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As a visitor to San Diego, I beg to differ. It doesn't go anywhere I wanted to go. No rail to any of the beaches, no rail to Hillcrest, no rail to get you to Balboa Park, no rail connection to the airport. Good for commuters to get from inland suburbs to downtown, and the one nice option for me was its line to the border. But when I was there, I had to use Uber to get to any of the real points of interest that a common visitor to the city would want to get to. That's not a great mass transit city.
Again with Miami, no rail to the beach, you know... where a ton of people want to go. Why? Both Miami and San Diego are very tourism driven, one would think that Mass Transit would bring you to the main attraction where traffic is heavy and parking is difficult. At least Seattle's system hits several important urban nodes and the airport and on mostly elevated and subway lines with a separate right of way. And please don't suggest a bus, any city will have bus lines, but you need comprehensive rail coverage to be a serious transit city.
Dallas has great coverage, very extensive with most of the important nodes covered, but the problem is the layout of Dallas isn't very walkable and downtown is not a big focal point for the area.
Denver has an excellent system to get suburban commuters into the city, and I really like the new heavy rail airport line. The problem in Denver is it severely lacks intra-city coverage, so you can't get to important nodes by rail to the high density areas like Highlands, East Colfax/Capital Hill, Cherry Creek, City Park, and South Broadway. Also Colorado Boulevard is probably the biggest traffic cluster**** in the city, but rail doesn't serve that corridor either. Denver should develop a subway corridor down Colfax and Colorado Boulevard. RTD rail is pretty much a Park and Ride system, unless you're going into downtown into the city for a game at one of the sports facilities, it comes up pretty short.
I voted for Atlanta, it's a great system. The only thing that perplexes me is why would they put the new Braves stadium in the suburbs (seems like a reverse trend as far as ball parks go), no less in a county that rejected MARTA. That's just odd.
Agreed. Resident of San Diego here, and while sprinter and coaster do serve the suburbs, their puny ridership and pathetic headways between trains tells a different story. Even the San Diego Trolley has fifteen minute headways once outside of Downtown. And there's no rail on the SR 56 corridor, from Del Mar to Rancho Bernardo.
It's time for people to stop assuming that just because a city's in ultra liberal California, it must have underrated mass transit. No. Mass transit in California, if anything, is overhyped. San Francisco might have the best transit system on the West Coast, but most of its intracity rail network comprises of the Muni Metro streetcars that average a pathetic 10 miles per hour. The BART subway does average a whopping 35 mph or so, but it only has one main corridor in SF itself, and beyond that it's a suburban commuter rail system that relies on park and rides, has very little transit oriented development, and has trains arriving at 15 minute intervals on weekdays in most of the suburbs. I believe even the Dallas light rail has better frequencies in the suburbs, not to mention Atlanta.
And yes, you do have the Caltrain commuter rail from SF to San Jose which is actually the only impressive mass transit in the Bay Area, with ten minute intervals between trains, an express service, and a ridership of 60,000 daily on just one line. Not to mention they're electrifying the corridor, so that the express services will be even faster.
But yeah, Muni Metro is more of a shame than an asset to SF Bay Area mass transit. Just judging by the BART and the Caltrain combined, SF rail transit is really no better than Dallas or Arlanta. It may have more ridership than Dallas or Atlanta, but Dallas and Atlanta have more frequent trains and arguably have, or will have , in the near future, better coverage. Atlanta already has better coverage of the inner city with Marta than SF has with BART. Ditto for Dallas. And Dallas is actually building a new line from Plano to DFW. All the BART is doing is building three more stations to San Jose.
Make no mistake, San Diego mass transit is on the level of Miami, if even that.
What San Diego does have over the others, despite how wanting its system is now, is an expansion that is likely to be extremely useful since it’ll go to SD’s secondary CBD and major research university. The expansion of the Blue Line doesn’t just give access to those areas, but also effectively increases the frequency for some of the core stretches of its current services as the Blue Line will share several stations with the Green Line. It’s sort of silly how long this took to happen, and even sillier still that the extension to Balboa Park and beyond is still in the planning stages, but the Blue Line extension is under construction and will likely make a significant impact. I don’t think any of the other cities listed in the poll have as significant an expansion under construction.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-07-2019 at 04:10 PM..
Agreed. Resident of San Diego here, and while sprinter and coaster do serve the suburbs, their puny ridership and pathetic headways between trains tells a different story. Even the San Diego Trolley has fifteen minute headways once outside of Downtown. And there's no rail on the SR 56 corridor, from Del Mar to Rancho Bernardo.
It's time for people to stop assuming that just because a city's in ultra liberal California, it must have underrated mass transit. No. Mass transit in California, if anything, is overhyped. San Francisco might have the best transit system on the West Coast, but most of its intracity rail network comprises of the Muni Metro streetcars that average a pathetic 10 miles per hour. The BART subway does average a whopping 35 mph or so, but it only has one main corridor in SF itself, and beyond that it's a suburban commuter rail system that relies on park and rides, has very little transit oriented development, and has trains arriving at 15 minute intervals on weekdays in most of the suburbs. I believe even the Dallas light rail has better frequencies in the suburbs, not to mention Atlanta.
And yes, you do have the Caltrain commuter rail from SF to San Jose which is actually the only impressive mass transit in the Bay Area, with ten minute intervals between trains, an express service, and a ridership of 60,000 daily on just one line. Not to mention they're electrifying the corridor, so that the express services will be even faster.
But yeah, Muni Metro is more of a shame than an asset to SF Bay Area mass transit. Just judging by the BART and the Caltrain combined, SF rail transit is really no better than Dallas or Arlanta. It may have more ridership than Dallas or Atlanta, but Dallas and Atlanta have more frequent trains and arguably have, or will have , in the near future, better coverage. Atlanta already has better coverage of the inner city with Marta than SF has with BART. Ditto for Dallas. And Dallas is actually building a new line from Plano to DFW. All the BART is doing is building three more stations to San Jose.
Make no mistake, San Diego mass transit is on the level of Miami, if even that.
Muni Metro needs to get rid of about half of the stops that aren’t part of the Market Street Subway or the coming Central Subway, because its station positioning is ridiculous. However, that stretch of BART in SF and the bit of the Peninsula it serves is really high frequency as multiple services interline through one corridor there. Essentially, SF has one heavy rail rapid transit line and a large streetcar network.
It's time for people to stop assuming that just because a city's in ultra liberal California, it must have underrated mass transit. No. Mass transit in California, if anything, is overhyped.
As a point of fact, 3 of the top 5 (Los Angeles #1, San Francisco #3, San Diego #5) light rail systems by ridership in the United States are located in the state of California. San Diego will almost certainly blow past Portland for the number 4 spot within days of the Mid-coast trolley opening next year. There's no telling how high ridership numbers could get on the Blue Line next year.
Agreed. Resident of San Diego here, and while sprinter and coaster do serve the suburbs, their puny ridership and pathetic headways between trains tells a different story. Even the San Diego Trolley has fifteen minute headways once outside of Downtown. And there's no rail on the SR 56 corridor, from Del Mar to Rancho Bernardo.
It's time for people to stop assuming that just because a city's in ultra liberal California, it must have underrated mass transit. No. Mass transit in California, if anything, is overhyped. San Francisco might have the best transit system on the West Coast, but most of its intracity rail network comprises of the Muni Metro streetcars that average a pathetic 10 miles per hour. The BART subway does average a whopping 35 mph or so, but it only has one main corridor in SF itself, and beyond that it's a suburban commuter rail system that relies on park and rides, has very little transit oriented development, and has trains arriving at 15 minute intervals on weekdays in most of the suburbs. I believe even the Dallas light rail has better frequencies in the suburbs, not to mention Atlanta.
And yes, you do have the Caltrain commuter rail from SF to San Jose which is actually the only impressive mass transit in the Bay Area, with ten minute intervals between trains, an express service, and a ridership of 60,000 daily on just one line. Not to mention they're electrifying the corridor, so that the express services will be even faster.
But yeah, Muni Metro is more of a shame than an asset to SF Bay Area mass transit. Just judging by the BART and the Caltrain combined, SF rail transit is really no better than Dallas or Arlanta. It may have more ridership than Dallas or Atlanta, but Dallas and Atlanta have more frequent trains and arguably have, or will have , in the near future, better coverage. Atlanta already has better coverage of the inner city with Marta than SF has with BART. Ditto for Dallas. And Dallas is actually building a new line from Plano to DFW. All the BART is doing is building three more stations to San Jose.
Make no mistake, San Diego mass transit is on the level of Miami, if even that.
A significant portion of Muni Metro is underground and the Central Subway is opening to Chinatown and North Beach in a couple years. At that point it will have 11 subway stations. Add that to the 10 BART subway stations and you have 21 subway stations in the city. Then don’t forget BART has urban service in Oakland and Berkeley (including several other subway stations).
The Bay Area destroys both Atlanta and especially Dallas in terms of rail service. It’s not even close. LA also has a decent and rapidly improving rail system. San Diego’s is pretty bad but honestly I’d put it on par with Dallas.
The Bay Area destroys both Atlanta and especially Dallas in terms of rail service. It’s not even close. LA also has a decent and rapidly improving rail system. San Diego’s is pretty bad but honestly I’d put it on par with Dallas.
Are you sure, even when MARTA's rail service has more frequent trains over most of the system than the BART? Or when MARTA has more coverage of Atlanta city limits than BART + Caltrain does? Forget about Muni Metro, that's an embarrassment, not an asset.
The BART + Caltrain still cannot even come close to the DC Metro. If you ask JesseSMH, he'll tell you basically the same thing, that SF rail transit is hardly any better than Atlanta's.
The BART + Caltrain still cannot even come close to the DC Metro. If you ask JesseSMH, he'll tell you basically the same thing, that SF rail transit is hardly any better than Atlanta's.
Coincidentally, its not better than Los Angeles either.
The Bay Area destroys both Atlanta and especially Dallas in terms of rail service. It’s not even close. LA also has a decent and rapidly improving rail system. San Diego’s is pretty bad but honestly I’d put it on par with Dallas.
Hmm, LA better than Dallas in terms of rail transit. Sure, LA's got more riders. But in terms of service/convenience, it's not so clear. Let's take, for example, going from DFW to Downtown Dallas vs. LAX to Downtown LA.
You can take a one seat ride from DFW airport Terminal A to Downtown Dallas AND Downtown Fort Worth (they just opened TexRail). In a few years, you'll be able to take the Cotton Belt Line directly from Plano to DFW. It takes only 45 minutes to go from Downtown Dallas to DFW (over a distance of at least 21 miles).
Meanwhile, all LAX is doing is building a people mover to connect to the new Green Line station at the very edge of the airport. So People Mover->Green Line->Crenshaw Line->Gold Line to get to Downtown LA. That's a lot of transfers, and that's even after they build the Regional Connector.
Let's not even mention that you'll have to take the light rail through what is now the Expo line, which has a whopping 17 mile per hour speed average because it's not fully grade separated and actually has to stop at traffic lights. Brilliant.
Sure, at the DFW airport, you do have to take the people mover from terminals other than Terminal A to get to the DFW light rail station, but even then, it'll be far more convenient to get from DFW airport to Downtown Dallas.
Are the other systems that much better than SoFla?
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