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New York is without peers in the United States. After that, DC is an up and comer, and in my opinion is clearly already # 2. When the Metro is completely built out, and all of the light rail is in place, it will probably be closer to NYC than it will be to the rest of the cities people have mentioned. Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, are all very good, but lacking in certain respects that can require a bit more adjustment to successfully live car free. The relative rankings of this tier is also somewhat dependent on particular user need.
I'd imagine that If Portland had 22 million people too, and a correspondingly expanded transit system, it would really give NYC a run for its money. I was an urban planning geek long before I joined this site, and was really impressed with the place when I visited.
I'd imagine that If Portland had 22 million people too, and a correspondingly expanded transit system, it would really give NYC a run for its money. I was an urban planning geek long before I joined this site, and was really impressed with the place when I visited.
I agree I visited the city a few weeks ago, what makes people downplay Portland is that it's such a small city, but nevertheless if there's a model on how to functionally run a small metro it should be Portland.
Washington, D.C. Always seems to have a bright future being that it is our nations Capitol. So I would have to think that D.C.'s public transportation is only going to get better with time. New York will probably always be #1 but D.C. might be able to inch closer being that they have all that federal money and all of those blank checks that they can write. Chicago seems pretty solid and I'm sure that Boston and Philly will both improve with time as well. D.C. sure seems to have a big advantage though. All of these are great cities though. It's nice to not have to drive everywhere and be stuck in traffic all the time like in cities like Los Angeles and Seattle.
I'd imagine that If Portland had 22 million people too, and a correspondingly expanded transit system, it would really give NYC a run for its money. I was an urban planning geek long before I joined this site, and was really impressed with the place when I visited.
Though at that scale the system would need much higher capacities; Trying putting a million people on those light rail lines and you would see the difference. (remember one subway train may be more than ten times the volume of the average train in portland, and is faster and shorter headways)
But agree based on my admittedly limited experience it is quite good and very much an outlier for the US given its size, feels almost eurpoean in this sense.
DC is also good but the region is much more sprawled out and the metro cannot cover it all. Also, the trains don't run 24/7 like New York.
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