Battle of the top cities for rapid transit that only use light rail and/or commuter lines (best, cost)

[MDAllstar]

Rank each of these cities for rapid transit. This battle is for cities that have light rail systems only without any heavy rail subway integration. Any city with heavy rail subway lines is not included in this comparison. Rank these cities based on efficiency, ridership, coverage, transit integration, expansions, and TOD development.

Portland
San Diego
Dallas
Denver
St. Louis
Salt Lake City
Sacramento
Phoenix
Minneapolis
Seattle
Pittsburgh
Charlotte
Houston

[Champ le monstre du lac]

I voted for Portland, Seattle, and Denver. Rail transit works well in these cities as they actual have nice and active downtown areas and pockets of density within the cities themselves.

Portland for its ambitious light rail expansions, for a metro of only 2 million it has such an extensive wide network of light rail lines. It's also one of those cities where you can fly into and easily hop on a train right from the airport terminal and roll right into donwtown with little hassle. The streetcars in downtown are also great.

Seattle - I like Seattle's system because it feels like an actual metro system as most of the track is either elevated or subway. The expansion seems to be slow going but it will get there (someday).

Denver for FasTracks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTracks
http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/systemmap.php
This is a very ambitious expansion plan with commuter and light rail expanding to the airport, Boulder, Golden, and through Aurora. Pretty much hitting every angle of the metro area. The only thing that could be improved upon is more rail within the city of Denver itself, perhaps a streetcar down Colfax Ave for starters.

Honorable mention: Salt Lake City - though it didn't get my vote who'd have thought that a medium sized city/metro like Salt Lake would get so many light rail lines (and awesome freeways to boot).

[Gantz]

I think you can judge here fairly objectively. You just need to find ridership #, coverage %, track length, etc.

[lammius]

Just a question for the transit buffs, is LRT considered "rapid" transit? I always thought that term was reserved for the grade-separated (subways/metros/els) systems.

Also, Norfolk is a city that (while probably not the best) now qualifies to be on the list.

[kcmo]

Denver and Portland, followed by St Louis.

[Tex?Il?]

I don't understand why people make a big deal about the difference between light rail and a subway. I mean yes, subways go underground, but a lot of subways sometimes go above ground in places (Chicagos L is sometimes above ground, sometimes below). Yes the trains themselves maybe a bit heavier, bigger capacity, but I for all intensive purposes they are the same thing.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by Gantz

I think you can judge here fairly objectively. You just need to find ridership #, coverage %, track length, etc.

Here you go...

Source: http://www.apta.com/resources/statis...rship-APTA.pdf

Rank by central city population

Houston - 2,099,451
Phoenix - 1,445,632
San Diego - 1,301,617
Dallas - 1,197,816
Charlotte - 731,424
Seattle - 608,660
Denver - 600,158
Portland - 583,776
Sacramento - 486,488
Minneapolis - 382,578
St. Louis - 319,294
Pittsburgh - 305,704
Salt Lake City - 186,440

Rank by daily ridership

Portland - 133,000 daily trips
San Diego - 96,800 daily trips
Dallas - 76,800 daily trips
Denver - 67,900 daily trips
St. Louis - 52,000 daily trips
Salt Lake City - 43,500 daily trips
Sacramento - 41,700 daily trips
Phoenix - 38,700 daily trips
Minneapolis - 30,500 daily trips
Seattle - 27,100 daily trips
Pittsburgh - 23,800 daily trips
Charlotte - 15,400 daily trips
Houston - 35,700 daily trips

Rank by track length

Dallas - 72 miles
San Diego - 53.5 miles
Portland - 53 miles
St. Louis - 46 miles
Sacramento - 36.9 miles
Denver - 35 miles
Pittsburgh - 25 miles
Phoenix - 20 miles
Salt Lake City - 19 miles
Seattle - 15.6 miles
Minneapolis - 12 miles
Charlotte - 9.6 miles
Houston - 7.5 miles

Rank by percentage of central city population served by daily trips

Salt Lake City - 23.33%
Portland - 22.78%
St. Louis - 16.28%
Denver - 11.61%
Sacramento - 8.57%
Minneapolis - 7.97%
Pittsburgh - 7.78%
San Diego - 7.43%
Dallas - 6.41%
Seattle - 4.45%
Phoenix - 2.67%
Charlotte - 2.10%
Houston - 1.70%

Note: While it is likely that it is not just city residents using transit in these cities (it is always a mix of both residents and tourists/commuters), I thought this metric was interesting.

Conclusions

Not surprisingly Portland, when weighted against all of the metrics, does the best out of all of these cities. Suprisingly Salt Lake City is right on it's tail at having the second most effective system. While it would be easy to say that Houston and Charlotte are the worst, they can at least be given a pass for now for having relatively new systems without much track. Dallas on the other hand...

Also, those looking for a comparison of passengers per mile, forget about that metric. It tells you nothing useful when comparing transit systems in different cities, especially when there is a such a large disparity between population size and the size of the transit system.

[Nightscape]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

I don't understand why people make a big deal about the difference between light rail and a subway. I mean yes, subways go underground, but a lot of subways sometimes go above ground in places (Chicagos L is sometimes above ground, sometimes below). Yes the trains themselves maybe a bit heavier, bigger capacity, but I for all intensive purposes they are the same thing.

I'm not an expert at this but isn't it due to the speed factor? Heavy rail/subways may go above ground but they don't share surface streets with automobiles & pedestrians while lightrail systems do. (slowing down commute times vs subways)

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

I don't understand why people make a big deal about the difference between light rail and a subway. I mean yes, subways go underground, but a lot of subways sometimes go above ground in places (Chicagos L is sometimes above ground, sometimes below). Yes the trains themselves maybe a bit heavier, bigger capacity, but I for all intensive purposes they are the same thing.

It depends on how it's built. Most LRT systems are not 100% in dedicated right of way and totally separate from traffic and pedestrians which drastically slows them down. The reason is cost. It's MUCH cheaper to build tracks on or along side a street than to create a dedicated right of way above or below ground.

St Louis has probably the closest thing to heavy rail using light rail technology. They were able to use existing downtown tunnels and bridges and there are only a few at grade crossings with streets and their newer extensions have new subway tunnels, so most of the sytem funtions esentially as a heavy rail system, even downtown.

Some have a nice hybrid of subway and elevated portions with on street portions in downtown areas (Denver for example) where they have portions where they run fast (like along I-25) but when they get downtown, they are probably slower than buses.

Some run mostly at grade like Baltimore and Salt Lake City with few (if any) portions of high speed dedicated right of way.

All heavy rails like what DC or Chicago has (regardless of if they are subway or elevated or in a secured right of way) are 100% in dedicated right of way.

It really does make a big difference. The reason most LRT lines are not like this is due to cost.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by lammius

Just a question for the transit buffs, is LRT considered "rapid" transit?

It could be, but usually not. Rapid transit is high frequency, high volume, and grade separated. It's usually either underground or elevated above street level. If it runs at ground level it's separated from all other roads, usually resulting in all of the roads running perpendicular to the rapid transit line as being dead-ends (thats why rapid transit lines at ground level are pretty rare).