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Busiest is a question of how you define it. If you count busiest as most riders, then, yes Los Angeles and Chicago are the busiest outside New York. LA Metro's ridership is slightly ahead of CTA's, that lead would probably widen if you added in other agencies, which are more extensive in the LA region than in Chicago.
If you look at passengers per capita, measuring how much the system is used by a region's population, then its San Francisco, specifically the San Francisco-Oakland urbanized area after New York.
If you look at passengers per revenue mile--how many people are getting on an individual bus or train, then Los Angeles has the busiest heavy rail (subway) with 180 passengers per revenue mile. Granted, LA has a pretty small subway system, the second place system with 115 was SEPTA in Philadelphia, with others like DC not too far behind. For light rail, it was Houston, with 143 passengers per mile, again a pretty small system as of yet. MBTA in Boston was the next busiest light rail system, with 117 passengers per revenue mile.
Among buses, the busiest was San Francisco's Muni, which had 63 passengers per revenue hour on its diesel buses, 72 on its trolley buses. The data comes from the National Transit Database.
Busiest is a question of how you define it. If you count busiest as most riders, then, yes Los Angeles and Chicago are the busiest outside New York. LA Metro's ridership is slightly ahead of CTA's, that lead would probably widen if you added in other agencies, which are more extensive in the LA region than in Chicago.
I goofed, the numbers that were almost identical were passenger miles rather than trips, presumably trips on LA Metro are a bit longer. The annual ridership numbers for the two systems:
Chicago 531,931,689 trips
Los Angeles 456,751,053 trips
So Chicago has about 17% more overall trips, 23% more daily (weekday) trips. The difference would come from relatively higher use on the weekend in LA.
I goofed, the numbers that were almost identical were passenger miles rather than trips, presumably trips on LA Metro are a bit longer. The annual ridership numbers for the two systems:
Chicago 531,931,689 trips
Los Angeles 456,751,053 trips
So Chicago has about 17% more overall trips, 23% more daily (weekday) trips. The difference would come from relatively higher use on the weekend in LA.
Probably wouldn't count for this thread because it is by "system", but add in the Big Blue Bus (Santa Monica) and Long Beach Transit, plus about a dozen other municipal systems and LA might catch up. Point is moot if you are just measuring by single systems.
Probably wouldn't count for this thread because it is by "system", but add in the Big Blue Bus (Santa Monica) and Long Beach Transit, plus about a dozen other municipal systems and LA might catch up. Point is moot if you are just measuring by single systems.
Correct, but the numbers I listed do not count Metra (2nd busiest commuter rail in country) and PACE (suburban bus system with small ridership numbers)
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