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Sav - I generally agree with you but on this I am not sure I totally follow your logic, while I agree with some points to me a clear delineator is the number of people that live in areas where "good" car-free lifestyle is available (on absolutes) to me this is where the Chicago transit separates itself (pure scale of good coverage) Second to only NYC in this regard
But I will agree that I would have a car in SF or Chicago as a choice, as I do in Philly
I think that's pretty obvious considering how large Chicago is compared to SF. I would think Chicago would offer more options for pretty much everything. As a whole though (the entire city), it doesn't appear any more people (percentage wise/per capita) are living w/o a car or using transit than SF. That was my point.
I'd be curious to see a map of car ownership / usage for Chicago and San Francisco. You can dig up data by census tract but it's tedious. CD has some info.
I'd be curious to see a map of car ownership / usage for Chicago and San Francisco. You can dig up data by census tract but it's tedious. CD has some info.
This took me a little longer than I would have liked so I didn't want to spend anymore time making them look pretty, so here is a rough map of households without access to a vehicle by census tract for SF and Cook Counties.
Oh I just created these myself in ArcMap using census data lol. I did see that option to map data but it didn't work or pull up anything for me so I did it the old fashion way.
Basically I downloaded the census tract shapefiles for each county. Downloaded the census data with no vehicle households then joined it to the census tract shapefile so it would display. Then set the intervals to display what I have there. If you haven't used ArcMap none of that probably made any sense lol.
The maps aren't too scale and are pretty raw, I did this during lunch. Just wanted to display the raw data and didn't bother cleaning it up or isolating the city of Chicago.
I use the factfinder maps for income stats all the time.
Anyway, BART will have 24hr service for the next 4 days starting this evening because the Bay Bridge is closing so the new eastern span can open next tuesday...anyway, interesting times.
Well, it seems you don't know much about Atlanta. Before MARTA, the city had a fairily extensive streetcar and interurban network:
Pre-MARTA Atlanta street rail network (This does not include the passenger rail lines that snaked all through out the region with dozens of stops what was Atlanta then.)
MARTA was the replacement for the streetcars. While we should have kept our streetcars like San Francisco did, we're actually in the process of rebuilding them now. The first line will be up and running in a few months with several other lines planned over the next few years down major central city avenues as well as the famed circular Beltine network. These streetcar lines will be integrated with all five MARTA lines in Atlanta proper.
As for this thread, if the real question is who has better public transit then it is San Francisco. With MUNI, Caltrain, and the suburban bus systems they have a fairly good system (though I hear a lot of complaints from my friends and family in the Bay Area) that is definitely ahead of Atlanta.
When it comes to BART vs MARTA though, I would say it's a tie to a slight edge to MARTA. While BART goes much further in it's metro region than MARTA does, MARTA has about the same daily ridership as BART. Also, MARTA has a flat rate fare structure, so you can transfer or ride as far as you want or for as long as you want so long as you don't leave the station. Also, as mentioned earlier, it cannot be discounted how much more coverage and emphasis has on central city coverage that MARTA has over BART.
That’s not saying anything. Practically all cities had extensive streetcar systems back in the day, from Detroit to Dubuque. Like I said, MARTA is a very good rail system, but cannot keep up with the sprawl. Commuter rail is needed… Another problem is the more Red-State conservative suburban areas that are anti-rail which have pretty much put the kibosh on any MARTA rail extension for the foreseeable future. Overall, suburban SF is much more progressive and open to public transit … which is why the SF rail network is big and keeps expanding/improving unlike MARTA…
The fact is, Atlanta is really a more sprawling type Sunbelt city. There are some old sections, but these are mainly close in, such as up to about North Ave. a short distance from downtown. There are a few older sections in Midtown, such as where the classic old Fox Theatre is. Older Atlanta areas have a lot of old wood-frame homes on substantial lots similar to Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Milwaukee and KC. Where Atlanta has grown significantly is with a lot of condo and townhouse areas along with a lot of suburban-ish cul-de-sacs. Buckhead has had a lot of more recent growth: a lot of glass n’ steel office buildings, including some towers. It also has tons of strip development and malls... Point being: urban density in Atlanta (which is overall very light compared to SF's) is not the kind of old-school, buildings-crowding-the-curb kind of density seen in older, mature cities like SF, Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc...
Downtown Atlanta is small and not very impressive – it’s got more giant hotels than anything. Downtown Cleveland is far more impressive than Atlanta’s downtown imho… btw, Midtown is NOT downtown. And that just proves my point about Atlanta: it’s a sprawling city that actually has 3 downtown-type areas: downtown, midtown and Buckhead. I once read that Buckhead has more office space than downtown Cincinnati.
SF is small, dense and compact—it’s like Boston with Spanish/Moorish architecture. Greater SF may have sprawl in East Bay, but it’s not nearly as wild and uncontrolled as Atlanta’s. For one thing, suburban SF’s growth is hemmed in by natural resources, such as the bays and the mountains whereas much of Atlanta is flat. Also, Atlanta is one of the few big cities that has no downtown waterfront at all.
Once again, as noted many times, the OP's original question was about each city's entire transit system, not just a direct comparison to BART and MARTA, because both are different.
Atlanta = Dallas = Charlotte = Birmingham = Memphis = Houston, etc...
SF = Boston = DC = Philly = Montreal = Chicago (in miniature) = Brooklyn, etc.
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