative to comparably sized cities. This isn't the case.
That doesn't mean that Chicago doesn't have good transit (it certainly does) or that it isn't a great city overall (it certainly is). But it doesn't have higher bus ridership than comparable cities (unless you want to compare to Sunbelt cities like Houston or Dallas, which Chicago destroys in terms of bus ridership).
I'm not boosting Boston. I'm not even a big Boston fan. I'm just refuting the nonsense on this thread.
The claim was that Chicago's bus ridership is unusually high compared to other cities, because it's rail ridership low. If anything, Chicago's bus ridership is lower than those of other cities.
Here's the current APTA stats, as of 1Q 2012 (in thousands of trips)-
Chicago bus ridership- 78,487
LA bus ridership-125,002
Ok, so it isn't quite twice the ridership, but almost twice. The point is that Chicago doesn't have higher-than-average ridership for a city its size.
NYC has vastly higher per capita bus ridership than Chicago. SF Bay area and DC-Baltimore have about the same per capita bus ridership than Chicago. Those are the five largest metros.
Here's the current APTA stats, as of 1Q 2012 (in thousands of trips)-
Chicago bus ridership- 78,487
LA bus ridership-125,002
But I think what people are seeing is that at least in the way you state things you're what's causing a lot of the nonsense in the thread. Where's the 125K come from and the 78K come from? I see CTA with 78K and MTA with 90K. Are you including everything like Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and San Bern? If so you know you're cherry picking by at least not including the obvious 8K for PACE in Chicago. It's all just numbers at the end of the day - but don't say everyone is throwing out nonsense and then knowingly skew your facts.
Chicago is almost 70% of ridership comparing 86 million to 125 million rides.
Boston and Philly have regional bus systems that pull in around half of what Chicago's CTA does basically just within the city. Washington DC regionally gets 600,000 and the CTA still gets 1,000,000 in just the city. I was stating that the CTA gets less rides in part because the bus system is quite large and picks up many rides in the city - where the CTA's L mainly runs. I don't see what you're trying to disprove.
Last edited by Chicago60614; 08-21-2012 at 08:37 AM..
Has a better climate? Both are terrible. Chicago is colder, Boston gets more snow.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
