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What city has the best mass transit?

What City has the best Mass Transit?

  • Tokyo

    Votes: 3 9.7%

  • Paris

    Votes: 1 3.2%

  • London

    Votes: 11 35.5%

  • Rome

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • New York

    Votes: 1 3.2%

  • Dublin

    Votes: 1 3.2%

  • Chicago

    Votes: 2 6.5%

  • Jefferson Airplane

    Votes: 2 6.5%

  • The Carrot train

    Votes: 3 9.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 7 22.6%
  • Total voters
    31
#61
GregC said:
Ranking the ones I've experienced:
1. London: The Tube, as many have mentioned, appears to run well most of the time. Though there are delays at times. Most of the city proper is fairly well-covered. I've heard good things about the buses, but have only tried it once in my 3 visits. I also took a train to and from Brighton that was very convenient.
2. NYC: Great coverage by the subway system in Manhattan. The PATH train is also handy for getting onto the island if you're staying in or near Newark. You can also get to lots of different places in NJ by taking a train from Penn Station. And I've taken the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) from Penn Station to eastern Queens and back for a TB get-together. Oh yes, and I should count the Staten Island Ferry--it's free and you get a great view of the Statue of Linerty.
3. DC: Limited experience, but it was easy to use, and the long escalator coming out of that one station was pretty cool.
4. Amsterdam: Only took one round trip. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, but we were told you could pay on the train and we never figured out how to do that. So we ended up riding for free. I feel kind of bad, but we basically had no choice and the two rides were pretty short.
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I was clearly out of it yesterday morning, as I forgot to include the city I live in.:bag: It lands in the middle of my rankings.

2.5. Chicago: The El is really convenient for certain neighborhoods. Indeed, from my office downtown, it's two blocks or less to trains that go directly to O'Hare or Midway. And the trains generally run on time. The bus system is also pretty strong (though I might be biased since my route stops outside my building and drops me off less than half a block from work). While the buses don't run like clockwork due to traffic, they run pretty frequently in a lot of areas. And the train/bus tracker app on my phone works for every stop in the city. Finally, the Metra commuter trains that run straight to the suburbs (virtually no stops in the city) bring a ton of people into downtown for work each day.
 
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#62
Bangkok's system is pretty good, but also fatally flawed in some spots:

Link Removed

They screwed up from the beginning, because in the process of completing the NorthWest leg of the skytrain line, the connected bus depot moved (a 45 minute walk from the terminal station)

They also never considered using the same passkey system for the subway & the skytrain, so you need to buy separate cards for each.

They now have a rail-link to the airport, but it isn't so much an extension of the original skytrain as it is a whole new system.

However, they are expanding the lines to extend into surrounding provinces already, but at the same time it's making it more congested.
 
#63
slobake said:
Our subway here in San Francisco goes right to the airport too.
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That was the first place our rail system went when we finally got around to building it. They should have built it back in the 1960s, but Seattle process gummed up the works and we lost out. I didn't live here then, so I probably shouldn't say "we" about it, but I live here now and I can say "we" are finally building what we should have built a long time ago.
 
#64
Walking seems to be an option particularly in combo with transit. In LA, my hometown pedestrians were viewed with mild suspicion, "what are they doing walking". The common courtesy was to offer your car keys to someone going to the bathroom....

Here in Porland a neighborhood based city transit integrates all including rail, trolley, buses, cyclists, pedestrians and cars. The city will restripe two lanes into a single car lane adding transit and cycle lanes. It increases traffic which becomes its own deterrent to car traffic.

I think we are living through a period where neighborhoods are rising in importance and local circulation systems, linked to a larger transit scheme are popular.

One thing, I wish the bus systems would go to is grid system of compass directed travel rather the origin destination. This would put a line on a major east west artery, for instance, and others on north south intersecting streets. The rider could then transfer between lines as needed. LA and Porland have bus lines that are anchored in two non diametrically opposed destinations and wheel their ways along a variety of Blvds and streets.
 
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#67
StyleOverShow said:
One thing, I wish the bus systems would go to is grid system of compass directed travel rather the origin destination. This would put a line on a major east west artery, for instance, and others on north south intersecting streets. The rider could then transfer between lines as needed.
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It is on the east side where the streets are setup as a grid. You have Powell, Division, Glisan, Sandy blvd and all the other major streets go East/West until the street ends. Then MLK, 20th, , 39th, 82nd, 122, 223 the major North/South streets go North/South.
 
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#68
Gaolee said:
That was the first place our rail system went when we finally got around to building it. They should have built it back in the 1960s, but Seattle process gummed up the works and we lost out. I didn't live here then, so I probably shouldn't say "we" about it, but I live here now and I can say "we" are finally building what we should have built a long time ago.
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Seattle was not built to accommodate the huge influx of bodies that started coming in the 90s & hasn't stopped. 133,000 vehicles per year are added to the roads here (that doesn't include people without cars), and there's no room to expand then because it's got water on 3 sides and is in an earthquake zone.
 
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#69
catcauphonic said:
Seattle was not built to accommodate the huge influx of bodies that started coming in the 90s & hasn't stopped. 133,000 vehicles per year are added to the roads here (that doesn't include people without cars), and there's no room to expand then because it's got water on 3 sides and is in an earthquake zone.
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Sounds like San Francisco
 
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#70
catcauphonic said:
Seattle was not built to accommodate the huge influx of bodies that started coming in the 90s & hasn't stopped. 133,000 vehicles per year are added to the roads here (that doesn't include people without cars), and there's no room to expand then because it's got water on 3 sides and is in an earthquake zone.
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We can clearly build up, even in an earthquake zone. Or maybe all the people in those downtown towers are screwed. Is 133,000 a regional number or just in the city limits? I have seen projections that say Seattle proper will be somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million people in five to ten years. I really don't know where all those people will go, let alone how they will get around. Crane rental is a great business to be in around here right about now.

Seattle isn't shaped to be anything except endless bottlenecks. Not only is there water all around a narrow downtown, there's water cutting across the whole thing, steep hills, and I-5 cutting through the middle like another fault line. The only thing we don't have is a volcano. I suppose some tectonic shifting could get us one of those if we are patient.

We need to drill holes all over the place, or just get used to staying home.
 
#73
Gaolee said:
We can clearly build up, even in an earthquake zone. Or maybe all the people in those downtown towers are screwed. Is 133,000 a regional number or just in the city limits? I have seen projections that say Seattle proper will be somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million people in five to ten years. I really don't know where all those people will go, let alone how they will get around. Crane rental is a great business to be in around here right about now.

Seattle isn't shaped to be anything except endless bottlenecks. Not only is there water all around a narrow downtown, there's water cutting across the whole thing, steep hills, and I-5 cutting through the middle like another fault line. The only thing we don't have is a volcano. I suppose some tectonic shifting could get us one of those if we are patient.

We need to drill holes all over the place, or just get used to staying home.
Click to expand...

um... hate to be the bearer of bad news, but: Invalid Link Removed
 
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#74
Gravedigger Dav said:
As to mass transit replace individual vehicles, it depends. In rural areas and small towns it isn't likely. For larger cities, the cost and convenience has to get a lot better. When I lived in Aloha, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, I considered using public transportation to work. I worked in Montgomery Park. The drive was about 30 minutes and I didn't have to pay for parking. When I mapped out a course for using a bus/train, which is what I would have to do, it came to an hour and half, assuming all the schedules lined up perfectly. I don't remember the exact cost, but it would have been several dollars a day.
I know some mega-cities have good public transportation. New York, for example is excellent. I think a car in New York would be a liability.
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Boy that has skyrocketed.... currently that commute is about an hour by car (during peak times), probably one of the worst in the city actually unless you happen to have easy access to the red or blue light rail lines....
 
#78
On a good day, it's hard to top the Sydney ferry service,

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#80
This is a promotional video concerning the smart cities initiative. This may have an impact on mass transit in the coming years. I bring this up because my hometown, Columbus, recently won a smart cities grant to implement some of the mass transit concepts. I'll be curious to see how it works because the city has practically no mass transit to speak of today (disjointed bus service, poor taxi service and no rail of any kind.)
 

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