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You love to pretend you don't know this....Seattle destroys LA in commute share, and San Diego is through the floor.
Metro 2019 stats for transit commute share:
--Seattle 10.7%
--LA 4.8%
--SD 2.8%
I'm starting to think your mission is to make sure these stats are posted more often. Or maybe to embarrass Southern Cal.
I think since this topic mentioned ridership specifically, then eh, LA and SD are still on top here.
I think it's interesting to consider either commute share or total ridership. I think in terms of me living somewhere, I'd be more interested in something that's more along the lines of the latter, because I'd be more interested in the total area that I can access without a vehicle more than the percentage of various sized areas that I can cover. LA's pretty decent with the former, but pretty bad with the latter given how large it is for city, urban areas, MSAs, or CSAs.
I'd actually be interested in coming up with some model and finding the stats for trying to figure out the largest "connected" transit covered area, and well-covered with decent service frequencies. I think it'd probably be taking the most granular nationally available geographic census division like the census block, and then doing something like all census blocks within a 1 km radius of a mass transit station whether bus or rail that has a combined frequency (so including interlined services that are not frequent enough by themselves) greater than once every 15 minutes and then combining all these units that are connected to each other.
It would be interesting to see comparative maps of frequent coverage.
I'd also be interested in the quality of that coverage. Most importantly, whether bus, rail, ferry or other, speed matters. Is that frequent bus in an HOV lane or stuck in traffic? Is the rail grade-separated?
A metropolitan transit system includes all of the services provided by its operators: local buses, express commuter buses, light rail, rapid transit, light metro*, regional/commuter rail — and ferries, for those cities where they are a part of the transit network (as they are in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle). To ignore any one of these parts is to fail to consider the whole picture.
That Chicago's metropolitan transit service is structured so that one agency serves the city and two others serve its suburbs is irrelevant in this big-picture view. The Washington Metro is, as I noted above, a hybrid system, much like its rough contemporary Bay Area Rapid Transit, with the main difference being that WMATA Metrorail has much better coverage of its core city: of all the Second Subway Era hybrids, it does the best job of serving both the city resident and the suburban commuter, and that probably explains why it's the second-busiest subway system in the country after New York's...
...which doesn't extend beyond the New York city limits at all. A true picture of New York's metropolitan transit would be seriously incomplete if you limited it to MTA New York City Transit and left out the MTA's two commuter railroads (Metro-North and Long Island) and the transit services that carry New Jerseyans into New York (Port Authority of New York and New Jersey PATH, New Jersey Transit regional rail and express buses, the privately run bus lines that originate at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, New York Waterway cross-Hudson ferries).
So yes, Metra counts, and because of that, Chicago tops DC for transit use. (DC came late to the regional rail game; the only "commuter service" it had prior to the creation of Maryland Area Rail Commuter [MARC] in the 1970s was the Baltimore & Ohio trains that stopped in Silver Spring and a few other towns near the District. And with only four commuter rail lines, it's underpowered relative to its Northeast Corridor peers. WMATA Metrorail to a very large extent makes dense regional rail unnecessary for much of the DMV, but not all of it, and I do note (and have reported on in my weekly Next City transportation column) the effort to turn the commuter rail lines there into a true regional rail network. Imagine being able to take a single train that runs frequently throughout the day from Fredericksburg all the way to Perryville. That would be a reach no other Northeast Corridor regional rail system currently provides on a one-seat-ride basis.
*I use the term "light metro" to refer to those LRT systems whose operating characteristics are more like those of rapid transit: boarding level with the car floor, grade separation (or reserved medians with no cross traffic), off-board fare collection, stations spaced further apart. The four systems that I think come closest to this are the ones in Seattle (which IIRC checks off all these boxes 100 percent), Dallas (which will when the downtown subway tunnel opens), San Diego (again, downtown excluded) and St. Louis (again, it checks off all the boxes 100 percent). Buffalo (which is unusual in that it runs in the street downtown, then runs in a subway outside it), Pittsburgh and Portland come close too (Portland operates in streets downtown IIRC, and one of the Pittsburgh lines runs in the street in one south-side neighborhood).
Seattle has low floor boarding, grade crossings, and stops at traffic lights but you almost don't notice. I didn't have to stop at a traffic light until my 4th time riding. Other than the low platforms they are the only light rail system that I've ridden where I've noticed grade separation when it wasn't really needed. I'm guessing in anticipation of future streets?
On the flip side, they do have significant portions of the existing line that run at grade for long stretches without crossings because their infrastructure isn't as built out as densely as it may be eventually. I'm thinking of the bit next to the freeway. We don't have areas like that in LA and if that gets developed they will likely have more grade crossings.
I think since this topic mentioned ridership specifically, then eh, LA and SD are still on top here.
I think it's interesting to consider either commute share or total ridership. I think in terms of me living somewhere, I'd be more interested in something that's more along the lines of the latter, because I'd be more interested in the total area that I can access without a vehicle more than the percentage of various sized areas that I can cover. LA's pretty decent with the former, but pretty bad with the latter given how large it is for city, urban areas, MSAs, or CSAs.
I'd actually be interested in coming up with some model and finding the stats for trying to figure out the largest "connected" transit covered area, and well-covered with decent service frequencies. I think it'd probably be taking the most granular nationally available geographic census division like the census block, and then doing something like all census blocks within a 1 km radius of a mass transit station whether bus or rail that has a combined frequency (so including interlined services that are not frequent enough by themselves) greater than once every 15 minutes and then combining all these units that are connected to each other.
Yes, strictly in terms of light rail ridership San Diego is ahead. Pre-pandemic Seattle’s Link light rail was averaging about 85,000 riders per day. Northgate Link which opens in 6 months will include two new subway stations in dense areas and an elevated lstation in a regional center. I think with Northgate Link, once things are back to “normal”, we’re talking an increase up to 125K, which puts it on par with SD rail in terms of ridership. But it has way more grade separation and is much more of an urban system than the more park-and-ride oriented Trolley. East Link to Bellevue and Redmond 2 years later will be huge as well. And that doesn’t even consider how much better and higher ridership Seattle’s bus system is to San Diego’s.
It would be interesting to see comparative maps of frequent coverage.
I'd also be interested in the quality of that coverage. Most importantly, whether bus, rail, ferry or other, speed matters. Is that frequent bus in an HOV lane or stuck in traffic? Is the rail grade-separated?
Pre-covid LA would do very well in that comparison. LA does very well in bus coverage and bus frequency. Not so well in attracting choice riders as you keep pointing out.
I haven't done a definitive comparison, but I think that Seattle bus frequency is more similar to larger cities than it is to its peers in population although I think that it's service is very commuter oriented. I don't think that I would put it with LA or Chicago, but I'm pretty sure that it's ahead of DC.
Oh and as far as rail, it's fairly easy to calculate the speed using published timetables. IIRC Seattle didn't fare that well in the central portions which you attributed to station spacing.
Seattle's bus system is a lot of things. You can get an express to the suburbs (generally on HOV lanes) but the service is also pretty decent in simply fanning out to every neighborhood (also with a lot of HOV lanes). Within city limits, most people live a reasonable walk to a frequent stop. And of course that's where nearly all of our growth goes.
PS there are a lot of systems. King County (central 2.3m) is the biggest. Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap (ferry) counties all have services locally and into the key parts of King. Sound Transit is the regional agency and focuses on regional routes.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Easy
I haven't done a definitive comparison, but I think that Seattle bus frequency is more similar to larger cities than it is to its peers in population although I think that it's service is very commuter oriented. I don't think that I would put it with LA or Chicago, but I'm pretty sure that it's ahead of DC.
Both. I was thinking about how when WMATA was having all all the problems and maintenance on the rail system how people were complaining about how infrequent the buses were on GGW and other places. It didn't seem like most transit riders in DC that posted knew very much about buses, but I recall that the frequent bus map wasn't all that impressive either.
Seattle's BUS commute share is quite a bit higher than LA's total transit commute share.
Of course. It's mostly buses. I would imagine that Seattle's rail commute share is similar or less than LA.
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