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Sacramento, CA here. Public transportation here is county, rather than city, called Regional Transit, usually shortened to "RT," as fair.
Bus service will get you to and from most locations in the contiguous urbanized area within Sacramento County. We have a nice light rail system here, but unfortunately we have one line that always seems to have troublemakers from the ghetto making things miserable for anyone using it. Things like drug dealing on the cars and at the stations.
BART- I love it. BART is awesome. Service is great, fast, cheap, gets to where you want to go, clean, I can always get a seat even at peak hours. On a scale of 1-10, ten being great. I rate it a 8.5
Muni, on the other hand, is fine too, depending on the bus route. But I have a love/hate relationship with Muni. Muni Metro is always late, crowded, filty, slow, breaks down or crashes into another train or vehicle. Muni Bus sucks too. Drivers drive too fast, crowded on certain routes, slow, fights happen. On a scale of 1-10, I rate it a 4.5
CTA provides 53 percent of passenger-miles, Metra 41%, the remainder Pace bus. Pace buses run so infrequently that many times you could walk there by the time the bus arrives. And most of the routes quit running by 7 P.M. No night life in the suburbs? Maybe it's just as well.
San Diego has ok public transit but compared to other cities, it's lacking.
First of all, the light rail trolley system doesn't go throughout the county and skips popular populated neighborhoods in central San Diego.
2nd, budget cuts have kept the trolley system from be expanded but it has plans to be expanded starting next month
Yeah, SD blew it when we took out the pre-WWII trolley lines that ran extensively through uptown. I would concur that it is not bad, actually the bus lines/service that replaced the street cars in the urban core: the 2, 11, 7 (probably a couple of more I'm not familiar with) are actually quite good, mostly new and fairly clean busses with service running every 10 minutes (albeit not as on time as Tokyo) what's not to like? Takes me 10 minutes to get downtown to a ball game or the bay. I've actually taken the bus from my house to the airport to try it out; one transfer and a little over a half hour for $2.25, not bad! The trolley doesn't really service areas, or is within walking distance from my house that I use it much, I'd take it out to SDSU for a basketball game or a concert though just to add to the urban experience. And taking the coaster up north or Amtrak to LA is a no brainer unless you have to have a car while there.
As you get further out of the core though the service and availability drops dramatically- just getting to the beach can take 2 hours it seems. But then, the outlying areas typically don't have the density to sustain a more robust service. I roll my eyes when I keep hearing people demand that they absolutely should be getting light rail and trolleys to come out to the suburbs, as they absolutely refuse to even consider up-zoning the areas directly adjacent the service area that would potentially sustain such a system. Sorry surbanites, it doesn't work that way, you wanted the car based lifestyle and bigger yards, you got it. You shouldn't be getting convenient public transit unless you pony up with density.
As much as I like light rail and trolleys I think a more promising idea is dedicated commuter bus lines, routes with fewer stops, lanes that accommodate the bus service over unrestricted car access, upgraded service area and stops with ticketing; no tickets or cash for the bus and cleaner "trolley looking" busses with on/off access front and back. It just seems like more of the infrastructure is already there that you don't have to rip up so much land and roads for new rail lines. I just read that the city will be implementing a few of these in the next couple of years. I hope they are successful and take off.
Stats: 86 stations, 106.1 miles of track, #2 in the US for daily ridership and #3 for track length (behind) NYC and Chicago). This will change soon once the Silver line is completed, which is under construction as we speak and will make WMATA #2 in both ridership and system length.
Maryland and West Virginia suburbs:
MARC:
Penn line goes from D.C. to Baltimore to upper Maryland (Perryville) serving stops in both DC and Bmore's burbs.
Camden line foes from D.C. to Baltimore also serving the burbs of D.C. and Bmore
Brunswisk line goes from D.C. to Martinburg, West Virginia.
Overall stats: Daily ridership: 32K
System length: 187 miles
Here in metro Detroit we have two separate but equal messes for bus lines, DOT (owned by City of Detroit; only a few bus lines go outside city limits) and SMART (which only has a few lines going into Detroit city limits). DOT drivers are the worst, rudestdrivers in all Detroit. I live a mile and a half away from the SMART bus garage but the SMART bus doesn't go my way. I resent having to pay into a bus system I cannot use. What's more, my fellow voters approved a small SMART tax increase this summer, interesting because most metro Detroiters wouldn't be caught dead riding a bus. This fact was mentioned in a book; it may have been Edge City by Garreau.
Whether train or bus, you'll be able to find away to get into the city.
Unless you're trying to get there on the weekend from Maryland. Then a car is pretty much your only affordable option (Amtrak is about $40 from Baltimore on the weekends).
Considering Septa has gotten rid of 153 stations and 5 Regional Rail lines over the past 3 decades i would consider pretty bad. Septa is the most backward NE agency. NJT , MBTA , and MTA have only close 30 stations total and of those 30 stations only 10 were demolished for no reason. The rest were merged. Now Septa wants to go backwards and undo what it did the past few decades , surprisely everything is still intact just new wires and a few stations are needed. But restoring SE PA to what it was before most of this happen will cost up to 6 billion and take a decade or 2.
I'm curious about this. What were the stations and regional rail lines that were closed down? How much better can mass transit in Philly be right now if those weren't closed down?
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