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Dc Metro is immaculate and spotless and efficient compared to the MBTA which is an unbelievable mess with declining ridership fare hikes every other year, still leading the nation in derailments. Every new project they’ve built breaks or has massive flaws. Trains replacements have been delayed for years and years. 3 times this year alone. Smoking trains, people having sex, fighting and doing drugs in stations. I’ve literally seen all of this on video. People taking dumps while waiting for the train. No security, no cleanliness, nothing. Boston transit is shockingly bad when ever I come back from the DC area.
I think our experiences are different because as a commuter, the things I smell on the Blue Line every morning would disgust more people. More than once, have I been stuck underground on a train that just didn't move. Remember, our commuter rail options are a bit more limited here than the MBTA, so imagine all of that, with a throng of people on the train because there aren't any other options
And as awesome as nightlife has become in DC, it sucks that the last train leaves at 1 AM. I wouldn't trust it to be open after that time due to our famous maintenance issues.
You guys do have a better commuter rail system than we do. Ours is ok, but MARC and VRE don't cover nearly enough as it should. My experience with MBTA is much more limited though, limited taking it from Providence to Boston, then connecting to local rail to Cambridge to visit friends.
Even going by CSAs, The Twin Cities were larger than Cleveland and Akron's combined CSA in 2010. In reality though, Akron by no means considers itself to be apart of Cleveland's metro. Cleveland going on its MSA alone is well behind several other Midwestern metros, let alone competing for third.
This is more complicated than what is realized. However the OP seems to be looking at this from regional/CSA leveal as opposed to an MSA level. If that's the case North East Ohio CSA/regional area from a population/area standpoint is one of the larger in the Midwest.
I think our experiences are different because as a commuter, the things I smell on the Blue Line every morning would disgust more people. More than once, have I been stuck underground on a train that just didn't move. Remember, our commuter rail options are a bit more limited here than the MBTA, so imagine all of that, with a throng of people on the train because there aren't any other options
And as awesome as nightlife has become in DC, it sucks that the last train leaves at 1 AM. I wouldn't trust it to be open after that time due to our famous maintenance issues.
You guys do have a better commuter rail system than we do. Ours is ok, but MARC and VRE don't cover nearly enough as it should. My experience with MBTA is much more limited though, limited taking it from Providence to Boston, then connecting to local rail to Cambridge to visit friends.
Boston has a less extensive Subway because it’s a much more compact city. The Urban core is about 30% denser and the metro area is about 30% smaller so if you do the math, there is much less justication for subway stops 12 miles from the city center.
Boston has a less extensive Subway because it’s a much more compact city. The Urban core is about 30% denser and the metro area is about 30% smaller so if you do the math, there is much less justication for subway stops 12 miles from the city center.
Yeah, that makes sense. MBTA also didn't grow up in a time like DC Metro, MARTA or BART where they were obsessed with consolidating suburban commuter rail with urban subways. I think DC Metro combines it the best out of the three, but its still a strange concept given our country's sprawl issue.
I've definitely noticed in the past 10 years the urban cores of metros becoming more robust and adding more population. Gentrification is a real thing in a much more aggressive way than it was 10 years ago. I never thought the District would add this many people this quickly, but here we are.
Dc Metro is immaculate and spotless and efficient compared to the MBTA which is an unbelievable mess with declining ridership fare hikes every other year, still leading the nation in derailments. Every new project they’ve built breaks or has massive flaws. Trains replacements have been delayed for years and years. 3 times this year alone. Smoking trains, people having sex, fighting and doing drugs in stations. I’ve literally seen all of this on video. People taking dumps while waiting for the train. No security, no cleanliness, nothing. Boston transit is shockingly bad when ever I come back from the DC area.
Mind if I share these observations with our local SEPTAphobes?
And WTH happened to the MBTA that it's in that state?
I know how WMATA Metrorail got into such a parlous state. Two main reasons: First, WMATA as it was constituted was more a construction company than a transit agency, and that made some sense if the main goal was to build the third-most-extensive (after NY and Chicago, or maybe second after NY) rapid transit system in the country, but made less sense as more and more of that system was completed and needed to be run. Second, the transit agency side of the operation had an abysmal safety and maintenance culture; The Washington Times ran an expose shortly after the Takoma crash in 2009 that revealed all the termites in the woodwork.
I don't think the MBTA even now has rivaled the Washington Metro's record of four fatality accidents in 43 years of operation. I don't think any transit system in the country has that bad a record. (And if you change the metric to deaths per million passenger-miles or thousand revenue vehicle-miles or however else you want to slice it, WMATA comes out on top as the nation's deadliest subway as well as its second busiest. But I'm not absolutely sure of that if the metrics are individual fatalities divided by the distance traveled.)
I told SEPTAphobes that Philadelphia's mass transit agency deserved its "Best Large Transit System" award in 2012 because the agency kept its rapid transit and regional rail networks in decent operating condition using nothing more than duct tape and baling wire. (There have been two fatality accidents in the 112 years rapid transit has operated in Philadelphia, though the second was one of the deadliest accidents in US transit history.)
Yeah, that makes sense. MBTA also didn't grow up in a time like DC Metro, MARTA or BART where they were obsessed with consolidating suburban commuter rail with urban subways. I think DC Metro combines it the best out of the three, but its still a strange concept given our country's sprawl issue.
I've definitely noticed in the past 10 years the urban cores of metros becoming more robust and adding more population. Gentrification is a real thing in a much more aggressive way than it was 10 years ago. I never thought the District would add this many people this quickly, but here we are.
The main goal for what I call the "Second Subway Era" systems (these number seven**, more than were opened in the First Subway Era*) was what I call "remote vehicle storage." IOW, getting suburban commuters to leave their cars in the 'burbs and take trains into the city. Thus these later systems look, and function, more like commuter rail than like urban circulators.
But don't forget that when the First Subway Era systems were built, most of the territory they served was also "suburbia." The lines that extended into places like Queens, Olney, Oak Park and Dorchester often served areas where no one lived at the time the lines were built - but developers were hot on the heels of the builders, putting up apartment buildings, row houses and bungalows close to those stations.
The difference between the Second Subway Era and the First was that the suburbs already had been built by the time we got around to building the Second Subway Era lines.
*The "First Subway Era" began in 1897, when Boston opened its trolley subway, America's first, and ended in 1943 with the opening of Chicago's "Initial [and only] System of Subways." The Second began in 1969 with the transformation of the Philadelphia-Camden "Bridge Line" subway into the PATCO Lindenwold High-Speed Line, but the first new system of this era was BART in 1971. It kinda-sorta ended in 1993 with the opening of LA's Red and Purple Line subways, but if you throw in light metros, it's still going on, with Seattle embarked on the most ambitious of the projects right now.
**Counting only "heavy rail" metro systems:
First Subway Era: Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia [SEPTA] (4)
In between: Cleveland (1)
Second Subway Era: Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia [PATCO], San Francisco/Oakland, Washington (7). However, if we treat PATCO like the MBTA's grafting of a Second Subway Era system onto a First Subway Era one, then this number should be 6.
I think BBMM is overstating the woes of the MBTA. Uber/Lyft are generally chipping into transit ridership everywhere as are lower gas prices, but ridership is still very strong and service is adequate. I’m a daily user. New red and orange lines cars which are coming online as we speak will drastically impact two of the biggest issues - breakdowns due to maintenance issues on red and orange, and terrible headway on orange. Commuter rail ridership is up significantly in the past decade. All lines are seeing increased ridership.
This is more complicated than what is realized. However the OP seems to be looking at this from regional/CSA leveal as opposed to an MSA level. If that's the case North East Ohio CSA/regional area from a population/area standpoint is one of the larger in the Midwest.
All I want is for Cleveland boosters to stop pretending Youngstown is suburban Cleveland.
The Dallas metro had already surpassed Philadelphia prior to 2010, and Houston and Philadelphia were essentially equal in 2010, not anything recent.
I don't think the hierarchy of influence and impact has changed much in the past 9 years, mostly just population shifts and cities in the Southeast and Texas growing at very fast rates.
Correct, but you know as well as I do that because some New Yorker's have moved in and reverse commute from Mercer County and The Lehigh Valley The Philadelphia CSA/MSA has been jipped out of probably 1.1 million residents that had long been apart of the metro. It's not like the region's population has shrunk.
I certainly hope this changes by the next census. (Wishful thinking.)
Dallas and Houston both leapfrogging Philadelphia, with Miami close behind
Actually Miami's MSA has already passed Philly.
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