DART vs MARTA vs LA metro rail vs Denver RTD light rail vs Portland TriMet

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by Staysean23

Where are the riders for Dart every station seem damn near empty

I think at the time it was a new line as it said in the description.

[Galounger]

Where are the riders for Dart every station seem damn near empty

Originally Posted by Ant131531

I think at the time it was a new line as it said in the description.

This is the best video I could find of a DART station at rush hour.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EH-TW3yNSc

Here is a MARTA station at rush hour.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQgLUrhX0QY

[qolspony]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

I'll give you the DC metro is a league above every city in the States except NYC in terms of coverage and usage, but I really don't understand your premise for how BART whallops MARTA?

If it is the maps, then that is an example of how BART and MARTA equalize. As you can see on the MARTA map (which is not to scale), the majority of the system's stations are in Atlanta proper. With BART, the majority of the stations are not in San Francisco proper. Thusly, MARTA serves it's central city better than BART and BART serves it's suburbs better than MARTA.

However, as you should know (do you?), it really doesn't matter what the coverage is if no one rides it. Because of that, the most important factor of judging how good of a transit system a city has is to look at how many people ride it on a daily basis.

BART has a daily ridership of 300,000 passengers
MARTA has a daily rail ridership of 260,000 passengers

In other words, they are essentially equal and neither holds an advantage over the other.

With that said, and as others have stated, MARTA is leagues above the rail transit available in Dallas and Denver and is better than LA's rail for now (although they technically have a higher ridership than MARTA when Light Rail and Subway is combined, it is only be a few thousand passengers. MARTA is better at that metric given Los Angeles has a central city population 8 times higher than Atlanta and a metro population three times higher).

BART is a very expensive system with a different track gauge, which restrict it to specialized cars. MARTA on the other hand, can share car stock with Baltimore (or any other city that uses heavy rail).

Also, BART is a commuter railroad (suburban fares) that operates like heavy rail (stations). On the other hand, MARTA is just simply heavy rail, which charges a flat fare fee. It is mostly restricted to the city proper.

The only thing that is common about them is they are grade separated and have ART in their names.

[qolspony]

Originally Posted by kdogg817

DART big problem is it needs to end its Honor system. Many of their passengers do not pay for its fares, which cost the system millions of dollars. The orange line will go through Los Colinas before it hits the big airport. Los Colinas is HUGE for DART. People will gladly hop on the train in Fort Worth because simply put T bus transportation is horrible. Also the majority of Fort Worth jobs are located downtown all the way to the alliance corridor. The Fort Worth line will run smack down in the middle of highly populated residential areas on the Westside. If some kind of way Fort Worth can talk Arlington into creating a line from Arlington to downtown Fort Worth than a huge chunk of Tarrant County will have access to the system. From what I have read from Dallas morning News is a lot of DART stops have no development around it. They are banking on future development. I don't think that is very smart. You are supposed to build in areas that are already built up.

The DART system reminds me on how the #7 NYC subway was built. It was built around FARM land. REALLY! There wasn't a single building when the line was built. Because it was built in an area with no inhabitants, they was no opposition and no infrastructure to drive cost up. Now the #7 is one of the most populated subway in the area. And it has the unique characteristic as being the only subway line that uses 11 cars.