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And please by metro area. I know their CSA’s have a clear winner but Providence isn’t Boston, Laconia isn’t Boston. And while pretty much irrelevant to NYC’s overall size, New Haven isn’t New York.
Chicago is clearly bigger than Boston and more economically and culturally influential. But, I would still say Boston and Chicago are closer than Chicago and NYC. NYC is our big global primate city. Chicago and Boston are world class cities, but not among the elite megacities.
I will say Chicago clearly has more of a bigger city orientation with the skyscrapers, while Boston has more of a provincial NIMBY feel. But analytically, Chicago and Boston are closer in size and density than NYC. Their regional economies are closer in size, with Boston really punching above it's weight. Culturally, I would even say Boston punches above its weight with the history, academic scene, sports, the accent, old money Waspy institutions which still have disproportionate influence in America life. Sure Chicago still looms larger. But there is such a massive gap between NYC and Chicago on cultural that I think Boston is closer on par.
Now if I were picking a place to live, I would choose Chicago you get a lot more city for your buck and it really is unrivaled outside NY for urban big city feel. But, I still say it is more in league with Boston than NY
Chicago is clearly bigger than Boston and more economically and culturally influential. But, I would still say Boston and Chicago are closer than Chicago and NYC. NYC is our big global primate city. Chicago and Boston are world class cities, but not among the elite megacities.
I will say Chicago clearly has more of a bigger city orientation with the skyscrapers, while Boston has more of a provincial NIMBY feel. But analytically, Chicago and Boston are closer in size and density than NYC. Their regional economies are closer in size, with Boston really punching above it's weight. Culturally, I would even say Boston punches above its weight with the history, academic scene, sports, the accent, old money Waspy institutions which still have disproportionate influence in America life. Sure Chicago still looms larger. But there is such a massive gap between NYC and Chicago on cultural that I think Boston is closer on par.
Now if I were picking a place to live, I would choose Chicago you get a lot more city for your buck and it really is unrivaled outside NY for urban big city feel. But, I still say it is more in league with Boston than NY
I do feel like for within the US, Chicago, SF, LA, and Miami have varying aspects of the big city feeling that NYC does, but Boston does not. This isn't a bad thing as that's not necessarily what people want.
There was also a band named Chicago from Chicago. Funnily enough, there was a band called Boston from Boston. I don't really know which is better, and there should be a poll. There is no well-known group called New York or NYC or New York City.
Actually, that band called itself Chicago Transit Authority on its first album, which contained several iconic hits ("25 or 6 to 4", "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings"). They took the shorter name after the actual Chicago Transit Authority threatened to sue the band over the use of the name.
In terms of chart-topping success, Chicago laps Boston several times over. The band also has a much bigger discography.
There may not have been a band called New York, but there was one called Kansas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
I do wish transit was better in all of these places. I think Chicago has a really low hanging fruit in terms of making Metra or at least large parts of Metra run more like a S-Bahn. In this sense, Chicago has the easiest pathway to doing this, NYC next but has a lot of not technical but political issues with having this, and then Boston having much less in political issues but expensive technical issues. If the Chicago Hub station plan actually gets funded and Metra continues to keep with its recent spate of making Metra run more frequently within the urban core, then Chicago can pretty rapidly find itself with a transit system in its urban core closer to that of NYC than that of Boston.
Also, Chicago has rapid transit access to both of its major airports which is something that Boston and NYC completely eat **** at.
Replace "Chicago" with "Philadelphia" in that first paragraph of yours and I think the statement becomes truer, in no small part because the latter city is the only one in North America whose regional trains run through rather than to its downtown.* (Because of this, SEPTA abandoned all non-electrified service when it opened in 1984, but there's talk of restoring service to some places beyond the reach of wire. Dual-mode locomotives should make doing so easy.)
But we weren't talking about Philadelphia here, were we?
In terms of running trains more frequently, I'd say that in terms of ease of achievement, after Philadelphia, I'd also rank the cities Chicago, Boston, New York. Even though New York has more electrified service. Part of the reason is that two separate agencies under the New York MTA umbrella plus a third in New Jersey operate regional rail service while Boston has just one agency that's a unit of the state transportation department.
I wouldn't say Boston "completely eats s**t" at providing rapid transit service to its airport. Yes, both the Blue and Orange lines in Chicago have stations next to (Midway) or inside (O'Hare) the airports, and neither NYC nor Boston have that. But I don't think that a circulator shuttle bus connecting five separate terminal buildings with a rapid transit station on the airport property is an awful setup, and Boston's had that since 1950. And with the opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel, a BRT line also serves the airport terminals directly.
*Oops! One of only two. But Toronto's GO Transit regional system has only one downtown station (Union Station), while Philadelphia has two, plus three more in adjacent activity centers.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 11-14-2023 at 10:58 PM..
Actually, that band called itself Chicago Transit Authority on its first album, which contained several iconic hits ("25 or 6 to 4", "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?", "Beginnings"). They took the shorter name after the actual Chicago Transit Authority threatened to sue the band over the use of the name.
In terms of chart-topping success, Chicago laps Boston several times over.
There may not have been a band called New York, but there was one called Kansas.
Replace "Chicago" with "Philadelphia" in that first paragraph of yours and I think the statement becomes truer, in no small part because the latter city is the only one in North America whose regional trains run through rather than to its downtown. (Because of this, SEPTA abandoned all non-electrified service when it opened in 1984, but there's talk of restoring service to some places beyond the reach of wire. Dual-mode locomotives should make doing so easy.)
But we weren't talking about Philadelphia here, were we?
In terms of running trains more frequently, I'd say that in terms of ease of achievement, after Philadelphia, I'd also rank the cities Chicago, Boston, New York. Even though New York has more electrified service. Part of the reason is that two separate agencies under the New York MTA umbrella plus a third in New Jersey operate regional rail service while Boston has just one agency that's a unit of the state transportation department.
I wouldn't say Boston "completely eats s**t" at providing rapid transit service to its airport. Yes, both the Blue and Orange lines in Chicago have stations next to (Midway) or inside (O'Hare) the airports, and neither NYC nor Boston have that. But I don't think that a circulator shuttle bus connecting five separate terminal buildings with a rapid transit station on the airport property is an awful setup, and Boston's had that since 1950. And with the opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel, a BRT line also serves the airport terminals directly.
Oh yea, Philadelphia has an even lower hanging fruit and it's much lower hanging. A few grade separations, a shift to EMUs and possibly BEMUs, more rolling stock for higher frequencies, a different fare system and verification system, installation of high level platforms in some parts, and all of this can be gradually done and all within the same transit agency. Philadelphia bar none among US transit systems has the lowest hanging fruit towards massive transit enhancements for rather low costs. After that are Chicago and LA. Then NYC. Then Boston and DC. Then kinda SF, Seattle, and Miami.
I guess saying Boston eats it is a bit harsh since most US airports are really bad. Boston is good in that respect for the US and only awful in comparison to cities in peer developed countries while Chicago is about par to good.
I do feel like for within the US, Chicago, SF, LA, and Miami have varying aspects of the big city feeling that NYC does, but Boston does not. This isn't a bad thing as that's not necessarily what people want.
I get they have a bigger city orientation than Boston due to their taller buildings. But, Boston had more of a London style built environment. Not as peaked, but fairly dense and busy across a large area.
But, NYC blows the barn doors off everyone else from an urbanism perspective. Like Chicago theater or art is better than Boston. But it's still tripple A compared to NY. Second City is like the Harvard Lampoon a place famous people cycle through. There aren't big fashion houses. The big theaters are filled with traveling shows. Try getting food after midnight. It's not as bad as Boston, but not like NY. Try living without a car and on and on. To me it feels a lot more like Boston than NY
I get they have a bigger city orientation than Boston due to their taller buildings. But, Boston had more of a London style built environment. Not as peaked, but fairly dense and busy across a large area. But, NYC blows the barn doors off everyone else from an urbanism perspective. Like Chicago theater or art is better than Boston. But it's still tripple A compared to NY. It's a place to cycle through.
Yes, I agree on the point of sheer scale of NYC. To me, Boston does not have that big city feeling. The high-rises contribute to that but so does the critical mass of people and crowds and events. I agree that Boston does in some ways seem reminiscent of London, but while there are similarities, the scale and overall area covered in London is much denser an larger overall and reaches a higher peak. I think part of it for Chicago is that the city invested a lot over the decades, and events, institutions and corporations agglomerated heavily into the the Greater Loop area. There are a lot of cities in terms of urbanity and how busy and alive they are overall that I think are well above Chicago, but I think that downtown peak urbanity of Chicago and what a marvel the greater Loop area is in many respects is what lets the city / metropolitan area leave an outsized impression. LA's impressive big city feel is a different one and more about the dense sprawl that keeps going. SF is a bit like cutting between the two as is Miami though I'd put these both a peg down. Boston doesn't have as much of this on either end, but overall the urban area is still in the same tier. I think I mentioned this in another topic about top downtowns, but my impression is that while Chicago isn't going to be on the shortlist for top urban cities, it should be on the shortlist for top downtowns. That greater downtown with its high concentration of Chicago's most notable features is also what most visitors are most likely to see and thus is likely to leave a greater impression despite some of its issues with the city and metropolitan area at large.
Put in another way, Chicago's good parts are great, but the bad parts are wild in the breadth and depth to which they're bad. And I think that's what's really an outlier about Chicago compared to metros in its peer tier of Boston, DC, LA, Philadelphia, and SF (and increasingly arguable DFW and Miami). Its good parts can be great, but there's this massive drag from the worst parts of the West Side and South Side that these other cities do not have to anywhere near the same extent though Miami and Philadelphia gets close in depth, but nowhere close in breadth and even so with NYC despite NYC being a much larger metropolitan area. The worst parts of Chicago cover so much larger an area and are so much worse than that of the Boston area, and while that does mean the functional and more ritzy parts of Chicago on the other side of the average can be great. It's not just that the crime and poverty is bad, which it is though some of these other cities have places that have crime rates that are also very bad, but it's so bad that large areas are mostly abandoned and derelict. There are neighborhoods that look almost abandoned and with a lot of leftover environmental hazards like lead pipes and the detritus of lead paint scattered.
I think theater today Chicago is a bit closer to NYC but more because the gap between NYC and Boston is massive. Art depends on what arts you're talking about. Modern art practices whether performing or fine art is definitely Chicago closer towards Boston. Institutional art collections available to the public though, I'd say Chicago has an argument for being closer to either.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-14-2023 at 11:36 PM..
Yea, Chicago really put in the work and had good conditions for setting aside public venues. Boston supposedly could have done it with parts of the Seaport and even now has massive waterfront surface parking lots close to downtown that could be used better, but it has not. Chicago definitely does quite well on the music festival front, but it's also a fairly minor point.
Sort of related to this is the conversation about symphony orchestras and this one's interesting because implicit to this topic is the idea that NYC is on top and the question is whether Chicago is closer to NYC which would be considered above both Boston and Chicago and that Chicago is generally above Boston. In this narrow field, it's almost universally agreed that Chicago is well above the other two and also somewhat commonly acknowledged that Boston is above NYC, so it's a funny case where being closer to NYC rather than Boston in this instance would actually be worse.
I do wish transit was better in all of these places. I think Chicago has a really low hanging fruit in terms of making Metra or at least large parts of Metra run more like a S-Bahn. In this sense, Chicago has the easiest pathway to doing this, NYC next but has a lot of not technical but political issues with having this, and then Boston having much less in political issues but expensive technical issues. If the Chicago Hub station plan actually gets funded and Metra continues to keep with its recent spate of making Metra run more frequently within the urban core, then Chicago can pretty rapidly find itself with a transit system in its urban core closer to that of NYC than that of Boston.
Also, Chicago has rapid transit access to both of its major airports which is something that Boston and NYC completely eat **** at.
In fairness, at least Boston attempts at rail with an airport station. New York cant even get close, and misses more than the Giants’ last 11 seasons. (To the boosters.. no im not counting AirTrain. Thats not rapid transit, nor is it public transportation at all).
But lets be clear, both cities do have rapid transit to their airports. NYC has two SBS routes and Boston has the Silver Line terminalside. SBS/Silver Line=BRT=Rapid Transit. They just don’t have the rail service that Chicago, Philadelphia and others have.
In fairness, at least Boston attempts at rail with an airport station. New York cant even get close, and misses more than the Giants’ last 11 seasons. (To the boosters.. no im not counting AirTrain. Thats not rapid transit, nor is it public transportation at all).
But lets be clear, both cities do have rapid transit to their airports. NYC has two SBS routes and Boston has the Silver Line terminalside. SBS/Silver Line=BRT=Rapid Transit. They just don’t have the rail service that Chicago, Philadelphia and others have.
I understand them wanting to call it rapid transit, but I don't think the NYC SBS Routes or the Silver Line really fit it. Aside from not being grade-separated rail, they both exhibit a lot of BRT creep where a lot of features that would make them actual bus rapid transit aren't consistently there.
For various reasons, direct rapid transit connection to airport terminals just isn't very common in the US, and we're still doing the same bull**** now with our construction dollars. LA's about to build a people mover from a light rail station to LAX. Blegh.
I understand them wanting to call it rapid transit, but I don't think the NYC SBS Routes or the Silver Line really fit it. Aside from not being grade-separated rail, they both exhibit a lot of BRT creep where a lot of features that would make them actual bus rapid transit aren't consistently there.
For various reasons, direct rapid transit connection to airport terminals just isn't very common in the US, and we're still doing the same bull**** now with our construction dollars. LA's about to build a people mover from a light rail station to LAX. Blegh.
I be pretty surprised if Logan isn’t quicker to get downtown than Ohare just because it’s like 1/3rd the distance.
Also seems irrelevant. Cleveland has a metro stop in its airport and Paris does not.
I be pretty surprised if Logan isn’t quicker to get downtown than Ohare just because it’s like 1/3rd the distance.
Also seems irrelevant. Cleveland has a metro stop in its airport and Paris does not.
So the airport transit shortcoming is irrelevant for a world class city like Paris but critically important for NYC? Ok, got it
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