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Seattle has the closest one to a big city metro system as their light rail has a number subway stations through the city's core. Seattle has been a latecomer in the rail networks, but they have a big plans locked in for a full build out through the city and the suburbs.
All of the the light rail stations in Seattle between Chinatown/Int'l District and through downtown, Capital Hill, and the U District are all subway. Beacon Hill station is subway station as well. They are adding a second subway line through the core of the city as well.
I was referring to heavy rail rapid transit. I'm sorry for the poor terminology; I'm from New York so that type of transit if referred to as a subway. Heavy rail rapid transit is only present in Baltimore and Cleveland of the cities listed.
St. Louis' system has a lot of subways too, no street running sections. Seattle is not unique in that regard. In fact, I think all of these cities besides Minneapolis/St. Paul has subways. I believe even Minneapolis' system has stations that are below grade though.
Minneapolis/St. Paul has a short underground segment beneath the airport on the Blue/Hiawatha Line.
1. Portland
2. Seattle
3. Minneapolis
4. St. Louis
5. Baltimore
6. Pittsburgh
7. Cleveland
How do you figure St Louis and Pitt are better than Cleveland? Clevelands Blue/Green line is about equal to the STL system and Pitt system plus they have an additional Heavy Rail Line.
Clevelands Rail is pretty well intergrates into its BRT system, as does Pitt.
How do you figure St Louis and Pitt are better than Cleveland? Clevelands Blue/Green line is about equal to the STL system and Pitt system plus they have an additional Heavy Rail Line.
Clevelands Rail is pretty well intergrates into its BRT system, as does Pitt.
St. Louis's rail system has MUCH higher ridership than both Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Its odd, the actual pages for the Red Line and Cleveland Light Rail say ridership combined is about 37,000/day, (comparable with 44K) while those list combine for 24,000/day.
While Ridership shows the utilization it doesn't necessarily show the actual quality of the system. I think that the Cleveland System has better coverage allowing east west and North South travel through the major axis of the city, while currently St Louis has basically an East-West line, and Pittsburgh basically has a North-South Line.
Regardless of actual ridership numbers, I think it is pretty clear that Portland has the best rail system with Seattle gaining on it. Portland kicks the butt of many larger cities including all the sunbelt cities and you could make an argument has a better system than LA as well although obviously much smaller.
The fact that more low income people in Cleveland or St Louis or Baltimore might use their rail out of necessity does not mean that they have better systems.
When many people think of rail systems, they only consider heavy rail and light rail. However, commuter rail and intercity rail are also forms of rail transit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brianpmcdonnell17
I was referring to heavy rail rapid transit. I'm sorry for the poor terminology; I'm from New York so that type of transit if referred to as a subway. Heavy rail rapid transit is only present in Baltimore and Cleveland of the cities listed.
However I hadn't really thought about that in my rankings at all. I was simply considering movement around the city (again as a visitor) didnt really consider connectivity from the suburbs. I would disregard intercity rail though as that is not how I interpret the spirit of the question...to me it's about mobility within the city. But that's just me.
Reviewing my rankings, the only change I would make as a result of the commuter rail argument is bumping Baltimore up just ahead of MSP but still well below Seattle. I was impressed with Baltimore's options, but still felt that it's connectivity and comprehensiveness to the areas we wanted to go were very lacking. Not to mention that literally NO ONE ELSE was in sight each time we took the subway, and very few on the light rail. During my tours of Bmore I used the Charm City Circulator more than I used the rail system, and I used uber twice as often. TBH the only practical reason for riding the rail lines was to actually see what it was like.
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