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I really think every city should have some sort of rail/transit system like many european cities have mastered. Show some pictures of your city's mass transit (Rail, Busses, Ferries,Etc.)
This is not to compare each other and bash each other, just to talk about different cities transit systems (ridership, expansion, etc.)
I currently live in Norfolk, Va. The Transit System is called HRT (Hampton Roads Transit). We have 62 bus routes that run every 15-30 minutes at peak hours and every 30-60 minutes at night and early morning. There is a electric bus that runs on a circulator through downtown. Ferries run from downtown Norfolk to downtown Portsmouth every 15 minutes. Light Rail is under construction and will run every 7.5 minutes with the starter line daily ridership of 12,000. Currently 12-13 million ride HRT annually. Plans are to expand the rail to every city in the metro and at full buildout daily ridership will approach 100,000 and be within walking distance of 680,000.
Here is Youngstown's/Mahoning county's mass-tranit website: WRTA Mahoning County
Instead of a city-funded service, we just passed a sales tax to become a county wide service. It's OK for a county of 250k people. None of the routes run more than once an hour, but some routes overlap, so there is a bus every half-hour in some places. We'll see how much better it gets when they intruduce new services this September.
Here is a typical bus used on the fixed routes:
http://www.wrtaonline.com/images/buswebpg.jpg (broken link)
They also have vans that are used for door to door pick-ups.
Public rail service is a great thing. Really great. And every city I have lived in has had a pretty good rail system. Unfortunately, it is also fairly expensive compared to buses, so many communities simply cannot afford it.
Also, one of the reasons why train/rail transit works so well in Europe has nothing to do with the amount of train/rail lines -- we have tons of train tracks connecting virtually every city in the US -- it has to do with Europeans' willingness to ride trains instead of cars. It helps that many European cities (and countries) are closer together, making trains a more viable method of transportation if you want to travel across the country in a few hours.
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Most of you know what the NYC subways look like, so I'll post about the Long island railroad. The trains are just as long as the subway cars, and the LIRR goes as far as about 80 miles outside the city. It's the largest commuter rail in the country. I live about 10 miles outside the city, and the trains run as often as 10 minutes certain times of the day.
Rachael, I always thought that the LIRR was a separate service. Your picture shows MTA on the front of the train though. Is it the same service as the subway then? Just different routes that cover the suburbs instead of the city?
Rachael, I always thought that the LIRR was a separate service. Your picture shows MTA on the front of the train though. Is it the same service as the subway then? Just different routes that cover the suburbs instead of the city?
They are run by the same company, the same thing goes for Metro North and Long Island Bus.
The LIRR is way better than the subway, and it stops down the block from where I live.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Infamous92
They are run by the same company, the same thing goes for Metro North and Long Island Bus.
The LIRR is way better than the subway, and it stops down the block from where I live.
You're right, I find LIRR better than the subway. Where I live in Nassau county takes the same amount of time to get to midtown, compared to when I lived in Maspeth, Queens (only like 5 miles from midtown). It's because in my old neighborhood in Queens, you had to take a 10 minute bus ride to the subway, and then it was a local subway ride that took about 30 minutes.
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