WalkScore releases first ranking of of U.S. city transit systems

[seaskyfan]

Originally Posted by CyberEric

That map of Seattle's proposed rail looks good. I'm happy they are making an effort.

I'm curious, what kind of speeds are they seeing on these lines? Those are some long distances to cover.

The map is a vision promoted by a citizen's group. The gray lines are the current approved Link buildout. I think we'll likely see at least something across North Seattle in the next Sound Transit ballot measure but I'm not sure when that would be. There's also interest in funding development of subways by the City but that might be unlikely given what happened with the monorail proposal.

The current Link route covers a little over 15 miles of route in 36 minutes which includes serving 13 stations.

[mhays]

The monorail proposal went down due to the lower revised estimate of tax collections based on the funding mechanism the voters passed. The voters would love rail to Ballard and West Seattle. With Sound Transit, it would need sub-area equity, so the other parts of the metro would need their share. Getting light rail farther north and south would be a start. More service on Sounder Commuter Rail would be another, maybe with some track improvements northward, etc.

[seaskyfan]

^ I think any non-Sound Transit rail proposal is going to have to overcome concerns about what happened with the monorail. Not saying it's impossible, just a lot harder.

[jaxg8r1]

Originally Posted by mhays

Seattle's bus-focused system still beats a lot of rail-intensive systems in per-capita ridership. The fondest dream of LA, Denver, Portland, and some others is to have Seattle's commute transit share, not to mention commute pedestrian share.

That said, we're not doing well at all by world standards. Frankly just ok vs. our very limited competition.

Only using ACS data. Otherwise, for the service area data its as follows:
http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram...ncies&region=0
2010 Data
King County Dept of Transportation
Service area population: 1,931,249
Annual unlinked trips: 113,637,312
Per Capita: 58.84

Sound Transit
Service area population: 2,734,764
Annual unlinked trips: 23,404,762
Per Capita: 8.56

Portland Trimet
Service area population: 1,512,490
Annual unlinked trips: 104,339,822
Per Capita: 68.98

Obviously Seattle is a larger city with a superior bus system, a larger and more populated/visited core, etc. But its hardly Portland's "fondest dream" to catch Seattle in transit use.

I suppose if you are comparing the city of Seattle versus the city of Portland then you perhaps can make a decent case using ACS data, but the city limits of Portland are hardly comparable to Seattle's. Seattle's downtown/core employment and population base are significantly larger than Portland's as well, so there is that...

[mhays]

Yes, I'm referring to the ACS commute share. The difference is too large (19% to 11% for residents of city-of, and something like 6% vs. 7.9% for metro) to be mostly about city limits, but centralization of jobs is certainly a big factor. Another factor is that Seattle has denser core neighborhoods.

[Columbusite]

Not surprised to see Columbus 2nd to last on the list. In the winter even the busiest routes are sometimes an hour late Downtown when they start hourly intervals at 9PM-12PM while other buses are maybe 10-15 minutes late in the same weather conditions. If you don't have money to hang out at a bar up the street to wait for the next bus then you are SOL. You'd have to live in a neighborhood bordering Downtown for COTA to be bearable: at least you could walk home in the time it would take the next bus to show up late. That and residents shot down light rail twice and were indifferent at best in their reaction to a streetcar on the main drag which would have connected the touristy neighborhoods together along with Downtown (with a stop a couple blocks away from a hockey arena and baseball stadium) and OSU including the highly regarded Wexner Center.

Milwaukee is surprising on this list as well. I was also surprised to see the higher ranking they got for cycling infrastructure compared to other Midwestern cities: only Minneapolis ranked better. If the top transit cities list were to include cities just a smidgen smaller Minneapolis would've been a shoe in.

[LtBk]

Columbus is a transit black hole. Amtrak doesn't even serve the city, which is pretty stupid.

[Columbusite]

Well, not really. If they tried, they would have to derail into the convention center where union station used to stand. Currently, there is nowhere for Amtrak or any train to stop even if they wanted to, so it's pretty smart that they don't bother. Transit-wise it's made no significant progress for years, similar to its oft compared sister city Indianapolis. If Columbus had gone forward with the streetcar it would be debuting this year with a 2nd line planned as the next phase, but instead chose to reign as one of the worst large cities for transit: if this were that list they'd be the runner up. Would have been interesting to see what impacts the streetcar would have had on High St and on connecting bus routes vs. the status quo, but oh well: no more guessing needed.