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MARTA fails in its lack of coverage area for an MSA over 5.5 million people. Cobb, Gwinnett, Douglas, Forsyth, Cherokee you got nothing. And counties in Georgia, which has a lot of them for state of its size, aren't as big as those in California and Texas which have fewer counties but more transit coverage.
I see mention of ridership which is a function of price, employment hub location, cost of living/transit and adequacy of alternatives, i.e. street and highway infrastructure. Metro Atlanta, like D.C. and NY, has a notably inadequate road system, i.e. lots of two-lane surface roads, no frontage roads on highways and limited highway expansion the last 25 years. Thus, I can't give a high weighting to how much ridership occurs because overall it can reflect deficiencies in total regional mobility which is the PRIMARY directive and objective of creating public transit.
Post note - I've lived in Atlanta and Dallas and visited the other three cities listed several times. Denver and D/FW have made the biggest strides this century with expansions. South Florida's Brightline is interesting because Sir Richard Branson is the owner rather than any municipality and it appears well received.
For these 5 cities it's more of a fair comparison as none of these are in the league of NYC, Chicago, DC, Boston, Philly, SF, or even LA and Seattle. Which has the best coverage, efficiency, on time performance, cleanliness and safety of these systems? I'll be curious to read the discussions.
BOTH L.A. and Seattle are not in the tier of the metro areas with rail lines pre-dating 1980. L.A. for its size and sprawl has done a good job but Its NO better than DFW. Seattle!? I recall the fiasco new tunnel system being built downtown where the boring machine got stuck! Sea-Tac has insufficient rail without a doubt!
Last edited by walker1962; 07-24-2019 at 08:07 AM..
This one's a stumper... I really can't choose. All have some qualities, although San Diego is the clear loser in my book: too slow, too much downtown street running, doesn't cover enough area given its sprawl...
Denver is the biggest (track-age wise, if you're only including electric service, otherwise Miami's diesel-electric commuter system beats it), but its weird and disjointed. It's got electric commuter lines to the north then LRT to the south (and there's not even a direct connection between the 2; thru riders must walk several blocks between the 2 stub terminals). It's high-speed hub is at the edge of the CBD and none of the lines serve the dense core areas of Denver, such as the Colfax corridor.
I'm leaning Atlanta/MARTA. It is all heavy rail, serves its core corridors and has the highest ridership by far... But its not comprehensive enough given its gigantic metro region (commuter rail is desperately needed here; you can't expect every city to build a DC Metro (which blows all these cities away, along with practically everybody else, save NYC) ... or even a BART.
Miami is not bad. Yes the rapid transit isn't comprehensive, (and there's a huge hole in the system with no service to crazy-dense South Beach), but there's the very comprehensive downtown Metro Mover, the expanding Tri-Rail and the new Brightline high(er) speed line connecting (for now) Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach and (eventually) Orlando. All these, in concert, serve this sprawling region fairly well.
SIDE NOTE: Last summer we tried out Brightline when it was brand new riding from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami... It's a luxury train service like no other, including Acela in terms of the luxury, airplane-like service, smoothness and comfort. It will be a huge Miami and Florida asset when its fully built out to Orlando...
Denver's rail service is not the biggest. Its lightrail is 87 miles plus a 23 mile long commuter rail line. DART light Rail for Dallas and Collin counties is over 100 miles including six lightrail and its two trolley lines. Then you add:
1. The 30 mile long Trinity Rail Express from Downtown Dallas to Fort Wort;
2. The 21 mile long A train from downtown Denton, north of Dallas, that connects with a DART Rail line, began service in June 2011.
3. Last, as of January of 2019, Tarrant County/Fort Worth , a 25 mile long rail line to DFW airport started service.
D.C. rail, including commuter lines, doesn't blow away Philly or Chicago in terms of coverage area. I lived in D.C. and Philly. D.C.s was good and gotten better as it finally finished the subway across the Anacostia River and is building a line out to Dulles (crazy expensive and taking like 15 years!). Due to the inadequacy of its road system, the need is just going to be higher for that MSA than most.
What is interesting about D/FW is there remains significant roadway expansion concurrent with passenger rail line growth, adding a second beltway, additional bridges, tollways and lanes on existing highways the last 20 years. I can't think of another region this century that has spent what D/FW has on regional mobility.
Last edited by walker1962; 07-24-2019 at 07:53 AM..
Denver's rail service is not the biggest. Its lightrail is 87 miles plus a 23 mile long commuter rail line. DART light Rail for Dallas and Collin counties is over 100 miles including six lightrail and its two trolley lines. Then you add:
1. The 30 mile long Trinity Rail Express from Downtown Dallas to Fort Wort;
2. The 21 mile long A train from downtown Denton, north of Dallas, that connects with a DART Rail line, began service in June 2011.
3. Last, as of January of 2019, Tarrant County/Fort Worth , a 25 mile long rail line to DFW airport started service.
D.C. rail, including commuter lines, doesn't blow away Philly or Chicago in terms of coverage area. I lived in D.C. and Philly. D.C.s was good and gotten better as it finally finished the subway across the Anacostia River and is building a line out to Dulles (crazy expensive and taking like 15 years!). Due to the inadequacy of its road system, the need is just going to be higher for that MSA than most.
What is interesting about D/FW is there remains significant roadway expansion concurrent with passenger rail line growth, adding a second beltway, additional bridges, tollways and lanes on existing highways the last 20 years. I can't think of another region this century that has spent what D/FW has on regional mobility.
I guess everybody has their own take... I realize overall systems like Philly have huge coverage areas, but as we're finding, large coverage areas don't necessarily = quality transit service.
Philly has a beautiful regional rail system, on paper, and it's the only completely connected (through-routed) electrified system in this country; and SEPTA's 2 subway lines (plus PATCO's 1 NJ route) and 5 subway-surface lines, interface with Regional Rail pretty well. But RR's way under-potentialized (new word) due to its mostly low-level boarding platforms (causing slow ingress/egress for passengers) and sparse frequencies. DC's Metro serves most general areas of a small city and most close-in suburbs -- and some further out ones, too. Comparing DC's and Philly's core commuting areas, the Metro, at about 116 total miles (and growing), gives you coverage very comparable to Philly's regional rail, when taking into account the geographical sizes of the 2 central cities. And it's beyond question that Metrorail, for all its recent 'age' troubles, is still one of the true workhorses of North American rapid transit systems. And even though the Chicago L recently slightly edged out Metro in terms of daily ridership, I still favor Metro in terms of quality service and comfort as well as the fact that Chicago's so much larger and more complex than DC.
And then DC's actually commuter rail -- 6 lines into MD and VA; 5 of which are rush-hour only) penetrate deep into the DC and DC/Baltimore metro areas. And now Metro has a few new streetcar lines in its NE quarter and the State of Maryland is building the Purple Line LRT connecting areas of Montgomery and PG counties with Metrorail branches as well as the University of Maryland's huge campus.
BOTH L.A. and Seattle are not in the tier of the metro areas with rail lines pre-dating 1980. L.A. for its size and sprawl has done a good job but Its NO better than DFW. Seattle!? I recall the fiasco new tunnel system being built downtown where the boring machine got stuck! Sea-Tac has insufficient rail without a doubt!
You might be confused.
The stuck boring machine was for a highway, which is now open. We're currently demoing the highway it replaced.
Some metros with pre-1980 rail have horrible transit ridership...Atlanta for example. Seattle's transit ridership is in another league (ours is sorta ok, Atlanta's is pretty bad, LA's is similar to Atlanta's...).
Sea-Tac Airport has pretty good rail connections...you can easily walk from the terminal, it's reasonably fast and frequent..
The stuck boring machine was for a highway, which is now open. We're currently demoing the highway it replaced.
Some metros with pre-1980 rail have horrible transit ridership...Atlanta for example. Seattle's transit ridership is in another league (ours is sorta ok, Atlanta's is pretty bad, LA's is similar to Atlanta's...).
Sea-Tac Airport has pretty good rail connections...you can easily walk from the terminal, it's reasonably fast and frequent..
I wouldn't necessarily say easily. It's a pretty long walk from the terminal to Link. They could have done a better job integrating the station into the airport instead of making you walk through a parking deck to get to it.
I wouldn't necessarily say easily. It's a pretty long walk from the terminal to Link. They could have done a better job integrating the station into the airport instead of making you walk through a parking deck to get to it.
Agreed. Walking through a smelly parking garage to get from the terminal to the platform sucked. Now imagine doing it in a walking boot.
I wouldn't necessarily say easily. It's a pretty long walk from the terminal to Link. They could have done a better job integrating the station into the airport instead of making you walk through a parking deck to get to it.
That's one thing that Atlanta has, the train station is literally up one level from where you get your bags. Now the International Terminal on the other hand...
Agreed. Walking through a smelly parking garage to get from the terminal to the platform sucked. Now imagine doing it in a walking boot.
It's similar to what people walking to their cars have to do at every airport. I'd call that reasonable.
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