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Outside of the the top 10 cities which have the best rail system graded on
1) usefulness of destinations
2) Ridership
3) Integrating into the greater Transit system
4) reliability/ upkeep
Where is Denver? Denver should definitely be on here.
Baltimore, easily. Besides Amtrak service at Penn Station (far busier than any other city on this list), it has the fastest commuter rail line in the country (MARC's Penn Line). It has a subway line, a light rail system, Amtrak/Acela service, and a very comprehensive and fast commuter rail system that serves it, its suburbs, and DC.
I agree. If you exclude the other cities in the NE Corridor, Baltimore has one of the best rail systems in the country. Portland has good rail transit but Baltimore seems to do everything better with rail transit except maybe light rail which I will give Portland the edge.
My Rankings
#1 Baltimore
#2 Portland
#3 Seattle
#4 Cleveland
#5 Denver
#6 Pittsburgh
#7 Minneapolis/St Paul
#8 St Louis
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.
What's crazy is that light rail goes through some of the wealthier urban neighborhoods in St. Louis. The poorest and densest neighborboods in St. Louis are not even served yet, which would really boost ridership. St. Louis also is working on expansion and has one of the larger light rail systems for a city it's size.
I've never been to Portland or St Louis, but Seattle is light-years ahead of this grouping. Pittsburgh's is terrible. Pittsburgh's BRT >>>> Pittsburgh's light rail. Any discussion of Pittsburgh transit should begin and end with busses, with the T as an aside.
People clearly never have ridden the RTA, seeing it at people's bottom of their rankings. I'm not saying it's amazing, but it is certainly pretty decent for a mid-sized city. Definitely better than Pittsburgh and baltimore, and in my opinion than Minneapolis. Seattle and Portalnd's are really overrated.
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? I think ridership is a very good indicator of if your system is useful to it's citizenry. Poor ridership I would think indicates bad system, especially if the system has good coverage.
I tried to rank the systems based off current ridership, system coverage, and last year it was expanded. I think this presents the best method of showing how much the systems are used, how much of the metropolitan area they service, and the trajectory for system growth/expansion.
1. Portland 1.3 - high ridership, large coverage, recent expansions
2. Minneapolis 3.6/Seattle 3.6 - high ridership, small coverage, recent expansions
3. Baltimore 4 - moderate expansion, large coverage, last expansion 20 years ago
4. St. Louis 4.3 moderate ridership, large coverage, last expansion 10 years ago
5. Pittsburgh 5.3 low ridership, small coverage recently expanded 5 years ago
6. Cleveland 5.6 low ridership, moderate coverage, last expansion 20 years ago
*If we do not include heavy rail and just include light rail, the rankings stay the same except Baltimore and St. Louis switch places.
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