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1. New York
2. San Francisco
3. Los Angeles
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Chicago
6. Boston
7. Philadelphia
8. Seattle
9. Denver
10. San Jose
Access Across America Rankings were determined by a weighted average of accessibility, giving a higher weight to closer jobs. The calculations include all components of a transit journey, including “last mile” access and egress walking segments and transfers.
America's 10 Best Cities for Commuting on Public Transit | WIRED The report, by Andrew Owen and David Levinson, defines accessibility as “the ease of reaching valued destinations,” in this case jobs. Simply put, it’s an examination of how easy it is for people to get to work.
Each metro region is ranked by how long it takes people to get to work: Jobs that can be reached within 10 minutes are worth more than those accessible with 20 minutes, and so on, up to 60 minutes. Data for job locations is drawn from the Census Bureau, and the time it takes to get there is measured using “detailed pedestrian networks” and full transit schedules for weekdays between 7 and 9 am.
The method accounts for things like how long it takes to walk from a transit stop to a destination and transfer times from one bus or subway line to another. Importantly, it also factors in service frequency and includes the time people spend waiting for a bus or train to arrive.
This approach, Owen and Levinson write, “avoids the assumption that transit service with 30-minute frequency is as valuable as service with 10-minute frequency and that users suffer no inconvenience from adjusting to personal schedules to match transit schedules.”
The ranking that is likely most surprising is Los Angeles. Milwaukee is also a little higher than I'd expect.
Not that I'm implying that this study is at all inaccurate, but it is interesting and demonstrates that, despite a smaller transit system relative to its size, LA must do very well with locating routes near job centers -- which is extremely important.
Buses, being tied to the road network, are far inferior to rail systems. Moreover, once buses reach a certain frequency, they begin to 'clump', turning up in twos or threes with long stretches in between. These rankings don't give enough weight to rail.
The ranking that is likely most surprising is Los Angeles. Milwaukee is also a little higher than I'd expect.
Not that I'm implying that this study is at all inaccurate, but it is interesting and demonstrates that, despite a smaller transit system relative to its size, LA must do very well with locating routes near job centers -- which is extremely important.
It's because LA has a very comprehensive bus network that runs on a grid pattern that pretty much overlays the entire lower half of the county. One thing that the study does point out is that as the travel times decrease (i.e. jobs within 60, 30, 10 minutes) Los Angeles does go down a bit in the rankings, though it still stays among the top - I believe this is a result of LA not really having one big huge jobs node but instead a handful of nodes that allow many residents to be within close transit range of at least one job center.
Los Angeles has the 3rd highest transit ridership in the nation, so the ranking actually is not that surprising to me, though I do not think it means LA has the 3rd best transit system in the country. Essentially what it says is that I can access just about any place in urban Los Angeles County on the transit system - granted, it might take 3 hours to go from North Hills to Carson, but I can get there. Overall though, LA has a way better transit system than it gets credit for. I use it a few times a week to go from Pasadena to DTLA (on the train) and it is awesome for my needs.
This link has a table with some stats about Metro bus stops/routes/etc:
Also keep in mind that these do not include municipal bus operators, some of which are quite extensive (LB Transit, SM Big Blue Bus, Foothill Transit) and sometimes replace Metro routes (BBB on the Westside in particular).
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Not sure if SF is ahead of DC when considering the whole metro area. I'm not as familiar with the transit in the Bay, but I know it's a dense area. Do the numbers of people using transit there come close to DC region?
Bart extends pretty far like the Metro but doesn't have nearly as many stations as DC. In a thread about transit accessibility to jobs this would be of importance.
If LA is ranked above DC, Chicago, Boston and Philly, then you know the ranking is a joke.
And no, don't give me "but LA has good bus service". These other metros generally have equally good or better bus service, and overall far higher transit share. Jobs are scattered all over LA/OC, usually in areas with poor transit access. In contrast, jobs in DC, Chicago, Boston and Philly tend to be concentrated along transit.
Los Angeles has the 3rd highest transit ridership in the nation, so the ranking actually is not that surprising to me, though I do not think it means LA has the 3rd best transit system in the country.
LA has nearly 20 million people. Excepting NYC (which is even larger), no other metro area in the U.S. even has 10 million people.
So LA's high transit ridership is purely a function of size. It has an enormous population, basically twice that of any other metro area (again, excluding NYC, which is a huge outlier anyways in terms of population and transit share).
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