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View Poll Results: San Francisco vs. D.C.
San Francisco 85 49.13%
Washington D.C. 88 50.87%
Voters: 173. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 05-03-2010, 09:33 PM
 
Location: Rockville, MD
3,546 posts, read 8,528,950 times
Reputation: 1389

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Quote:
Originally Posted by ffknight918 View Post
So your argument for BART being better is because ONE accident occurred on the Metro in its existence? That's a mature response.
It's the response of someone for whom statistics do not support his position.
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Old 05-03-2010, 09:37 PM
 
4,692 posts, read 9,255,770 times
Reputation: 1330
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
Here are the 2 systems to scale.
San Francisco


Washington


world subways at scale - fake is the new real
I find these maps interesting. I am not sure how to analyze this data. Do you have a figure for miles of track. It seems that SF transit is more spread out, whereas DC transit is clustered around DC. Am I interpreting that wrong?
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Old 05-03-2010, 09:46 PM
 
Location: Los Altos Hills, CA
36,623 posts, read 67,123,456 times
Reputation: 21154
Quote:
Originally Posted by adavi215 View Post
I find these maps interesting. I am not sure how to analyze this data. Do you have a figure for miles of track. It seems that SF transit is more spread out, whereas DC transit is clustered around DC. Am I interpreting that wrong?
I agree with your interpretation.

DC Metro appears to be far more centralized-there is more of an apparent focal point of the system.

BART otoh, goes way out for an intra-city subway system-and that's because while technically BART is a subway, it also doubles as a commuter rail of sorts for people in far flung suburbs.
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Old 05-03-2010, 10:09 PM
 
Location: Los Altos Hills, CA
36,623 posts, read 67,123,456 times
Reputation: 21154
Quote:
Originally Posted by 14thandYou View Post
No need to apologize, Montclair. After all, DC lags behind only NYC in terms of the number of subway riders, and is behind only NY and Jersey City in terms of cities with the highest percentage of transit riders. (39% of DC residents take transit, as opposed to 30.2% of San Franciscans.)

List of U.S. cities with high transit ridership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia is not a reliable source and its link goes to data from 2000? Meanwhile that graph pretends to be from 2008?

hahahahaha...please, no.

Quote:
Each day, nearly 1.4 million DC-area residents commute via public transit, as opposed to 1.1 million in San Francisco.
Wrong. I mean, WAY, WAY wrong.

According to the US Census Bureau American Factfinder Community Survey for 2008:

Total Workers Age 16+
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland 3,642,648
Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia 4,385,515

Workers Age 16+ who travel to work via public transit:
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland 357,822...9.8%
Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia 481,505...10.9%

Not exactly a resounding East Coast advantage huh?


As far as transit percentages, SF and DC are incredibly close and therefore neither can claim some huge advantage.

It simply does not add up to a lopsided victory for either side.
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Old 05-03-2010, 10:13 PM
 
1,263 posts, read 3,993,970 times
Reputation: 642
DC metro goes to suburbs too. That map of DC metro was drawn for clarity and is out of proportion far out from the core. This is typical for any system which forms a grid in the central part. Here is a map to scale. File:Washington DC Metro Map (To Scale).svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The two systems are very similar in terms of number of lines and total length. The difference is that Bart has significant overlaps for different lines while DC metro is more like a network spreading into all directions. Overall I think DC metro is the better system because it makes better use of the length by forming a network at the core. The ridership tells the same. But that is partly because of the layout difference of the two cities. For SF the cost vs. benefit analysis doesn't call for such a network based system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
I agree with your interpretation.

DC Metro appears to be far more centralized-there is more of an apparent focal point of the system.

BART otoh, goes way out for an intra-city subway system-and that's because while technically BART is a subway, it also doubles as a commuter rail of sorts for people in far flung suburbs.
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Old 05-03-2010, 10:56 PM
 
4,692 posts, read 9,255,770 times
Reputation: 1330
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
I agree with your interpretation.

DC Metro appears to be far more centralized-there is more of an apparent focal point of the system.

BART otoh, goes way out for an intra-city subway system-and that's because while technically BART is a subway, it also doubles as a commuter rail of sorts for people in far flung suburbs.
Perhaps SF transit connects several cities along the Bay Area, mostly SF-Oakland I guess. Whereas DC is connecting DC to outside areas. Maybe the geography of the physical terrain is more important in this comparison.
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Old 05-03-2010, 11:05 PM
 
Location: NYC
1,213 posts, read 3,595,075 times
Reputation: 1254
People, if you're going to analyze SF transit, you have to look at Muni as well. For getting into SF, people use BART, but for getting around SF, it's all about Muni. Two entirely different systems, serving different functions.

from curbed SF


Last edited by matt345; 05-03-2010 at 11:18 PM..
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Old 05-03-2010, 11:08 PM
 
1,263 posts, read 3,993,970 times
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Muni is very slow. It is not exactly comparable with the subway system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by matt345 View Post
People, if you're going to analyze SF transit, you have to look at Muni as well. For getting into SF, people use BART, but for getting around SF, it's all about Muni. Two entirely different systems, serving different functions.

from curbed SF
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Old 05-03-2010, 11:13 PM
 
Location: NYC
1,213 posts, read 3,595,075 times
Reputation: 1254
Quote:
Originally Posted by fashionguy View Post
Muni is very slow. It is not exactly comparable with the subway system.
I'm not saying it's fast, but it's what people use for getting around the city, much more so than BART. And a good portion of Muni does ride in a subway as well. It's set up very similar to Boston's Green Line or Philadelphia's subway surface lines - subway downtown, while running on surface streets in the outer neighborhoods.

I was just making the point that if we're going to be posting transit maps, it's unfair to leave out Muni when discussing SF. When people post transit maps of Boston or Philly, no one questions the Green Line or subway-surface lines being included, even though they are slow and run on city streets just like Muni. Would anyone discuss Boston transit while ignoring the Green Line? Of course not. Then why is it okay to discuss SF transit while ignoring the Muni rail system?
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Old 05-03-2010, 11:24 PM
 
1,263 posts, read 3,993,970 times
Reputation: 642
I don't know but there are different statistics for the ridership of the Boston subway and the Boston Green Line (light rail) in the wikipedia. So I am not sure that people don't treat them differently in the discussions. Your point is valid and I am not disagreeing with you, but I just want to give some clarification about the difference. Because if you include the slower at grade light rail which has to follow traffic signals most of the time into discussion, next thing people can include bus lines as well. There has to be some cutoff line.

Quote:
Originally Posted by matt345 View Post
I'm not saying it's fast, but it's what people use for getting around the city, much more so than BART. And a good portion of Muni does ride in a subway as well. It's set up very similar to Boston's Green Line or Philadelphia's subway surface lines - subway downtown, while running on surface streets in the outer neighborhoods.

I was just making the point that if we're going to be posting transit maps, it's unfair to leave out Muni when discussing SF. When people post transit maps of Boston or Philly, no one questions the Green Line or subway-surface lines being included, even though they are slow and run on city streets just like Muni. Would anyone discuss Boston transit while ignoring the Green Line? Of course not. Then why is it okay to discuss SF transit while ignoring the Muni rail system?
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