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Comment by patrickg_zill | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the dense and compact NYC subway, is there any transit system in the USA that people would say is a great example to follow?

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Chicago’s rail system (“The L” elevated line + Metra hub and spoke to the suburbs) as well as the CTA bus system are very good.

My suggestions to improve would be better funding for light rail, dedicated lanes for buses that other vehicles can’t enter, priority access at intersections, and a congestion charge to enter the core (“The Loop”).

EDIT: Dropped "light" from "light rail system".

Too bad they rejected bus-rapid system. They seem to be cheap, effective and actually working really well. We have few lines here in Auckland and they are about 2-3x faster than taking a car at peak times.

There's one in our town- the one pitfall I've come to feel is placement of the crossings. Close but not part of existing intersections means another traffic light whose timing you can now bungle.

Minor quibble but Chicago's elevated and commuter rail systems are all heavy rail, not light rail.

Whats the difference? Heavy is the same stuff as freight trains, and light is smaller?

It’s not a rigorously defined phrase but yes basically.

WMATA used to be a great system, at least from an infrastructure perspective. However the governance structure lead to a dysfunctional board, which has subsequently neglected the infrastructure. If they turn WMATA in to a voting district where the board is directly accountable to voters that could hopefully improve things.

While I'm less well versed in the governance issues of the MTA, it seems as though control should be passed back to local voters, as the NYC subway has been dealing with a fair amount of issues as of late also, and it appears the governor and mayor can't agree on who's fault it is and who should fix it.

I like the idea of a federal government that creates avenues for voters in multiple states to work together to pass measures that affect all affected states.

We see a gross form of state's forming supra-state policy in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but with NPVIC each state is working on it's own to pass the compact, each state it's own independent stakeholder, whereas if you want to get DC, MD, and VA and other local regionals voting to fix WMATA, I believe there needs to be some supra-democratic structure the states can form.

King County Metro (Seattle area) is very highly rated.

...people would say the NYC subway is a great example to follow?

It's what "everyone" knows about, moves 5.7 million per week, almost a million per day on average; many who are just visiting NYC have used it.

It hasn't broken down too many times, and is reliable enough that many New Yorkers don't own a car (which IMHO is the gold standard for trust in a public transit system).

The only 24 hour system in the world. That's nothing to sneeze at. Almost no other metro system is even close to the hours NYC pulls. It's sort of unbelievable to me how early metros like Tokyo as just one example close.

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