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It's anecdotal but most of the choice riders that I know from work have stated that they are never going back to metro and that has little to do with the pandemic and everything to do with perceived safety. Never is a long time but they won't be back anytime soon.
LA Metro doesn't have a dashboard nor does it count daily ridership like NYCT does. NYCT calculates subway ridership daily based mostly (mainly solely) on turnstile registrations. LA counts ridership based on a rolling annual average and I'm not sure of the basis. LA used to have people on trains with actual counters back before TAP. I seem to recall that they were going to purchase automated door counters but I don't know for sure. Either way I think that only about 50% of train riders tap anymore so who knows?
Yea, I can see that as a major issue, but I do wonder how much of that has to do with the pandemic and the kind of disruption that caused and how long that will last. I know pre-pandemic it was already an issue though.
Has LA Metro mentioned what if anything they'll do to try to mitigate the safety issues?
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Easy
Agreed. I fully expect it to have the highest ridership per mile outside of NYCT/PATH. I just don't know when that will allow overall ridership to get back to 2019. Getting back to 2015 will be an even bigger accomplishment.
To be fair, that high per mile basis is partly because it's a fairly short line though it is in a very population and resident dense area. If you took an equivalent of a DC metro or Chicago L main line that was in the core and of the same length, you might still end up with higher ridership for that Metro or L segment. It is going to be pretty awesome when it hits Westwood and gets that college ridership going. I think having that and through-running Metrolink with higher frequencies is going to lead to a much changed city in terms of how easy it is to live without a car.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-22-2022 at 02:53 PM..
I think this is a bit weird with SF at number one, but then I looked at the methodology and it seems to be weighted heavily towards research and emerging technologies rather than actual current mobility whether private or public which I suppose is how it ended up at the number 1 out of 60. However, even their public transport index is weird because it allows for a fudge factor of "extent to which they can adapt to address competition from emerging mobility services"
I do think San Francisco and the Bay Area in general actually has some very low hanging fruits such that within this decade it could actually have a transit system that is not only good by US standards, but even good when compared to those of cities in other developed countries. It has a very large amount of existing rail infrastructure that's underutilized and the vast majority of people live within a half mile of such since the flatlands ringing the bay is where the majority of development exists and the majority of where people live. Just getting BART to connect to downtown San Jose and then upping frequencies for the various sources including buses (and giving buses and light rail dedicated lanes) would pretty much do it.
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I do think since this the forum supposedly allows for North American cities, it's appropriate to also at least include Canadian cities. I tried to find something equivalent to the NTD database for Canada, but thus far no cigar. Anyone have any pointers or links for this?
My gut feeling is that if we're doing large cities as in urban areas over a million, Canada likely fields about half the top ten list if going by a sort of adjust for metro size / population kind of rubric via Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa which would be all of its 1 million plus urban areas, and with the first four hitting near the first half and Ottawa maybe barely clinging on to the top ten. If it was more of a ranking of total area with good coverage, then they'd probably still get three spots. The wildest thing about all of this though is that Canadian cities have really massive transit projects in progress in multiple cities while already being quite good for Northern America standards. Given how long transit projects take to really get off the ground in the US, it's looking like the gap is going to continue to grow.
Boston
San Francisco
Philadelphia
Seattle
Denver
Portland
…
Baltimore
Minneapolis
Atlanta
Los Angeles (obviously yuge with a giant expansion, but I don’t think light rail was adequate for majority of their system. Obviously pound for pound it’s one of the top but for serving LA. Not so great.)
…
Houston
Dallas
Miami (I think Miami has a ton of realistic potential in the near term to catapult to one of the best)
Salt Lake City
…
Richmond (no rail line but they’re killing it with bus infrastructure and ridership post pandemic)
St. Louis
Pittsburg
Charlotte
Cleveland
That’s sort of a ranking off of the top of my head. I’m sure I’m missing some or some may disagree.
DC and Chicago on the same tier as NYC? I'd argue that the gap between NYC and the next tier is the biggest gap between tiers.
I'd put DC and Chicago as the only two on the second tier and I keep flip-flopping on which is higher. Chicago has a noticeably stronger bus and commuter rail system but DC being more centrally located in the metro may make it easier to get from suburb to suburb.
DC and Chicago on the same tier as NYC? I'd argue that the gap between NYC and the next tier is the biggest gap between tiers.
I'd put DC and Chicago as the only two on the second tier and I keep flip-flopping on which is higher. Chicago has a noticeably stronger bus and commuter rail system but DC being more centrally located in the metro may make it easier to get from suburb to suburb.
I mean. I’d agree NY is a leap above Chicago & DC - if not even with those two combined and then some… especially when you start factoring in all mass transit in NY that some don’t factor in. It just didn’t occur to me to make NY by itself at the time I posted, but I’d agree with you.
Boston
San Francisco
Philadelphia
Seattle
Denver
Portland
…
Baltimore
Minneapolis
Atlanta
Los Angeles (obviously yuge with a giant expansion, but I don’t think light rail was adequate for majority of their system. Obviously pound for pound it’s one of the top but for serving LA. Not so great.)
…
Houston
Dallas
Miami (I think Miami has a ton of realistic potential in the near term to catapult to one of the best)
Salt Lake City
…
Richmond (no rail line but they’re killing it with bus infrastructure and ridership post pandemic)
St. Louis
Pittsburg
Charlotte
Cleveland
That’s sort of a ranking off of the top of my head. I’m sure I’m missing some or some may disagree.
Houston about Cleveland, St. Louis or Pittsburgh?? Really? ... an entire tier above, at that? A whole lot of people would disagree with you.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Easy
DC and Chicago on the same tier as NYC? I'd argue that the gap between NYC and the next tier is the biggest gap between tiers.
I'd put DC and Chicago as the only two on the second tier and I keep flip-flopping on which is higher. Chicago has a noticeably stronger bus and commuter rail system but DC being more centrally located in the metro may make it easier to get from suburb to suburb.
This is a common thing I've seen done with people factoring in commuter rail/bus when comparing Chicago to DC, but I take the thread title, and OP, as which city has the best individual "system", and for me I think rail first. Regarding trains, and the cities heavy rail systems comparing them directly: DC Metrorail> Chicago L for me, but they are overall very close. Chicago has an argument that the overall regional transit still may be ahead of DC, which is at a good pace trying to catch up, but as you mentioned the suburb to suburb transit commuting is probably advantage DC. So I guess this all sums up to basically remaining a draw if you ask me.
Last edited by the resident09; 11-27-2022 at 04:56 PM..
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,128 posts, read 7,552,695 times
Reputation: 5785
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlotte485
I mean. I’d agree NY is a leap above Chicago & DC - if not even with those two combined and then some… especially when you start factoring in all mass transit in NY that some don’t factor in. It just didn’t occur to me to make NY by itself at the time I posted, but I’d agree with you.
There are advantages the DC Metro has that MTA does not.
There's no MTA train connection to at least 1 borough of NYC itself, and the NYC Subway does not go into New Jersey. To get from 42nd street Midtown to Weehawken or West NY, NJ you have to take a shuttle bus, and sit in Lincoln Tunnel traffic. From a transit perspective something like this is unheard of regarding connections in DC where you can ride from MD-DC-VA on a one seat ride across town. Transferring to PATH is quick in easy in most instances, but it's not directly within MTA system, and doesn't cover significant parts of Manhattan.
Metro in DC goes from Downtown and the US Capitol, to suburbs 30 miles away, and now goes to the two major airports directly, unlike NYC.
Again I'm only pointing out things if we're talking about an individual, or standalone transit system. I'm also by no means saying that Metro is a better system than MTA, it's not, but everywhere has pros/cons.
Last edited by the resident09; 11-27-2022 at 04:57 PM..
Houston about Cleveland, St. Louis or Pittsburgh?? Really? ... an entire tier above, at that? A whole lot of people would disagree with you.
Depends on how much weight you want to give bus service.
Jarrett Walker's straightening-out of Houston's bus service caused ridership to head into the stratosphere. And in every US city save New York and Washington, buses actually do the heavy lifting in terms of riders carried and passenger-miles traveled. (Here's what Walker had to say about the superiority of buses as a means of moving people around most urban areas.)
I know there is a rail bias among transit geeks. But buses are the workhorses of mass transit not only in all but a handful of North American cities but also in many European cities whose rail transit puts the US to shame (London and its double-decker buses, e.g.)
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