Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
citylab.com
citylab.com
NYC has (by far) the best public transportation system in the US. Nothing even comes close, though obviously MTA is not perfect. The BART stops running at midnight and doesn't go everywhere, the T is basically an east coast version of the BART, and King County Metro is just a shit show in general.
Granted, NYC obviously has the population to support such a great transportation system. But I wonder if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy: NYC public transit is good, and so more people are willing to live in the metro area and commute. Commuting from Westport, CT to NYC daily isn't a huge deal. Commuting from Brentwood to SF every day would be a nightmare.
Ah, yes, I was wondering if I was going to read this here. In the same sentence that you give BART a pass for stopping at midnight and not going "everywhere," Metro gets written off completely. Even thought it has a 5am to 1am span of service, 14 night owl routes, daily express service from as far out as North (freakin') Bend, and is the most-used mode of transportation to jobs in Seattle, it's a "shit show."
I wish it wasn't all bus based; Portland does much better than Seattle in this regards.
I would frequently walk home from Fremont to Ravenna because it was 2 AM and there was no way to get home aside from getting in a cab (and good luck competing with the million other people trying to get a cab that time of night), or waiting maybe an hour for a bus to maybe come by when it was supposed to. At least in SF there was no illusion of public transportation to get me anywhere very far after midnight.
As to why it's a "shit show" as compared to other cities, Metro is constantly in limbo and notoriously unreliable. Didn't they just cut a bunch of routes because of budget shortfalls? http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/future/service-cuts.html
EDIT: The whole reason OBA is/was even remotely popular is because of how notoriously unreliable buses are in Seattle.
As for being notoriously unreliable, I suppose we'll have to chalk it up to different circumstances. I've regularly commuted from Lake City and the CD to the Eastside for years, even during off-peak hours when there aren't any one-seat expresses, and have been late maybe twice. Metro's collection of buses seems to work great for me.
They cut 20+ regular routes. Even if they're "low-hanging fruit", that's a lot.
> Seattle is even holding a vote in November to buy service for expansion.
I wish for the best. Seriously. I think Metro is doomed to live in a constant state of limbo, where only serious service cuts will spur Seattleites to do anything about it. I think it's a greatly under-appreciated service in the city.
> As for being notoriously unreliable, I suppose we'll have to chalk it up to different circumstances.
That's fine, but again, OBA serves as solid proof that I'm not the only one who was frustrated by Metro's unreliability (otherwise timetables would be perfectly adequate).
EDIT: This has gotten off-track. Even if you disagree about how bad it is, Seattle public transit absolutely pales in comparison to NYC's public transportation system. I don't think that's really up for debate, and anyone suggesting otherwise I posit is delusional.
There's no reason for buses to be uncomfortable and unreliable beyond popular perception. I've ridden trains in Dallas that have worse onboard conditions than bus routes in Seattle.
And it's a simple matter of right of way, not "popular perception". A train runs on its own tracks, so it can be scheduled to the second and stops only when needed. A bus shares the road with other traffic, and is thus subject to traffic jams, traffic lights, other cars driving crazily and breaking down, nutcases running across the road and so on, which means lots of unnecessary stop-and-go (compared to a train) and a chronic inability to stick to a schedule.
My only point here is that everything is quite relative (i.e. first world vs. third world problems).
I had a friend who was born and raised in the New York City area. I couldn't tell you what borough specifically. He was used to that insane commute. Wake up early, ride the train(s) for 90 minutes, work, ride them for 90 minutes home, have dinner, and go to bed. This is what he considered normal. When he moved to a city that doesn't have a broken transportation system and his daily commute time went from 3 hours to 30 mintues he said "Wow. So this is what it's like to be alive! I didn't realize this is what being an actual person was like".
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/new-yorkers-havelongest-...
By how much? What's the variance like compared to other cities? Are we comparing NYC commute times to cities that don't have public transportation systems used en masse? If I live in Houston and drive 15 minutes to work, is it really fair to compare it to spending 30 minutes on a subway?
"Average commute time" isn't extremely relevant if we're including cities where most people don't commute by public transportation, given the subject of the article.
> I had a friend who was born and raised in the New York City area...
I spend 15 minutes commuting to work each day in NYC, compared to 45 when I was in SF. Based on that fact, I can conclusively say that SF's transportation system is 3x worse than NYC's based on my personal anecdote.
31.5% of NYC workers have a commute time longer than 60 minutes. That's insane.
Also, my commute these days is about an hour and 20 min each way. 45 min Amtrak, 20 min walking, 15 min metro. Way preferable to a 30-40 min car commute.
This analysis is more sophisticated than WalkScore’s Transit Score; this analysis uses OpenTripPlanner to simulate trips rather than just counting the number of bus lines near a given location.
There are many related questions that are not directly answered by this report, but I think on the top of everyone’s mind is: How many apartments can you afford in commute distance from a random job? I’m guessing San Francisco would no longer rank near the top anymore. To determine whether the transit system is good enough for car-free living, one would also want a score that takes into account trips to other destinations such as bars and grocery stores.
I live in Palo Alto and I've heard people tell the City Council that no one wants to take public transportation and therefore we don't need it. I've also heard people scoff at the idea that jobs and housing should be built next to each other to avoid long commutes, emissions, lost time, sprawl, etc. Anyone here who says we need more housing next to all our huge office parks gets called "entitled."
We're facing a paradigm shift wherein younger generations want to be able to have the option of taking public transportation. They want to live in lively neighborhoods where friends and spaces for hanging out are close at hand- a trip to the local coffee shop doesn't involve getting in your car and driving to a strip mall. But, people who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s grew up with the notion of the car as freedom and a house in suburbia as the definition of success. To them, quality of life is all about how fast they can drive somewhere and how easily they can park there. When they think "urban" they think "ghetto."
These attitudes contribute to the NIMBYism all over the Bay Area and they're the reason why outside of SF, it's extremely hard to get around without a car. It's the reason why despite being the center of innovation on the planet, Silicon Valley still looks like a Leave It To Beaver throwback.
I've been to most of the big cities in the U.S. and despite having some problems the D.C. (the city proper) system is easily the 2nd best public transport. It's no NYC, but it's not bad. By wider extension, the links into the Maryland and Virginia systems are also pretty good. Looking at the map it's not even clear to me why it's ranked below LA or SF. It provides lots of coverage and covers a vast area.
Then I realized they were measuring time as part of their ranking and yeah, I guess I can see that. The D.C. metro area is larger than all of L.A. county and it can take forever to get around it.
1 - BTW, the map for D.C. is here https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/ctswebrequest.jlb2j0ip/page.ht...
Using the subway system as a commuter rail line means that it can take something like an hour or more to make it from an endpoint station to the city.
Plus D.C. has two actual commuter rail systems (VRE for Virginia and MARC for Maryland) plus Amtrak.
As in any market, increased liquidity translates to reduced risk. For this reason I think that within 5-10 years NYC will overtake SF / Bay Area as the optimal startup economy/environment in the US.
The sheer volume of people also means that people have a good chance of having good ties to NYC even when never having lived there. Love the weather out here in the Bay Area, but there is a part of me that will always miss NYC and the whole tri-state area (well, minus Long Island anyhow ;) ) - hell, the whole east coast in general.
Deleted comment
As a philanthropic effort an open system that would allow someone to "play" with transit designs might be a godsend for all urban planners. Add in the ability to easily adjust schedules/stops (e.g. bus every 4 minutes, or add a stop between X and Y), easily add routes (more buses, streetcars, light rail, subway) and compare multiple configurations would be pretty kick ass.
Oh and all this in real time with instant updating ;)
Looks like he'd primarily need replacements for U.S. Census TIGER 2010 datasets: blocks, core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) and the U.S. Census Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) 2011 Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES)
For the specific Census data... all I can do is point to http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html, the top level of Stats Canada. I tried to find similar datasets but wasn't even close to successful. CANSIM seems to be the bit where you can download the "raw" data... but finding the right CANSIM table(s) appears to be more difficult than I expected.