Just a correction, BART service hours: Weekdays (5:00 am- Midnight) Saturday (6:00 am - Midnight) Sunday (8:00 am - Midnight) So only on Sundays does BART start running trains at 8am. And this is due to their track upgrade project which has been going on for quite a few years now, but will eventually end and they will push the Sunday start time back to what it used to be.
thanks for this - also check me if I'm wrong here, but they also just (finally) retired the original Boeing trains (which I remember being futuristic ... in the 1970s) in favor of the new (and far superior) fleet, and have both reduced their former peak-time service and increased their weekend service so it's now every 20 minutes every day - is that right?
@@dwc1964 Basically, yes. The old fleet is no longer in regular service but is going to stay available for event and overflow service until Alstom delivers enough new trains. So you can still see an old "space age" train every now and again during heavy days, but not on a regular weekday it's all new trains. And they have indeed reconfigured their service for more evenly spread service seven days per week. They also made the frequencies more uniform across the whole system. A majority of the stations used to get 7.5 minute frequencies or better, and the remaining ~40% would get only 15 minute service. Now all but four stations get 10-minute frequencies all week long. So again, kind-of-sort-of what you said. There used to be almost half of the stations with 15 minute frequencies and the rest with 7.5 or better. Now 46/50 stations get at least 10 minute service and the remaining four get 20 minute service. This new schedule is also built with more even spacing allowing them to just slot in the new trains that they want to add in the near future without moving any of the existing trains. Overall, this feels like a major upgrade to me, even though they only added a few trains per hour across the whole system. The stronger weekend and evening service was something that the riders have been asking for and BART resisting for literal decades. The pandemic commuter traffic slump finally forced them to heel.
@@TohaBgood2 thanks for all the info! I agree that BART was stuck on the commuter model for way too long at the expense of people trying to use it to live their lives - but then, I'm one of those people who lives on the same side of the Bay as I work, and only use BART on the weekends, so maybe I'm biased. (I used to commute on BART though, before I moved to the City.) I'm glad I was wrong about the frequencies and it's only a few stations that get the 20-minute lag (and now I'm guessing ... the Dublin line?) We do need better all-night or even just late-night service. It's been a slogan of mine that it's not really public/mass transportation if it closes before the bars do. It's legit the best investment we can make in stopping drunk driving.
@@dwc1964 Yep, the last three stations on the Blue line spur and (for some unknown reason) also Millbrae, get only 20 minute frequencies. I'm assuming that Millbrae is on the list because they have an operator shortage and Caltrain is just not sufficiently recovered to make that connection a priority. The three Blue line stations are supposedly waiting for that new Purple line (Richmond to Dublin) to fill in the schedule gap. But I guess we'll find out soon enough when they get enough new trains.
Being a Chicago native, I would also put Chicago mass transit in the A tier. A lot of people like to slander the CTA, and while yes, the transit system does have its problems (tbh what US transit system doesn't have problems), but for the problems we do have, Id take CTA ANY DAY over essentially any other US transit system. CTA has been spending a ton of money to completely upgrade the northern portion of the red line, is extending the red line on the south side, is currently rebuilding the tracks on a major portion of the blue line, adding a couple new stations to existing lines, and we even have new 7000 series rail cars that are beginning to appear on the lines. While frequency of trains and cleanliness could be improved, us Chicagoans tend to take our mass transit system for granted.
Frankly, I wish I could take the CTA for granted, I work weekends, I live just outside walking distance to the train and so I have to take a bus and transfer to the blue line to get to work. On weekends this is an absolutely miserable experience with no bus or train frequency and what should be a 45 minute commute can take up to and hour and a half. The CTA could easily be the best system in the US but it can't manage to operate decent headways except during weekday rush hour.
As an Angeleno, LA making C-tier is actually a testament to the improvements that have been going on. I honestly expected no higher than D, so this is good to hear
I moved to LA from the Miami area ten years ago and although I can't contest the C-tier placement either, god, it's come so far and there's some really good stuff on the horizon. On that note, lol, Miami didn't even make the list.
@@DeadHonky Let's go! I'm honestly still just flabbergasted that LA now has a completely functional and useful subway that takes to almost anywhere you'd want to go in LA! Imo this is already incredible progress and any more new lines and extensions are just gravy to me. (Now if they could make it cleaner and safer then I'd be a completely happy camper. And I'm sure that the ridership would absolutely skyrocket as more people realize how useful and usable it has become!)
I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough, but the main reason for all the deferred maintenence on the T is the result of MassDOT saddling them with a huge chunk of The Big Dig cost. Imagine what 3.8 BILLION dollars could have done for the MBTA... because that was deemed as their share of the bill.
3.8 billion out of what was the full cost, 22 billion? I don't think the T got 15 percent or so of the work done so definitely they shouldn't be stuck with financing highway improvements.
@@tonywalters7298they had to cut the rail link because of the extra construction from the tunnel collapse. They took a massive risk constructing the Dig.
1. 0:59 San Diego C tier 2. 1:46 Los Angeles C tier 3. 2:45 (just) San Francisco S tier 4. 3:48 Portland B tier 5. 4:30 Seattle A tier 6. 5:15 Flagstaff F tier 7. 5:44 Las Vegas D tier 8. 6:16 Kansas City D tier 9. 6:45 Saint Louis C tier 10. 7:20 Tampa Sun Belt tier 11. 7:43 Chicago A tier 12. 8:28 Washington DC S tier 13. 9:13 Baltimore C tier 14. 10:00 Philadelphia A tier 15. 10:55 Boston B tier 16. Not on the list but NYC would definitely have been in A tier
NYC is definitely S Tier with its 24/7 metro system and the insane amount of regional rail and bus connectivity. For the US it's S tier. But for what the city is/should be? There's a lot of room for improvement.
As a Floridian, I can't understand how a metropolitan area with over 3 million people doesn't warrant the use of some kind of mass transit that isn't a bus. Sucks that most efforts that come to mind were killed by politics...
yeah and the kicker is there aren't even really any intercity buses across the metro area. Just a disjoint collection of regional systems that barely connect if at all. Bare minimum transit
Density is the important factor here as well. NYC is dense enough where cars really shouldn't be in the city proper. Streetcars would serve the local transit better than the buses, at least in Manhattan, and would really help pull demand from the overloaded subways. We're also missing cross town lines, but apparently that's in the works
Right on. I used to live in south Hillsborough County. I might add the Tampa St Pete area is similar to the San Francisco bay area in that there's a goodly number of regional agencies. HARTLine in Tampa is probably best of a sorry lot. The others, in particular PSTA in St Pete and Clearwater, suffer from short hours (there's exactly one bus line, running along US 19 from St Pete to Tarpon Springs, runnign any time later than about 7 or 8) Tampa Bay does deserve its low rating here
New York is in a class by itself. All subway lines have 24/7 service, with overnight headways (1-5 AM) of 20 minutes on every line. Weekend headways are excellent. The commuter rail network (LIRR, Metro-North and NJ Transit) provides service with tremendous rush hour headways and half-hourly to hourly service on most lines middays, evenings and weekends. Service runs until around 2 AM (and all night on most of the LIRR).
People can cry about NYC all they want but the Subway itself would already out NYC as no.1 and that's not even considering the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North Railroad which by itself could prolly also rank as no.1
As someone who just visited DC, if you drive there leave your car on the outskirts and just park and ride. Their metro system is super clean and very fast to get around the city. I never remembered it being that good as a kid, but I don’t know why anyone would drive in DC over taking the subway. It’s truly excellent.
It’s because there’s a significant difference in affordability. When someone lives closer to a metro station, rent becomes much more expensive. I live in an area that DC believes it shouldn’t support with transit. The city has cut bus lines near me and the closest metro station is almost 2 miles away. DC is definitely not S tier unless you live in the neighborhoods the city believes it should support transit wise.
@@khakchan that sucks. It used to be that people avoided the metro lines because suburban development meant you could avoid the dense areas of town. I suppose it’s a sign of positive change that it’s now a luxury, but let’s hope that further development in cities makes it so that it’s not a luxury, but a means to make it back and forth from a normal job. Plus with bike/impaired mobility infrastructure increasing in the US as a whole, I hope for your sake and the sake of others the line becomes accessible again.
It is very neighborhood specific. I have been carless in DC for 8 years now but that means I am paying the rent price of being near a metro center. Which I don't mind tbh and can afford but not everyone can.
@@khakchan Unfortunately our system is commuter centric. That is how it was designed and built up for the most part. I would however challenge that it is DC that believes it shouldn't support certain areas with transit and more that because it lacks revenue raising authority and involves Virginia, Maryland, and the federal government that WMATA is severely restricted in pursuing capital improvements. It can't raise the money on its own and has to constantly fight for money every year for anything that doesn't benefit Virginia or Maryland directly (with each state being an obstacle even when something benefits one and not the other). This includes operations and maintenance (massive budget shortfalls) which has led to cutting bus routes and the bus system reorganization that is currently being planned.
Boston having the oldest transit system in the country and it shows hits the nail on the head. There is so much potential for improvement there. Overall it’s not bad, but they really need some upkeep
it’s already underway, his complaints are actually directly linked as forced maintenance on the four lines that are a mix of lines dating back to 1897, 1904, 1909, 1912, 1923, 1928, 1941, 1959, 1975, 1981, and 1987
You could take a page from Philly's book and build a connection between North and South Station like Philadelphia did in the 1980s to connect the old Pennsylvania and old Reading Railroads.
The commuter rail is how the MBTA ought to be running. But the slow zones on the T are misery itself and it's all due to mismanagement and financial corruption.
The only reason the commuter rail is any good is because MBTA isn't actually operating the service. They instead contract Keolis to operate commuter rail. MBTA is highly incompetent in the state they are in and has many problems with their management.
The one thing that should change about the commuter rail is electrifying it. The diesel locomotives are cool but the stop and go time is much slower vs EMU’s like on Metro North.
Everything said above, but I’m mostly bugged by the “6” branches of the green line. There are only 4 branches, but during the recent northward extensions, the D and E branches were extended to Union Square and Medford/Tufts respectively. That said, personally I wish the commuter system ran more frequently services, perhaps with lower capacity per trip so as to make the service more consistent and desirable for commuters.
As a DC area native, it’s great to see our transit at the top of the list. WMATA has had some accidents and has gotten a bad rap over the years, but the trains are very clean, pretty new, the reach is expansive, and the bus service is fantastic as well. Out into the suburbs, the counties and states do a great job with bus service as well. Having ridden VRE and MARC, they are great services with really comfortable trains. It’s a shame that their frequency isn’t great but other than that, absolutely solid services. I agree with you that DC is deserving to be at the top of the list, and it’s noticeable when I travel that transit is lacking in other cities.
I would say cost and hours are the biggest issues with the Metro. Fare increases plus distance based fares have sucked. DC also has a street car for H street and NE, which took forever to get going
As someone that lived in NYC for 6 years and now lives in San Francisco, the transit in SF is good but not S-Tier good. My biggest complaint is that many services are running at street-level, so the mess of drivers make transit get delayed and the streets loud and unpleasant to walk. Many bus routes do not have dedicated bus lanes and -- while there are some 24hr routes -- transit shuts off too early. Public transport should be good enough that it convinces some people not to drive. SF is simply not there yet.
It wasn't mentioned here as you didn't visit before making this tier list, but more places with solid transit are Newark, Hoboken, and Jersey City! Of course NYC next door is the transit giant, but these three places do a pretty good job too! Hoboken and Jersey City both have the HBLR which stretches across Hudson County and uses a combination of old rail and new exclusive rights-of-way for most of its length, with some grade separation in certain areas. It provides connections to the PATH (goes between NJ and NYC) at three stops, NY Waterway ferries, and NJT rail at Hoboken Terminal! Jersey City also has Journal Square which is a big bus hub for NJT buses and jitneys and is a PATH station as well! Newark has Newark Penn Station which is a hub for Greyhound, Amtrak, NJT rail, NJT buses, PATH, and the Newark Light Rail! The Newark Light Rail connects northern Newark, Bloomfield, and Belleville as well as both Rutgers Newark and NJIT to Newark Penn! The Broad Street section of the light-rail provides a connection to Newark Broad Street Station. Newark Liberty International Airport of course has a station as well with connection to the AirTrain, though you could also take a bus to the airport from Newark Penn!
Those parts of Jersey I would personally just lump into NYC. Even tho it’s a different state and different systems , it’s apart of the NYC metro area and is largely that compact to create ease for getting from North Jersey to Manhattan
Firstly, thanks for putting this video together! I really enjoyed it. As a Philly native and someone who currently lives in Seattle, I can confidently say that those two cities do not belong in the same category as Philadelphia’s transit is way better in terms of coverage than Seattle’s. Seattle does have the 1 Line, the light rail line, which is pretty good, but there’s so many sections of the city that are not serviced by rapid transit and heavy rail at all, and are a pain in the neck to get to. Whereas a large portion of Philadelphia is covered by either the two subway lines or the regional rail. There really isn’t a rapid transit comparison for Seattle.
I just LOVE how people who aren’t from Philadelphia are so enamored by SEPTA. That’s because you haven’t stayed here long enough to see the bogus going on behind closed doors. You nailed the cleanliness problem though, I see people taking fat dumps in the stations way too often.
Glad you're showing off other systems in the country that need to be highlighted. Obviously New York dominates the conversation around American transit so I'm glad it didn't feature on this tier list because it would quite literally be all these systems compared to New York and that would be incredibly unfair.
Not sure about DC, but at the very least San Francisco compares very favorably to NYC. We have about the same level of subway service in the downtown core and much better commuter/regional rail and busses/trolleys. This is subjective, but having lived in both places I can tell you that SF is often easier to get around than NYC. Unless your destination is on Manhattan and you're down to walk for up to 15 minutes, the NY area is not that easy to get around. We often fetishize NY transit, and the ridership is indeed impressive. But in terms of actual mode share SF, Chicago, and DC are very close to NYC. It's not like we don't know how to run strong transit systems when we want to. The problem is that most of the country does not want to.
@@TohaBgood2 I mean San Francisco has the Market Street and Central subways. NYC has a lot more subway coverage and more frequent buses and bus lanes. In terms of transit mode share, around half of NYers use public transit, double that of San Francisco and DC. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership#/media/File:USCommutePatterns2006.png
@@bellairefondren7389 NY has more subway lines but less transit density overall. And no NYC busses are nowhere near as frequent as SF's. SF Muni targets 6 minute frequencies system wide, while NYC barely manages 10 minutes. And due to the pretty insane density of routes in SF almost all the lines are interlined with other lines for long stretches. If you know your way around the transit system (local) or if you use Google maps (tourists) you won't even have to wait for 6 minutes a lot of the time. Similarly, BART and Muni Metro subway trains run at 4-minute frequencies or better downtown. The new Central subway still only has 10-minute frequencies, but this is about to be cut in half too with the introduction of a shuttle line. Literally 100% of SF residents are never more than a 2-minute walk from a transit stop with sub 10-minute frequency transit. There is nothing even remotely comparable in NYC. In NY the downtown core is insanely well served by transit, but anything outside of that core gets meh service at best. SF is all one giant "transit core" with virtually no blank spots. This is purely a geographically-driven distinction (SF is a lot more compact and concentrated). But it still needs to be acknowledged.
@@TohaBgood2lol NYC regional rail is leagues ahead of SF. From the tip of long Island, to the Jersey shore by rail and farther by bus, your assertion is naive
Nice video! As a Chicagoan I think you were pretty fair. You should visit Madison, WI as an example of a college town with good transit. It's just buses but the network is pretty solid for a city of Madison's size. Also the city is getting a BRT next year if you would want to check it out!
Kind of a cool video idea would be ranking transit systems in college towns. Uiuc is pretty similar with a great bus system for a city of its size. They do a great job of deterring students from owning cars
It's been a while since I was there, and it was summer, but my recollection is that the mix of bike trails and B-Cycle locations offset a lot of my transit use. Getting around Madison by bike is just a delight.
I am a Chicago native myself. I would have rated it a bit lower, say B-, due to lack of cleanliness and the lacking suburban transit. PACE, the operator in the Illinois suburbs, suffers badly from short hours. But it looks good next to the Northern Indiana suburbs, many of which don't have service beyond the South Shore train (looking to you, Portage). And the bureaucracy at parent agency RTA is a legendary joke
The design of the DC Metro system is incredible! The flashing lights on the platform whenever a train arrives, the hexagonal tiles, the waffle-style concrete vault Brutalism, it was built as a showcase system, and it shows. They were designed by Harry Weese, and he worked with Massachusetts-based lighting designer Bill Lam on the indirect lighting used throughout the system. Weese is also the guy behind the iconic capital-M-on-a-pylon! He visited London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and many other smaller cities, hoping to take the best elements of each and combine them into the perfect system for DC. Weese created a proposal with dozens of views for station interiors with a simple semiellipse, with a flat bottom and curved top. For cut-and-cover stations, the vault was proposed to have straight, vertical walls supporting a curved ceiling. But the US Commission of Fine Arts wanted it to be beautiful, and no exposed rock walls like Stockholm, so he changed his thought. He felt the necessities of each station would produce the variety, that "You don't try to make them different for different's sake. We think it's very appropriate for Washington. After all". To Weese, the sweeping, swooping, floating lines of Metro's plazas, stations and mezzanines are the system's best feature. Once they were chosen, he said, the long, long escalators and the indirect, somewhat dim lighting in stations fell into step as a result.
The Washington Metro has great station design, but I've kind of gotten bored of it when I've visited. Some variety in the stations would be nice. Stockholm did a great job. A lot of stations have similar construction but unique art. My only other complaint about DC is that there are a lot of transit gaps. I found myself in many areas that had a 15-20 minute walk or a 14 minute walk, and then a 2 minute transit ride.
Don't even get me started on those escalators. I rode the Washington Metro for years, both for commuting and for other types of trips. Escalator steps are not designed to be walked on. The worst thing was when only one escalator was running and it was set to go DOWN. Ever try walking up a stopped escalator in a station like Bethesda? One time, I asked a station attendant about only one escalator that was going down. He answered "Blind people expect things to be on the right." Huh? What the hell was he talking about?
I'm just amazed you hit most of the biggest cities in the Northeast megalopolis and just passed over NYC. But it would be unfair to add us to your list ;-)
Lived in DC for a few years and was kinda shocked you didn't mention the bus system there at all, which in my opinion, aside from lack of dedicated right of ways in most places, was pretty extensive and frequent with a few routes w/ 24 hr service. Thanks for the video tho it was great!
San Francisco - ngl, I fist-pumped at S-Tier for context: Bay Area native, brought up in suburbia as a latch-key kid; my all-important 2nd decade was spent in the newly-dubbed Silicon Valley with practically _no_ public transit, but fortunately flat as a pancake, so I got good on the bicycle. Grew up and escaped to, first, the East Bay, and since 1994, San Francisco's lovely Noe Valley, where I learned through experiment (being late for work) that the J-Church is _faster_ to downtown than riding a motorcycle as aggressively as possible down the quickest route available (and then finding somewhere to park, plus donning and doffing gear...). I don't even own a motorcycle anymore, since I only had it for my annual road trips - I couldn't imagine actually driving a _car_ here. Though, of course, way too many people persist ...
This! I feel like we have sooooooo many new people cycling in and out of the Bay Area that it takes them up to a decade to realize that you don't really need to drive here if you don't want to. And by the time they're done with their Silicon Valley stint and want to semi-retire to some slower paced state, then new ones move in and start the cycle all over again.
@@TohaBgood2 Caltrain is *right there* - now that it's finally getting electrified, I might even ride it myself sometime just to try it out, even though I have no desire at all to go where it goes ...
Definitely agree with LA's C tier placement. Hopefully after the full D line extension and the LAX connection open it can move to B tier A/S tier are probably reserved for After Sepulveda and K line North projects open.
Increasingly wondering how various other Mid-American & Deep Southern cities will fare later this decade once VARIOUS BRT upgrades & streetcar proposals come online… since around 2018-2019 to the end of 2023, we’ve gotten: >Milwaukee’s Hop (streetcar) >IndyGo’s Red Line (BRT; purple line supposedly coming very soon) >Birmingham’s BRT >Omaha’s ORBT (BRT) >Milwaukee’s Connect1 (BRT) >Omaha’s streetcar beginning construction >Tulsa’s BRT lite network (with an additional line eventually coming to a historic US 66 corridor through town) >and most recently OKC’s northwestern BRT Among others.
Loved this video. Chicago area has a great system, although biased because that comes from being a 20-yr commuter on Metra and as a teenager having the then new Cumberland Blue Line station open up by my house growing up - this opened up many possibilities going downtown and to Wrigley Field. Also, the water taxi on the river downtown is a fun way to get around.
you're spot on for boston. riding public transit is one of my favorite ways to visit a new city too! chicago has been on my to-visit list for a while now
I feel like the T is better than that, the slow zones aren’t really that bad and the variety of transportation and the range of the T across the metro area is really solid imo
As a chicagoan, yes absolutely come in for a visit. I'ts not as dangerous as the media makes it out to be. A lot of the crime happens on the south and west sides (not where the tourists tend to go). Our transportation is good, but it can throw you for a loop at times, I've been on busses that broke down (but it's on the uncommon side), but the L (as we call our metro system) is fun to ride, but keep in mind the wait times can be a bit annoying (this was especially true with the staffing shortage we had during the height of the pandemic). Aside from this, we have a lot to offer here.
Here in Oakland, Bart is AMAZING! I go to San Francisco sometimes and ride muni a lot. Bart Headway is pretty good, also Muni headway is really good. I love how muni is mixed Metro/Light Rail. I love your placement of S for San Francisco! Bart Correction: Bart runs 24/7 but runs 4 line (Orange Richmond-San Jose, Yellow SFO-Antioch, Blue Daly City-Dublin/Pleasanton, and Beige Oakland Coliseum-Oakland International Airport) from midnight to 5am (weekdays) 6am (saturdays) and 8am (sundays). Bart is so useful here in the bay! I 100% agree with an S ranking.
SEPTA’s trolley fleet is being replaced. Order is already in place with Alstom. Not sure what you meant by SEPTA needing to run the “metros” longer. The Market-Frankfort elevated and Broad Street Subway run to 1am-ish. But the night owl bus runs the same service on the surface on 15 minute headways overnight. The regional rails could use more late night service, and of course more than hourly during the day. Good bones for a solid system.
As a Vegas resident, I think D tier is appropriate. I live in a part of town that has abysmal access (just one infrequent bus line) but our streets are so wide the RTA could totally afford to allocate one lane on each side to be a bus lane and hopefully lessen/slow down car accidents here. The monorail was privately owned which is why it’s not great but I heard it was bought by the city/county which I need to confirm. If so, that could be a game changer if they actually expand access. The area only focuses transit access near the Strip when expanding it could help Strip employees get to work easier. I’ve heard the rideshare companies lobby our local government though so who knows when things will improve here. I also recommend checking out Long Beach in the LA area when you get the chance! They have their own separate transit agency but also have train access to LA. Considering the west coast’s infamous car dependency, Long Beach is refreshing in comparison to the rest of the area.
The Red Line should be built by around the end of the decade in Baltimore. A 2nd light rail line would bump us up to B tier. Along with another proposal for another red line like service between Hunt Valley and Downtown Baltimore via Towson by either light rail or BRT. Also I have a fantasy of sorts of a trackless tram system (I actually like them in theory) that shadows the I-695 beltway from Columbia to either Essex or Dundalk.
I never forgave Governor Hogan for cancelling the Red Line, though his successor rightfully brought it back. But it would need to go at bare minimum to Eastpoint. I can't see it though. As a now former long time Dundalk/Essex area resident, the NIMBY is super strong there.
It only took 1 death by broken door, a federal investigation, and almost a year of localised bustitution in order to make room for track work, but the MBTA has gotten a good bit better since this video was made!
I am from Boston and I think that a B rating is quite good. We have the oldest subway in the USA, between Boylston street and Park street stations, going underneath the common. I hope for you to come back!
As a Philly native Ive noticed Septa tends to get allot of positive remarks from transit fans which is funny to me since it gets so many complaints from natives. You mentioned the el stock what did you think of the broad street subway rolling stock.
Being a Philly native and having lived in other parts of the country, I can see why transit enthusiasts rate Philly’s transit pretty highly as the city has pretty great transit coverage and transit options compared to a lot of cities in the US. That doesn’t mean that Philly doesn’t have its problems with service times, cleanliness, and the like. But the fact that you can still get around decently in the city at pretty much anytime of night or day is something that I think we take for granted because there are a lot of places in this country where you don’t have any transit options after certain time of day.
@@russelldinkins5801 I moved to Philly from GA/Atlanta, this is spot on. We absolutely take for granted SEPTA compared to the meager offerings of MARTA or being trapped in an automotive hellscape. SEPTA has great bones and if we can fund them like New York or DC, we could have the best public transit in the country (tbh its a testament to how much spite can overcome a lot of gaps in money.)
My only Bone to pick is that WMATA has not learned from it's mistakes and actively goes against Federal Recommendations when it comes to its safety issues. But the network itself, when not crashing, is great
As a Bostonian who used to be obsessed with the trains mostly but also founded the whole T for nearly two decades, I can confidently say it’s the least reliable organization humans have created. For years I had to leave for work at least an hour and a half early knowing there would be a decent chance I get there an hour early or just on time. My second day of one my most recent summer jobs had me check the app to see no maintenance warnings listed or posted anywhere to find out halfway through my train ride that the line was cut off early to be replaced by shuttle busses that didn’t even cover the remainder of the line before having to get on a second shuttle bus. This was to get from Fenway to park st, no more than 7 stops. Trains are sometimes completely replaced by shuttle busses that don’t run on schedule or at the frequency listed. The only pro I’d give the MBTA is that their bus routes run pretty far throughout the city and somewhat on time but I’ve def had a handful of busses passing by me waiting for them because they’re listed as “express busses” when their app lists them as a typical “on time” bus. In addition I’ve seen people who work for the org tell me replacement shuttle busses headed to certain places are lined up outside certain buildings only to find out they had no clue and were getting payed to watch homeless people crowd stations, not even tell them to leave becuase no trains were running. My sister had carried a knife on her since the orange line had that hard turn that used to tilt 45 degrees because of the untrustworthy people. Downtown stations smell like a kindergarten boys bathroom. As of late, trains have been running slower than usual to avoid the late dilemma of trains derailing. This initially happened on the green line after it took a couple months to realize most of the derailments came from the new, UNDERSIZED AND UNSAFE tracks to tufts that were placed AND CALLED BACK in the past two years; yet somehow this problem regularly occurs on the red line too. There are no direct lines to certain places from different sections of the city; you must go inbound, to connect to a railway that takes you outbound in the direction you were looking to go. It’s the opposite of a grid. On top of all of that. The majority of the city isn’t within walking distance of the train. Roxbury and Dorchester are the most minority based communities and it’s no coincidence a city with some of the greatest reputations for being racist only has the lousy silver line to help integrate these communities. The majority of the green and red lines connect to Brookline and Cambridge. Two much more white and wealthy communities. I may be unaware of how bad other transit systems may be and that could be screwing with my perception as to the tier the mbta should be in, but honesty I’ll die on this hill. The mbta deserves its own tier of JUST SAVE FOR A CAR OR BIKE.
I went to school at NAU for 5 years with no car, and the buses were either wonderful or horribly scheduled. I truly can't even argue with your ranking, but I'm pleasantly surprised that you visited!
figure u know this by stats, but this came up on my recommended and I loved it! Was surprised u haven't been to NYC yet but I'm sure it'll be a blast for ya, just wanted to lyk the algorithm is working! Also everyone loves a good tier list
Boston has definitely improved drastically since you visited, thanks to an amazing governor and GM. Although breakdowns are somewhat common, the subway and light rail is completely slow zone free for the first time in many years. We've also increased headways, although some parts still could use work. Most trains on the subway are newer, although we're still working on upgrading trains on the light rail.
As a Californian, those are pretty respectable placements. LA is getting better, but has a ways to go, San Diego is doing alright, and SF is just on another level. Overall, I’m very glad to see a pretty fair ranking of those. (Also, I don’t entirely know about the other cities outside of the state bc I haven’t visited yet, but I will scroll to see what yall are thinking)
I grew up riding the DC metro a lot whenever I'd travel there on many weekends of the year going to the zoo or Smithsonian several times in the year. I can say out of many other rail lines I've ridden, it has some of the most beautiful architecture for the tunnels for the underground stations. The waffle like structure with huge vaulting ceilings is just amazing. I don't understand how or why anyone who visits the area doesn't use the Metro. As a former local(ish) to the area, I can say even in my final years before moving out west(prior to 2016) WMTA network is by far the best way to get around DC and wherever the metro can't get a bus connected to a nearby station will. Truly is a testament to design and operation that many should strive to achieve if they can learn from the mistakes the network made over the years and improved on.
Hope you can get down to Atlanta and experience MARTA soon! It definitely has it's problems but I'm reminded what I could be stuck in every time my train passes over one of the freeways during rush hour 😬
I saw from Freeway Jim's videos that your 75/85 freeway downtown is a 14 lane monstrosity. When it gets that big the weaving and lane changing slows down the traffic, a lot, so I wonder why they didn't have 4 narrower roadways, 2 express through the city and 2 local.
If you live OTP in ATL, You mostly have no transit. ITP, the Train service is great but it just doesnt go to enough places. Bus Service generally sucks. As for Biking, it's great from a recreational perspective, but it's not a realistic, nor Serious component of transit. if you really want to enjoy Atlanta, live near where you work or work at home. Take Uber, Lyft or just drive & be done with it. ATL will never be a DC or SF for transit. Again, people ain't moving here for the transt, but they are for the other major Quality o Life reasons, Despite its transit & traffic, ATL is a great place to live which gets better every year.
RAHHH WMATA ON TOPPP literally never had a bad transit experience in Washington DC. The VRE can be a bit slow at times, but the Metro has always been there, through and through, as not just a reliable ferry to DC from the suburbs, but also an amazing interlink between regions in the DMV area. It really does deserve that S tier, and I'll always be there to defend it stay hot WMATA 🦾🔥
Bro thank you so much for thinking of SF as its own city, and not the Bay Area. I was excited to see your review of the city, I personally love it. the Ferry service is absolutely incredible and as of today the MUNI system has come back online in Sunset. The biggest issues with Muni are costs for me. They have been on top of cleanliness as of late. S tier is fucking beautiful.
Can confirm public transit inside San Francisco is pretty great. I ditched the car and took public transit everywhere and it was easy and got me to wherever I needed to go. Also, at least for the lines I regularly used, it was also clean.
As someone from the DMV I’m rlly happy with the ranking of the DC Metro. To be honest, my absolute favorite part about it is the architecture. DC’s Metro makes you feel like you’re in Europe.
RE: Baltimore Transit: A previous commenter mentioned the Red Line, which they have revived since the inauguration of Gov Wes Moore. But as interestingly, MDOT MTA received federal funding for some improvements to MARC, which may help bring about service into Virginia and Delaware, but which is also allowing MDOT MTA to study a connection between the MARC (Amtrak NEC) and Camden (CSX Baltimore Terminal and Capital Subdivisions) which may see trains being able to operate between lines. That would be exciting and help to improve the area’s standing so far as commuter rail goes.
I've lived in both Boston and Philly, and I think the philly metro is much wprse. The SEPTA trains were frequently delayed, and most stations did not have digital signs, so you couldn't even get an ETA on your train delay. This is a lot more inconvenient than slow zones in the Boston subway.
You said that Seattle has the most diverse network, but I'd argue that Philly is just as if not more! They got trolleys busses, trolley-busses, subways, light rail (NHSL), commuter rail, hybrid subway-commuter rail (PATCO), Amtrak (!), and m SEPTA CCT (it's sort of custom bus routes for senior citizens & people with disabilities). Seattle has ferries and the monorail though, so they get points for cool factor.
It’s a good system but the coverage is not the best, especially for rail. I would probably give it C tier. With all the new projects being constructed and planned (Beltline light rail, multiple BRT lines, etc) and also the fresh new subway cars, it may get up to B tier in 10 years
@@suprashank given the suburban sprawl and resistance from Cobb and Gwinnett county I don’t know it will happen soon. If anything I wish they would expand rail further in Clayton Fulton and dekalb county
Thank you for looking at Kansas City. As a transit lover and growing up in KC my whole life our system has taken several steps back since the pandemic to spite the free fares which may end at some point in 2024. We are extending the streetcar another several miles and our rolling stock is pretty good (with the exception of Johnson county ks buses) but we do need better frequency to some parts of our city , for our professional sports teams and to our amazing new airport.
I had issues on the Baltimore system. The light rail often never shows up and the Penn station to Camden yard shuttle had been shut down for a long time.
LA native here. I think LA is a B tier transit. Coverage for buses is extensive in LA city and most of 80 plus suburbs have decent coverage too with 18 different agencies. Metro lrt and heavy rail is still young and relatively new. It connects downtown and inner city to many suburbs with long fingers. Metro is open 4 or5am to midnight and many buses are 24hr even if just hourly after 10pm. I'm not trying to be a biased Homer. Coverage for bus is A, rail coverage is a B or C but needs time to build it. 1.75 with 2 hr free transfers is very cheap plus capped at 5 dollars all dayis A plus. Metro suffers from cleanliness especially on train but can be fixed easily by hiring crews to clean at the end of route instead of quick return with no cleaning. But some passengers are disgusting and trash up transit. Platforms are pretty clean, safely is an issue especially with homeless drug addicts using and mentally ill. at night it feels scary when it's you and a crazy guy in a train car. But not sure how Metro can fix this problem except more security hoping to deter these riders. For land use in LA city is for a sun belt city built for car culture vs dense urban walking cities like Philly, Boston, San Francisco. there has been a push for more developments around Metro stations like pico station, culver city, Vermont wilshire ror example. More and more properties within rail stations are developed over time but I admit it's a slow pace often new apartments near transit to expensive for average transit users, more affordable housing for transit users Overall LA city transit is B tier with good coverage, price, and hours but falls short in cleanliness and safely but many cities deal with also but get high tiers regardless.
Yes, LA Metro has issues related to safety and security but it definitely gets a "Most Improved" in terms of expanded rail coverage. Thirty-five years ago, there was nothing. Now you can go to places like Hollywood, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Compton, Pasadena, East LA and soon Westwood all on rail. The bus system is fairly robust in terms of coverage - but there just needs to be more service. While daytime bus service is reasonable in the core area, evening service in particular (after about 7 pm) just falls off a cliff, even on "frequent" routes. LA buses really aren't slow compared to other cities - but the area is so vast that it just takes a long time to go anywhere.
As a proud daily San Francisco transit rider.... it's absolutely bonkers to put us S tier but not put NYC anywhere. At the very least, NYC should be S tier and put us at A tier.
This is a pretty crisp survey, covering the essentials and minus a lot of the UA-cam logorrhea. Coverage of Sun Belt city transit systems other than Tampa -from San Diego to Miami and including Atlanta- would be a good addition, as would a list posted on a website, supplementing the versions that briefly appear on the video.
When you are ready to tackle New York City, keep in mind you can also subdivide urban New Jersey too. Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City are all majorly represented by public transportation, and most people who live in these wonderful cities use it regularly. New York City conurbation is probably the best Public transportation web in the English speaking world next to London. There, I said it.
For St Louis, you forgot to mention that their light rail serves the airport, which is a plus! Portland's light rail also serves the airport as well. You gotta visit Charlotte sometime. Their light rail is very good! It runs to 1:30am, 7 days a week. There's quite a bit of density around some of the stations, but still has park & rides. And, it has its own right of way too. Frequencies though, not so good. Every 15-30 min
I'd separate KC from STL with STL transit being much better. D for KC and STL being a high C. For the negative reasons he mentioned, STL isn't B tier yet. But compared to KC, it's not close, STL's light rail operates more as a light metro with higher speeds and on a grade-separated network, even underground subway-like segments in parts. It serves Airport, intermodal Amtrak station, colleges/tech district, interring suburbs, an air force base, and the major sports venues. KC's streetcar is a small system around the CBD that doesn't connect commuters to places of work or entertainment.
Can you make a video specifically about NYC area transit? I understand why you didn't include it in this list. A dedicated video would be good in my opinion though. Thank you.
Good list! I will say (speaking as someone also from Chicago) I think the city should be bumped higher than A tier and Boston should also be bumped up. I think if you live in a city or are from the area, the negatives of a transit system become more obvious than if you're just visiting. For Chicago specifically, the rail/buses are markedly better than Philadelphia and really not in the same tier of functionality imo, ditto for Seattle. DC's transit also suffers from poor regional coverage/frequency outside of WMATA, and even WMATA has pitfalls of poor development around stations (particuarly the suburban ones) because Metro also has to function as regional rail to the suburbs. I know you didn't talk much about BART, but it also has similar pitfalls.
@@beback_ How many of the cities featured on this list have you actually lived in or visited? The bar for U.S. transit, unfortunately, is not that high to be considered a top city in North America (sans NYC or Mexico City). Trust me, despite Metra and CTA's many shortcomings, they are quite ahead of SEPTA/Sound transit, on a similar level to DC and SF, and behind NYC. Realistically, the only North American city that can be considered S-tier is NYC, but this list doesn't include it, so that shifts everything around. Is Chicago s-tier by international standards? Definitely not and a ton of work would have to be done to improve service coverage. However, in the context of just the cities he's visited (so only the ones on this list), Chicago would be alongside DC and SF.
WMATA in DC also runs a bus service with pretty extensive coverage and respectable frequency (it varies by line, day, and time), and clean busses. There is also the Circulator with $1 fares and service to popular locations.
Pretty solid list. I would’ve been a bit more harsh with my rankings, putting both SF and DC into A tier and Seattle into B tier, mostly because New York is truly the only S tier transit city in the US. SF and DC both suffer from a lack of coverage in further out neighborhoods within their cities proper, and both Bart and Washington Metro are in this weird limbo of being true subway/metro lines in their urban cores but more like suburban commuter rail on their outskirts (highway median stations, massive park and rides, significantly less frequency, etc.) Seattle has an amazing bus network but their light rail system (while actively expanding) just doesn’t provide anywhere near enough coverage to be worthy of A tier in my opinion. Maybe in 20-30 years if they build out their full plan for the network but not in its current state. Plus the issues you mentioned with a lack of off-peak service and general low frequency on their regional rail line.
Now I dont live in Seattle but I am 30 minutes North but you are right The Light Rail should be expanded for more coverage which I hope there Everett Expansion Brings because for the past decades they have been expanding that. Tbh I Wish the Sounder would be reworked since now WSDOT Just got awarded 500 Million by the FRA.
"SF and DC both suffer from a lack of coverage" I'm sorry, but this common misconception needs to be squashed. BART is not SF's subway system. It's an S-bahn that just so happens to have 4-minute train frequencies within the city. If anything, BART is more Oakland's subway/metro than it is SF's. BART is just one single line, one option out of many in SF. SF's actual metro/subway system is the Muni Metro and it has great coverage. Muni in general has pretty insane coverage. Waaaaaaaaaay above what you see in NYC, Chicago, and almost all European cities barring Paris and maybe London. Yes, SF has very tricky geography and a ton of modes are needed to cover the whole city in its entirety. But that does not detract from the fact that Muni's motto is "no San Franciscan will ever be more that a 2 minutes walk from a Muni stop." And they actually deliver on that promise, in spades! You can say that SF does not have complete Sure, that's true. A good chunk of the network consists of light rail, streetcars, cable cars, trolly busses, diesel busses, and even newly souped-up commuter rail. But pound-for-pound Muni's coverage is genuinely crazy dense. You literally have a transit stop on every other block and a transit line on every other street. Only a few cities in the whole world can match or exceed this level of transit density, and none of them are in the US.
@@TohaBgood2 Having spent significant time in both SF doesn’t even come close to NYC’s transit coverage, especially for high capacity transit with dedicated right of way. NYC has all of the coverage of lower capacity transit options that SF has while also having an insanely dense and frequent subway network across the whole of the city with very few areas that aren’t covered. Not to mention a significantly better regional/commuter rail network than any other city in the US besides maybe Chicago. SF is still miles better than most cities in the US and is making improvements, but it just can’t even be compared to what NYC offers. Buses and similar lower capacity transit options only get you so far especially for a city of its size.
@@JordanPeace Are you kidding? Which part of Brooklyn or Queens has anything even close to SF's transit density? SF is tiny and the whole thing is crisscrossed by lines of transit. There are entire chunks of NYC that are the size of SF that have no > 30 min frequency transit in them at all! This is the difference between someone who visits a city and someone who lives there. As a tourist you only visit a few places on Manhattan island and think that that is all of NYC. That has virtually nothing to do with what it's like to actually live with that transit system day to day and have to go to doctors appointments and try to buy groceries on your way home from work.
@@TohaBgood2 Let me rephrase it then. Having literally lived in both SF and NYC, SF doesn’t come anywhere close to NYC’s transit coverage, especially for high capacity transit with dedicated right of way. Those far flung parts of the NYC boroughs that aren’t served by the subway are served by frequent buses that are comparable in frequency and coverage to similarly far flung parts of SF. And even then, comparing the two isn’t worth much because (as you have now implied) SF is at best the equivalent of just Manhattan in relative size to its metro area, and Manhattan has significantly more mass transit of all forms than SF (including much better connections to the suburban parts of its metro area) while the Bay Area has basically no reasonable alternative to driving for the significant majority of its population. Living in NYC owning a car was never even a consideration because it’s so much more convenient to use transit in every aspect of day to day life. Meanwhile in SF there are several neighborhoods where a transit option exists but is less convenient than just driving, in part because they’re slower and low capacity options with more frequent stops that interact with street traffic. Again, buses and the similarly low capacity transit options that SF has an abundance of can only get you so far, and NYC has a comparable amount of those while also having one of the best subway systems in the world and by far the best in the US. Meanwhile SF’s equivalent with BART is (as you said) one line that doesn’t even cover a significant part of the city and is usually used by commuters instead of people who actually live in the city. It’s not even a close competition and is why NYC is the only city that should be considered S tier for transit in the US.
I'm from Minneapolis and would definitely rank our local transit system, Metro Transit at a B tier. The pros are that the system consists of a good variety of modern vehicles: buses, BRT, and a few commuter and light rail lines. It also runs fairly frequently and has great digital payment methods. A few cons are uncleanly stations and transit officials having frequent problems with smoking and drug use on trains.
Cool video really appreciate seeing the other systems in the country. Just a note, it would've been nice to see the coverage maps so we could compare the different systems (you had something for Portland which gave me an idea). I love seeing people's opinions on transit. Have you thought about doing a video on how you would improve systems? Maybe a video on your proposed expansions/improvements for each system. Let me take Columbus Ohio for example, it is truly a blank canvas and you could do research on all the great possibilities of transit corridors and tell us what you think would be best. Maybe then that city can learn something instead of adding more lanes to I-670 or I-270. I also would love to hear what you think of Salt Lake City's UTA transit. Come out and visit! I think you would be pleasantly surprised, although it really needs more funding. Personally I think it needs expansion and a better central train station (cough cough the Rio Grande Plan), but I would love to hear what you think!
C tier was higher than I expected for baltimore. I live here and have for my whole life. The light rail and metro are fine systems and marc is good but there isn't enough of them. The buses might have fine schedules but their pathing is horrible. Wanna go 5 blocks? You likely will need to make 3 connections because there are only a few instances where the buses maintain a straight line for longer than just a couple blocks. Our rail is lacking a lot both due to nimbyism and lack of tracks. Nimbyism (and the "crime magnet/tax waste" people) prevents metros being added and the lack of existing rails prevent commuter rail service. There used to be a lot more tracks surrounding baltimore but were removed due to lack of use in the 50s and now new infrastructure takes its place meaning it can't be put back without going through houses and buildings. Adding more metro lines in baltimore would be best once we figure out how.
As a Puget Sounder. I’m grateful for LINK expansion to the Eastside, North to Lynwood, and south to Federal Way. However the Sounder Train should’ve extended their hours years ago. No reason for just limited Rush Hour times, since the majority of the Puget Sound dwellers don’t live in Seattle. As far as the city I always tell people that Seattle’s busses operate as efficient as subways since they go everywhere and are all night and all day. Plus our ferry system is the best in the US. They just need to improve with better security on the trains and busses. Snohomish Double decker busses are the exception, as well as the Sounder trains and busses, but King County Metro and LINK you better ride at your own risk depending on which neighborhood you’re riding to. Rapid Ride too.
You grew up in the Suburbs of Chicago and forgot Pace? Hah, I grew up there and often forget it too but when I was visiting the area last year it came in handy, even the funky BRT. My relatives think I'm looney the way I connect to where I need to go on transit anytime I swing into town rather than rent a car. But it works, and I love it. There is nothing like it where I live in the Sun Belt now, but there have been some improvements down here.
I live in Winston Salem NC where we just have a bus system. The wait time between buses is too long, and certain people who can ride the bus to work can't ride it back because their work shift ended after the bus system closed the return trip too soon. It left the worker having to call a taxi, Uber, or a personal driver to take them home. I'm specifically addressing Hanes Mall. If you get off at 9pm, the bus system has already given its last rides. There's a lot of room for improvement. Only poor people use the bus system, while regular streets are crowded with parked cars in lanes not allowed for parking. This leads to having to drive through an obstacle course for cars. Something needs to be done now. There's no passenger rail to Winston Salem, but I've heard that it might return in the next 5 years.
I live in New York but have been on almost all of Boston’s lines. I will say that it is a very strong system. But, compared to NY, the frequency loss (besides the green line) and lack express services make my rating of it go down. Of course compared to any other city transit agency it’s amazing but, New York is New York. So to me, the MTA will always be the best American transit service.
The Antelope Valley line in Los Angeles ran by metrolink is increasing in frequency to hourly, which is certainly great! Expansive projects for the lines is also occuring as we speak, so hopefully we'll see this move to the B tier :)
nice also they need to add more servives on the weekend and end orange county line trains at 10 Pm and plus Most of the metrolink lines gets at least 2 to 4 trains each way and with the venture County line having 2 amtraks run the same route
@@Georgiarailvideos6325 I agree esp with the OC line time extension. Lots of people commute from LA to the OC, and having that time extension allows for more people to use it!
Hope you can visit the other transit cities in the US that are not on the list. Miami, anywhere in NJ, New York City, New Haven, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Denver, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Boise, Minneapolis/St Paul, Honolulu, Jacksonville, and San Juan.
The lack of Sounder south service is so frustrating and the problem is that the only sufficient track between king street station and Tacoma dome station is owned by BNSF and is very congested with container freight
10:55 I’d argue for Philly even being in S tier. Yes, the subway and EL stop running after 2 AM on weekdays, but nothing is open in PA past 2AM, even on weekends. Not even bars. Also, many buses and trolleys run 24/7. Philly is also a pretty small city (landmass wise), but it has more bus and light rail lines than many much much larger cities. Finally, I’ve lived in both Philly and NYC for a long time and in my experience, SEPTA is more reliable than the MTA. Less delays, less station closures, very rare to just sit idle on the tracks for upwards of 15 minutes. To be fair, Philly has about a tenth the population of NYC, but it’s still a phenomenal transit system. Probably my favorite thing about Philly is SEPTA.
Personally I'm impressed,the transit system in the United States varies by region, but generally, it includes options like buses, subways, light rail, and commuter trains. Major cities often have more developed transit networks compared to rural areas.
2:57 SF bay area, OMG! Can you please do some actual regional planning so there aren't 500 million agencies for one region? I swear, it's insane how many tickets you can collect just from the Bay area alone. Also while I'm ranting, please build some housing, rent is insane in any part of the bay.
I've ridden both Philly and DC's metro often and yeah, I can't say I disagree with what you've said. In my opinion - the cleanliness of Philly is the biggest issue. DC can be a little much to navigate at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Both have a reach that is crucial to being viable on the East Coast, and I rather like that.
I agree with San Diego being in the C tier. The system has been expanded with the Blue line extension of the trolley network serving La Jolla and UCSD. Plus more of the track between San Diego and LA is double tracked allowing for more frequent service via Coaster and Surfliner trains. But there are some glaring shortcomings. One, there is no direct light rail/trolley service to the airport terminals despite only being a few miles from the city center (that could reduce auto congestion at the terminals especially for those staying downtown if built) Plus big tourist destinations like the Zoo, Balboa Park and SeaWorld are not serviced by the trolley.
And there's only one bus route (#9) that even goes to Sea World. Another major problem there is that there's no rail route connecting San Diego to Escondido, which is part of one of the two or three major missing corridors for rail travel in Southern California, a line linking San Diego to the Inland Empire, which in turn could make both Escondido and Riverside major transit hubs in Southern California. Much of my time there was spent in the southern portion of the county (National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach), where transit service is much better than in the northern part of the county.
I guess you might need to remake this tier list later tho as you missing many major US cities with transit network. Like, NYC+Newark, Miami (which somehow you made it to Tampa), Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, etc. Hope you could visit them all for the update. Added: I think Flagstaff, AZ deserves its own list as it is a complete different city size compared to the rest. Maybe a tier list of transit system for the small towns or the cities with only bus networks.
If you added NYC, there won't really be any point to the tier list. There is simply no other system that compares to it in terms of ridership, coverage, or frequency. Sure it still needs improvement, but it does highlight how underdeveloped a middling European transit network is to the rest of the US.
@@Demopans5990 Gotta disagree tho, I don’t think NYC would get the S tier that easy, it’s a falling apart system. Unless they could afford a major upgrade and implement new tech for the entire city at once which is impossible anyway as they can only fix it by small sections of the route. I personally would give it B tier, max, IMO. And the other major cities I mentioned that has far better and newer systems than NYC, except the area coverage, of course, are possibly reach higher ranks if added.
As a native to Massachusetts I agree with it being B tier feel you misunderstood several of Boston's transit aspects. The commuter rail for one is a big sticking point you skipped over it mostly but it has some glaring issues that drag it down. It has 12 lines but most are disconnected 4 are out of North Station and 8 are out of South Station and is really only effective for traveling to and from Boston. So if you live on the outskirts of the commuter rail system you have to travel all the way into Boston and back to get to stations that might be only a 30 minute drive away. For instance Auburndale on the Worcester Line and Brandeis on the Fitchburg line are only a mile apart as the crow flies but to travel between them at their terminus's on the commuter rail you would have to transfer to two separate metro lines. The MBTA also refuses to consider Electric trains even on lines that are already electrified by the Northeast Corridor. And in regards to the slow zones on the Metro and Light rail They have reduced them considerably since this video was published from 26% of the overall system length the day this video was published to just 6% now with two lines effectively having all their slow zones removed.
as a bay area native, thank you for putting respect on sf's name. i feel sf so underated when it comes to transit. i grew up in the east bay and once i moved to sf i was so amazed you could go virtually anywhere in the city from anywhere else by just transit alone
Boston has S tier potential, but has horribly mismanaged themselves for decades. It's honestly sad to see because that system has incredible coverage and modes on how to get around. Personally, my ranking for all of this is: S: SF, NYC A: Chicago, Philly, DC B: Boston, Portland, C: Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis D: St. Louis, Dallas, New Orleans, Buffalo, Atlanta, Miami, F: Kanasa City, Las Vegas, Cincinatti, Orlando NAH: Tampa, Phoenix, Houston, Flagstaff, Charlotte, San Antonio,
Thanks for the honesty about Boston's MBTA. It traditionally ranks high because it serves so many communities, but parts of it are held together by duct tape and spackle ...
All of septa’s rolling stock needs replacement but the mfl cars have tons of reliability issues and when riding I feel like they could fall apart with how it shakes and jolts, while the bsl cars have good ride quality still.
As someone who lived in DC around the Northwest for 2 years, which is basically the closest you can get to suburbanity inside of DC proper, I was *really* surprised you gave it an S. I had to get from American University Park to National Harbor (in Maryland, technically, but still WMATA via the NH1) twice, and it took me 2 hours each way, during peak rush hour (AKA when the transit frequency is at its absolute *best*) and off-peak (when the bus traffic was virtually non-existent). That trip is 30-40 minutes by car. Bus frequency when you get to the suburbs is abysmal, once every 20-30 minutes for some routes and the stations are quite far apart geographically. The buses don't show up about 10% of the time too, which becomes more noticeable when you take the bus 2-4 times a day. Downtown it's excellent, don't get me wrong, but if you aren't in a really well-served or well-built area like DuPont or Capitol Hill, it can be quite the pain.
I visited San Francisco twice this year and while coverage is good, Muni is *really* slow, especially compared to BART. I went from North Beach to Mission on Muni buses and it took 35 minutes. The next day I took BART for the same destinations at the same time of day and it took around 12 minutes. The problem is that most of Muni's buses and light rail are not grade separated, so they get bogged down in the same heavy traffic on narrow roads with lots of traffic lights as the cars do. BART has the opposite problem: it's grade separated so it's nice and fast, but within SF it only runs along one corridor, so not much coverage.
For anyone wondering what flashed on the screen around the South Shore Line, I did the work of playing this back at 0.25x speed so you didn't have to: "I know that Pace exists, it just mostly serves the suburbs."
It’s nice to see San Diego’s system get a bit of love, and I’m honestly surprised it got to C tier lol, it does have really really good bones for a system, we just really need to improve the connections along the I-15 and CA-163 corridors
As someone who grew up in North County I always appreciated the downtown transit options. I think the fact that there isn’t any trolley connections to the airport holds it back though
as someone born n raised in san diego, i have always been fascinated by the trolley as a little boy when it first launched in 1981 to where it has come in 2023. i remember my mom took me on a ride when it first launched from downtown to the san ysidro border. just wish it went to more populated parts of the city including the airport
I agree with your list. What I gather is that there are at least 7 cities in the US that are in the B tier (New York wasn't ranked and neither was nearby Jersey City/Hoboken, but the former would be in the S tier and the latter in the A tier). IMO, that's already more "transit-oriented" cities than Canada... first of all, Canada's truly BIG cities are: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City, Edmonton, Surrey, Mississauga, and Hamilton, and their best system is in Vancouver or maybe Montreal, but they still pale in comparison to SF. Toronto is also mediocre compared to Chicago, and it's actually a bigger city (surpassed Chicago in population a few years ago). The rest of them aren't really remarkable. IDK, Canadians like to rip on America for having "abysmal" transit when the reality is the opposite (they mostly chalk it up to ridership, but why is that more important than actual coverage, efficiency, and infrastructure?)...all it shows is a deep lack of self awareness, which is astonishing and mildly irritating. Fix yourself before you rip on someone else
New York and New Jersey should've been on this list. It's a must, especially for New York since it has a lot of transit systems, such as NYC Subway, PATH(New York to New Jersey), MTA, and many more
Just a correction,
BART service hours:
Weekdays (5:00 am- Midnight)
Saturday (6:00 am - Midnight)
Sunday (8:00 am - Midnight)
So only on Sundays does BART start running trains at 8am. And this is due to their track upgrade project which has been going on for quite a few years now, but will eventually end and they will push the Sunday start time back to what it used to be.
thanks for this - also check me if I'm wrong here, but they also just (finally) retired the original Boeing trains (which I remember being futuristic ... in the 1970s) in favor of the new (and far superior) fleet, and have both reduced their former peak-time service and increased their weekend service so it's now every 20 minutes every day - is that right?
@@dwc1964 Basically, yes. The old fleet is no longer in regular service but is going to stay available for event and overflow service until Alstom delivers enough new trains. So you can still see an old "space age" train every now and again during heavy days, but not on a regular weekday it's all new trains.
And they have indeed reconfigured their service for more evenly spread service seven days per week. They also made the frequencies more uniform across the whole system. A majority of the stations used to get 7.5 minute frequencies or better, and the remaining ~40% would get only 15 minute service.
Now all but four stations get 10-minute frequencies all week long. So again, kind-of-sort-of what you said. There used to be almost half of the stations with 15 minute frequencies and the rest with 7.5 or better. Now 46/50 stations get at least 10 minute service and the remaining four get 20 minute service.
This new schedule is also built with more even spacing allowing them to just slot in the new trains that they want to add in the near future without moving any of the existing trains. Overall, this feels like a major upgrade to me, even though they only added a few trains per hour across the whole system. The stronger weekend and evening service was something that the riders have been asking for and BART resisting for literal decades. The pandemic commuter traffic slump finally forced them to heel.
@@TohaBgood2 thanks for all the info! I agree that BART was stuck on the commuter model for way too long at the expense of people trying to use it to live their lives - but then, I'm one of those people who lives on the same side of the Bay as I work, and only use BART on the weekends, so maybe I'm biased. (I used to commute on BART though, before I moved to the City.) I'm glad I was wrong about the frequencies and it's only a few stations that get the 20-minute lag (and now I'm guessing ... the Dublin line?)
We do need better all-night or even just late-night service. It's been a slogan of mine that it's not really public/mass transportation if it closes before the bars do. It's legit the best investment we can make in stopping drunk driving.
@@dwc1964 Yep, the last three stations on the Blue line spur and (for some unknown reason) also Millbrae, get only 20 minute frequencies.
I'm assuming that Millbrae is on the list because they have an operator shortage and Caltrain is just not sufficiently recovered to make that connection a priority. The three Blue line stations are supposedly waiting for that new Purple line (Richmond to Dublin) to fill in the schedule gap. But I guess we'll find out soon enough when they get enough new trains.
Although it’s been like this for a while, the hours for Bart Service is now every day from 5am-12am
Being a Chicago native, I would also put Chicago mass transit in the A tier. A lot of people like to slander the CTA, and while yes, the transit system does have its problems (tbh what US transit system doesn't have problems), but for the problems we do have, Id take CTA ANY DAY over essentially any other US transit system. CTA has been spending a ton of money to completely upgrade the northern portion of the red line, is extending the red line on the south side, is currently rebuilding the tracks on a major portion of the blue line, adding a couple new stations to existing lines, and we even have new 7000 series rail cars that are beginning to appear on the lines. While frequency of trains and cleanliness could be improved, us Chicagoans tend to take our mass transit system for granted.
Hopefully one day, they'll make an orbital line...
Plus, for big city, rent is on the more affordable side!
Frankly, I wish I could take the CTA for granted, I work weekends, I live just outside walking distance to the train and so I have to take a bus and transfer to the blue line to get to work. On weekends this is an absolutely miserable experience with no bus or train frequency and what should be a 45 minute commute can take up to and hour and a half. The CTA could easily be the best system in the US but it can't manage to operate decent headways except during weekday rush hour.
WMATA #1
Best city in the country 👍 Let the media believe what they want ignorance is bliss.
As an Angeleno, LA making C-tier is actually a testament to the improvements that have been going on. I honestly expected no higher than D, so this is good to hear
The ongoing expansions will bump it up to at least a B in the very near future!
I moved to LA from the Miami area ten years ago and although I can't contest the C-tier placement either, god, it's come so far and there's some really good stuff on the horizon.
On that note, lol, Miami didn't even make the list.
@@leeszikiat7953and possibly A tier in the more distant future when Brightline West and CA HSR are done 🚆
@@DeadHonky Let's go! I'm honestly still just flabbergasted that LA now has a completely functional and useful subway that takes to almost anywhere you'd want to go in LA! Imo this is already incredible progress and any more new lines and extensions are just gravy to me.
(Now if they could make it cleaner and safer then I'd be a completely happy camper. And I'm sure that the ridership would absolutely skyrocket as more people realize how useful and usable it has become!)
Same here, but they have come a long way and are still expanding. Definitely looking forward to the phase 2 extension of the A Line to Pomona.
I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough, but the main reason for all the deferred maintenence on the T is the result of MassDOT saddling them with a huge chunk of The Big Dig cost. Imagine what 3.8 BILLION dollars could have done for the MBTA... because that was deemed as their share of the bill.
3.8 billion out of what was the full cost, 22 billion? I don't think the T got 15 percent or so of the work done so definitely they shouldn't be stuck with financing highway improvements.
3.8 billion dollars and they didn’t even finish the Silver Line.
Especially since the Big dig was supposed to include a north south rail link
@@tonywalters7298they had to cut the rail link because of the extra construction from the tunnel collapse. They took a massive risk constructing the Dig.
that’s a load of crap. it’s because of having zero money from being directly tied to the sales tax and inflation outpacing funding.
1. 0:59 San Diego C tier
2. 1:46 Los Angeles C tier
3. 2:45 (just) San Francisco S tier
4. 3:48 Portland B tier
5. 4:30 Seattle A tier
6. 5:15 Flagstaff F tier
7. 5:44 Las Vegas D tier
8. 6:16 Kansas City D tier
9. 6:45 Saint Louis C tier
10. 7:20 Tampa Sun Belt tier
11. 7:43 Chicago A tier
12. 8:28 Washington DC S tier
13. 9:13 Baltimore C tier
14. 10:00 Philadelphia A tier
15. 10:55 Boston B tier
16. Not on the list but NYC would definitely have been in A tier
NYC is definitely S Tier with its 24/7 metro system and the insane amount of regional rail and bus connectivity. For the US it's S tier. But for what the city is/should be? There's a lot of room for improvement.
convenience NYC is S tier but other issues drag it down to A
@@virusj216 SF is below NYC.
@@virusj216 New York's system outclasses SF is virtually everyway in terms of coverage, land use around stations ridership and frequency
At least an S tier bc they could get you anywhere around the city. The only problem is the traffic that would make it an A tier.
As a Floridian, I can't understand how a metropolitan area with over 3 million people doesn't warrant the use of some kind of mass transit that isn't a bus. Sucks that most efforts that come to mind were killed by politics...
yeah and the kicker is there aren't even really any intercity buses across the metro area. Just a disjoint collection of regional systems that barely connect if at all. Bare minimum transit
Density is the important factor here as well. NYC is dense enough where cars really shouldn't be in the city proper. Streetcars would serve the local transit better than the buses, at least in Manhattan, and would really help pull demand from the overloaded subways. We're also missing cross town lines, but apparently that's in the works
I live in Florida too, and to me, the streetcars are the main attraction.
Its very hard to make subways on sandy, marshy, wetlands.
Right on. I used to live in south Hillsborough County. I might add the Tampa St Pete area is similar to the San Francisco bay area in that there's a goodly number of regional agencies. HARTLine in Tampa is probably best of a sorry lot. The others, in particular PSTA in St Pete and Clearwater, suffer from short hours (there's exactly one bus line, running along US 19 from St Pete to Tarpon Springs, runnign any time later than about 7 or 8) Tampa Bay does deserve its low rating here
New York is in a class by itself. All subway lines have 24/7 service, with overnight headways (1-5 AM) of 20 minutes on every line. Weekend headways are excellent. The commuter rail network (LIRR, Metro-North and NJ Transit) provides service with tremendous rush hour headways and half-hourly to hourly service on most lines middays, evenings and weekends. Service runs until around 2 AM (and all night on most of the LIRR).
It’s like a underground city
Sounds great until you realize you'll never have a place to sit
Honestly the New York City subway is a underground city and it’s people are rats crawling around
People can cry about NYC all they want but the Subway itself would already out NYC as no.1 and that's not even considering the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North Railroad which by itself could prolly also rank as no.1
Don't forget PATH and SIR which are 24/7 NJ and Staten Island NYC metro area
As someone who just visited DC, if you drive there leave your car on the outskirts and just park and ride. Their metro system is super clean and very fast to get around the city. I never remembered it being that good as a kid, but I don’t know why anyone would drive in DC over taking the subway. It’s truly excellent.
It’s because there’s a significant difference in affordability. When someone lives closer to a metro station, rent becomes much more expensive. I live in an area that DC believes it shouldn’t support with transit. The city has cut bus lines near me and the closest metro station is almost 2 miles away. DC is definitely not S tier unless you live in the neighborhoods the city believes it should support transit wise.
@@khakchan that sucks. It used to be that people avoided the metro lines because suburban development meant you could avoid the dense areas of town. I suppose it’s a sign of positive change that it’s now a luxury, but let’s hope that further development in cities makes it so that it’s not a luxury, but a means to make it back and forth from a normal job. Plus with bike/impaired mobility infrastructure increasing in the US as a whole, I hope for your sake and the sake of others the line becomes accessible again.
It is very neighborhood specific. I have been carless in DC for 8 years now but that means I am paying the rent price of being near a metro center. Which I don't mind tbh and can afford but not everyone can.
@@khakchan Unfortunately our system is commuter centric. That is how it was designed and built up for the most part. I would however challenge that it is DC that believes it shouldn't support certain areas with transit and more that because it lacks revenue raising authority and involves Virginia, Maryland, and the federal government that WMATA is severely restricted in pursuing capital improvements. It can't raise the money on its own and has to constantly fight for money every year for anything that doesn't benefit Virginia or Maryland directly (with each state being an obstacle even when something benefits one and not the other). This includes operations and maintenance (massive budget shortfalls) which has led to cutting bus routes and the bus system reorganization that is currently being planned.
It's not that fast. I live in DC and if I wanted to go to the zoo, driving would take 20 minutes but the metro would take an hour.
Boston having the oldest transit system in the country and it shows hits the nail on the head. There is so much potential for improvement there. Overall it’s not bad, but they really need some upkeep
it’s already underway, his complaints are actually directly linked as forced maintenance on the four lines that are a mix of lines dating back to 1897, 1904, 1909, 1912, 1923, 1928, 1941, 1959, 1975, 1981, and 1987
You could take a page from Philly's book and build a connection between North and South Station like Philadelphia did in the 1980s to connect the old Pennsylvania and old Reading Railroads.
As a Bostonian, I kinda think you are underselling the MBTA especially when considering the commuter line, and delays aren't a major problem for me
The T > BART
The commuter rail is how the MBTA ought to be running. But the slow zones on the T are misery itself and it's all due to mismanagement and financial corruption.
The only reason the commuter rail is any good is because MBTA isn't actually operating the service. They instead contract Keolis to operate commuter rail. MBTA is highly incompetent in the state they are in and has many problems with their management.
The one thing that should change about the commuter rail is electrifying it. The diesel locomotives are cool but the stop and go time is much slower vs EMU’s like on Metro North.
Everything said above, but I’m mostly bugged by the “6” branches of the green line. There are only 4 branches, but during the recent northward extensions, the D and E branches were extended to Union Square and Medford/Tufts respectively. That said, personally I wish the commuter system ran more frequently services, perhaps with lower capacity per trip so as to make the service more consistent and desirable for commuters.
As a DC area native, it’s great to see our transit at the top of the list. WMATA has had some accidents and has gotten a bad rap over the years, but the trains are very clean, pretty new, the reach is expansive, and the bus service is fantastic as well. Out into the suburbs, the counties and states do a great job with bus service as well. Having ridden VRE and MARC, they are great services with really comfortable trains. It’s a shame that their frequency isn’t great but other than that, absolutely solid services. I agree with you that DC is deserving to be at the top of the list, and it’s noticeable when I travel that transit is lacking in other cities.
As a northern Virginia native, I second this
Try being down in the DC area when it snows the Metro is absolutely horrible it shuts down all the time.☹
I would say cost and hours are the biggest issues with the Metro. Fare increases plus distance based fares have sucked.
DC also has a street car for H street and NE, which took forever to get going
I just need MD to hurry up and complete the Purple Line so that we can finally have our (semi) Beltway Line.
@@terryneubaum8279 Idk my experience in the DC snow has been fine
As someone that lived in NYC for 6 years and now lives in San Francisco, the transit in SF is good but not S-Tier good. My biggest complaint is that many services are running at street-level, so the mess of drivers make transit get delayed and the streets loud and unpleasant to walk. Many bus routes do not have dedicated bus lanes and -- while there are some 24hr routes -- transit shuts off too early. Public transport should be good enough that it convinces some people not to drive. SF is simply not there yet.
Former San Franciscan of 15 years here, and I agree. I could make a case for A tier, otherwise it's always felt more like a solid B.
I lived in NYC for almost 10 years and now live in the LA area and the transit here is a joke compared to NYC.
@@jennifertarin4707well of course. To get to a transit system as good as NYC’s you’d have to go overseas to Europe
Better than Sydney, I lived in sf
It wasn't mentioned here as you didn't visit before making this tier list, but more places with solid transit are Newark, Hoboken, and Jersey City! Of course NYC next door is the transit giant, but these three places do a pretty good job too! Hoboken and Jersey City both have the HBLR which stretches across Hudson County and uses a combination of old rail and new exclusive rights-of-way for most of its length, with some grade separation in certain areas. It provides connections to the PATH (goes between NJ and NYC) at three stops, NY Waterway ferries, and NJT rail at Hoboken Terminal! Jersey City also has Journal Square which is a big bus hub for NJT buses and jitneys and is a PATH station as well!
Newark has Newark Penn Station which is a hub for Greyhound, Amtrak, NJT rail, NJT buses, PATH, and the Newark Light Rail! The Newark Light Rail connects northern Newark, Bloomfield, and Belleville as well as both Rutgers Newark and NJIT to Newark Penn! The Broad Street section of the light-rail provides a connection to Newark Broad Street Station. Newark Liberty International Airport of course has a station as well with connection to the AirTrain, though you could also take a bus to the airport from Newark Penn!
everywhere i go your here what the hell 😭
Exactly, bro sleeping on Jersey for real
Those parts of Jersey I would personally just lump into NYC. Even tho it’s a different state and different systems , it’s apart of the NYC metro area and is largely that compact to create ease for getting from North Jersey to Manhattan
Firstly, thanks for putting this video together! I really enjoyed it. As a Philly native and someone who currently lives in Seattle, I can confidently say that those two cities do not belong in the same category as Philadelphia’s transit is way better in terms of coverage than Seattle’s. Seattle does have the 1 Line, the light rail line, which is pretty good, but there’s so many sections of the city that are not serviced by rapid transit and heavy rail at all, and are a pain in the neck to get to. Whereas a large portion of Philadelphia is covered by either the two subway lines or the regional rail. There really isn’t a rapid transit comparison for Seattle.
I just LOVE how people who aren’t from Philadelphia are so enamored by SEPTA. That’s because you haven’t stayed here long enough to see the bogus going on behind closed doors.
You nailed the cleanliness problem though, I see people taking fat dumps in the stations way too often.
Glad you're showing off other systems in the country that need to be highlighted. Obviously New York dominates the conversation around American transit so I'm glad it didn't feature on this tier list because it would quite literally be all these systems compared to New York and that would be incredibly unfair.
Not sure about DC, but at the very least San Francisco compares very favorably to NYC. We have about the same level of subway service in the downtown core and much better commuter/regional rail and busses/trolleys.
This is subjective, but having lived in both places I can tell you that SF is often easier to get around than NYC. Unless your destination is on Manhattan and you're down to walk for up to 15 minutes, the NY area is not that easy to get around. We often fetishize NY transit, and the ridership is indeed impressive. But in terms of actual mode share SF, Chicago, and DC are very close to NYC. It's not like we don't know how to run strong transit systems when we want to. The problem is that most of the country does not want to.
@@TohaBgood2 I mean San Francisco has the Market Street and Central subways. NYC has a lot more subway coverage and more frequent buses and bus lanes.
In terms of transit mode share, around half of NYers use public transit, double that of San Francisco and DC.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership#/media/File:USCommutePatterns2006.png
@@bellairefondren7389 NY has more subway lines but less transit density overall.
And no NYC busses are nowhere near as frequent as SF's. SF Muni targets 6 minute frequencies system wide, while NYC barely manages 10 minutes. And due to the pretty insane density of routes in SF almost all the lines are interlined with other lines for long stretches. If you know your way around the transit system (local) or if you use Google maps (tourists) you won't even have to wait for 6 minutes a lot of the time.
Similarly, BART and Muni Metro subway trains run at 4-minute frequencies or better downtown. The new Central subway still only has 10-minute frequencies, but this is about to be cut in half too with the introduction of a shuttle line.
Literally 100% of SF residents are never more than a 2-minute walk from a transit stop with sub 10-minute frequency transit. There is nothing even remotely comparable in NYC. In NY the downtown core is insanely well served by transit, but anything outside of that core gets meh service at best. SF is all one giant "transit core" with virtually no blank spots. This is purely a geographically-driven distinction (SF is a lot more compact and concentrated). But it still needs to be acknowledged.
@@TohaBgood2yeah, all you need in San Francisco is more people taking using transit and it’s a pretty tense competition
@@TohaBgood2lol NYC regional rail is leagues ahead of SF. From the tip of long Island, to the Jersey shore by rail and farther by bus, your assertion is naive
Nice video! As a Chicagoan I think you were pretty fair. You should visit Madison, WI as an example of a college town with good transit. It's just buses but the network is pretty solid for a city of Madison's size. Also the city is getting a BRT next year if you would want to check it out!
Kind of a cool video idea would be ranking transit systems in college towns. Uiuc is pretty similar with a great bus system for a city of its size. They do a great job of deterring students from owning cars
It's been a while since I was there, and it was summer, but my recollection is that the mix of bike trails and B-Cycle locations offset a lot of my transit use. Getting around Madison by bike is just a delight.
Go to Albany NY for the best small city bus system in the country
I am a Chicago native myself. I would have rated it a bit lower, say B-, due to lack of cleanliness and the lacking suburban transit. PACE, the operator in the Illinois suburbs, suffers badly from short hours. But it looks good next to the Northern Indiana suburbs, many of which don't have service beyond the South Shore train (looking to you, Portage). And the bureaucracy at parent agency RTA is a legendary joke
The design of the DC Metro system is incredible! The flashing lights on the platform whenever a train arrives, the hexagonal tiles, the waffle-style concrete vault Brutalism, it was built as a showcase system, and it shows. They were designed by Harry Weese, and he worked with Massachusetts-based lighting designer Bill Lam on the indirect lighting used throughout the system. Weese is also the guy behind the iconic capital-M-on-a-pylon! He visited London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and many other smaller cities, hoping to take the best elements of each and combine them into the perfect system for DC. Weese created a proposal with dozens of views for station interiors with a simple semiellipse, with a flat bottom and curved top.
For cut-and-cover stations, the vault was proposed to have straight, vertical walls supporting a curved ceiling. But the US Commission of Fine Arts wanted it to be beautiful, and no exposed rock walls like Stockholm, so he changed his thought. He felt the necessities of each station would produce the variety, that "You don't try to make them different for different's sake. We think it's very appropriate for Washington. After all". To Weese, the sweeping, swooping, floating lines of Metro's plazas, stations and mezzanines are the system's best feature. Once they were chosen, he said, the long, long escalators and the indirect, somewhat dim lighting in stations fell into step as a result.
The Washington Metro has great station design, but I've kind of gotten bored of it when I've visited. Some variety in the stations would be nice. Stockholm did a great job. A lot of stations have similar construction but unique art.
My only other complaint about DC is that there are a lot of transit gaps. I found myself in many areas that had a 15-20 minute walk or a 14 minute walk, and then a 2 minute transit ride.
Don't even get me started on those escalators. I rode the Washington Metro for years, both for commuting and for other types of trips. Escalator steps are not designed to be walked on. The worst thing was when only one escalator was running and it was set to go DOWN. Ever try walking up a stopped escalator in a station like Bethesda?
One time, I asked a station attendant about only one escalator that was going down. He answered "Blind people expect things to be on the right." Huh? What the hell was he talking about?
@@TomHoffman-uw7pf The status quote is that in WMATA in matter what, the direction of travel is always on the right.
I'm just amazed you hit most of the biggest cities in the Northeast megalopolis and just passed over NYC. But it would be unfair to add us to your list ;-)
NYC transit system is god tier compared to the jokes on this list 🤣
No US city deserves S tier with the possible exception of New York. That should be reserved for the London and Tokyo level cities.
Lived in DC for a few years and was kinda shocked you didn't mention the bus system there at all, which in my opinion, aside from lack of dedicated right of ways in most places, was pretty extensive and frequent with a few routes w/ 24 hr service. Thanks for the video tho it was great!
San Francisco - ngl, I fist-pumped at S-Tier
for context: Bay Area native, brought up in suburbia as a latch-key kid; my all-important 2nd decade was spent in the newly-dubbed Silicon Valley with practically _no_ public transit, but fortunately flat as a pancake, so I got good on the bicycle. Grew up and escaped to, first, the East Bay, and since 1994, San Francisco's lovely Noe Valley, where I learned through experiment (being late for work) that the J-Church is _faster_ to downtown than riding a motorcycle as aggressively as possible down the quickest route available (and then finding somewhere to park, plus donning and doffing gear...). I don't even own a motorcycle anymore, since I only had it for my annual road trips - I couldn't imagine actually driving a _car_ here. Though, of course, way too many people persist ...
This! I feel like we have sooooooo many new people cycling in and out of the Bay Area that it takes them up to a decade to realize that you don't really need to drive here if you don't want to. And by the time they're done with their Silicon Valley stint and want to semi-retire to some slower paced state, then new ones move in and start the cycle all over again.
@@TohaBgood2 Caltrain is *right there* - now that it's finally getting electrified, I might even ride it myself sometime just to try it out, even though I have no desire at all to go where it goes ...
Definitely agree with LA's C tier placement.
Hopefully after the full D line extension and the LAX connection open it can move to B tier
A/S tier are probably reserved for After Sepulveda and K line North projects open.
Also the K line through Koreatown
Increasingly wondering how various other Mid-American & Deep Southern cities will fare later this decade once VARIOUS BRT upgrades & streetcar proposals come online…
since around 2018-2019 to the end of 2023, we’ve gotten:
>Milwaukee’s Hop (streetcar)
>IndyGo’s Red Line (BRT; purple line supposedly coming very soon)
>Birmingham’s BRT
>Omaha’s ORBT (BRT)
>Milwaukee’s Connect1 (BRT)
>Omaha’s streetcar beginning construction
>Tulsa’s BRT lite network (with an additional line eventually coming to a historic US 66 corridor through town)
>and most recently OKC’s northwestern BRT
Among others.
Loved this video. Chicago area has a great system, although biased because that comes from being a 20-yr commuter on Metra and as a teenager having the then new Cumberland Blue Line station open up by my house growing up - this opened up many possibilities going downtown and to Wrigley Field. Also, the water taxi on the river downtown is a fun way to get around.
Honestly DC is so underrated, so I’m glad to see someone finally show us some love! 😀
Yes once you understand how it works it's a great way to get around.
you're spot on for boston. riding public transit is one of my favorite ways to visit a new city too! chicago has been on my to-visit list for a while now
I feel like the T is better than that, the slow zones aren’t really that bad and the variety of transportation and the range of the T across the metro area is really solid imo
As a chicagoan, yes absolutely come in for a visit. I'ts not as dangerous as the media makes it out to be. A lot of the crime happens on the south and west sides (not where the tourists tend to go). Our transportation is good, but it can throw you for a loop at times, I've been on busses that broke down (but it's on the uncommon side), but the L (as we call our metro system) is fun to ride, but keep in mind the wait times can be a bit annoying (this was especially true with the staffing shortage we had during the height of the pandemic). Aside from this, we have a lot to offer here.
Here in Oakland, Bart is AMAZING! I go to San Francisco sometimes and ride muni a lot. Bart Headway is pretty good, also Muni headway is really good. I love how muni is mixed Metro/Light Rail. I love your placement of S for San Francisco! Bart Correction: Bart runs 24/7 but runs 4 line (Orange Richmond-San Jose, Yellow SFO-Antioch, Blue Daly City-Dublin/Pleasanton, and Beige Oakland Coliseum-Oakland International Airport) from midnight to 5am (weekdays) 6am (saturdays) and 8am (sundays). Bart is so useful here in the bay! I 100% agree with an S ranking.
lol BART is not 24/7
@@knightlunaaire1087 idk what I was smoking when I wrote that 💀 i have no idea why I said that, thanks for pointing it out tho.
SEPTA’s trolley fleet is being replaced. Order is already in place with Alstom.
Not sure what you meant by SEPTA needing to run the “metros” longer. The Market-Frankfort elevated and Broad Street Subway run to 1am-ish. But the night owl bus runs the same service on the surface on 15 minute headways overnight. The regional rails could use more late night service, and of course more than hourly during the day. Good bones for a solid system.
As a Vegas resident, I think D tier is appropriate. I live in a part of town that has abysmal access (just one infrequent bus line) but our streets are so wide the RTA could totally afford to allocate one lane on each side to be a bus lane and hopefully lessen/slow down car accidents here. The monorail was privately owned which is why it’s not great but I heard it was bought by the city/county which I need to confirm. If so, that could be a game changer if they actually expand access. The area only focuses transit access near the Strip when expanding it could help Strip employees get to work easier. I’ve heard the rideshare companies lobby our local government though so who knows when things will improve here.
I also recommend checking out Long Beach in the LA area when you get the chance! They have their own separate transit agency but also have train access to LA. Considering the west coast’s infamous car dependency, Long Beach is refreshing in comparison to the rest of the area.
The Red Line should be built by around the end of the decade in Baltimore. A 2nd light rail line would bump us up to B tier. Along with another proposal for another red line like service between Hunt Valley and Downtown Baltimore via Towson by either light rail or BRT. Also I have a fantasy of sorts of a trackless tram system (I actually like them in theory) that shadows the I-695 beltway from Columbia to either Essex or Dundalk.
I never forgave Governor Hogan for cancelling the Red Line, though his successor rightfully brought it back. But it would need to go at bare minimum to Eastpoint. I can't see it though. As a now former long time Dundalk/Essex area resident, the NIMBY is super strong there.
It only took 1 death by broken door, a federal investigation, and almost a year of localised bustitution in order to make room for track work, but the MBTA has gotten a good bit better since this video was made!
I am from Boston and I think that a B rating is quite good. We have the oldest subway in the USA, between Boylston street and Park street stations, going underneath the common. I hope for you to come back!
Same. I ride the T usually twice a week. I used to ride the commuter rail daily. It's been falling apart and been slow.
As a Philly native Ive noticed Septa tends to get allot of positive remarks from transit fans which is funny to me since it gets so many complaints from natives. You mentioned the el stock what did you think of the broad street subway rolling stock.
SEPTA is indeed dirty as all hell. If anyone bothered to clean the buses and trains it might rate better
Being a Philly native and having lived in other parts of the country, I can see why transit enthusiasts rate Philly’s transit pretty highly as the city has pretty great transit coverage and transit options compared to a lot of cities in the US. That doesn’t mean that Philly doesn’t have its problems with service times, cleanliness, and the like. But the fact that you can still get around decently in the city at pretty much anytime of night or day is something that I think we take for granted because there are a lot of places in this country where you don’t have any transit options after certain time of day.
I think most of the folks complaining about SEPTA are seeing SEPTA in a vacuum whereas transit fans are comparing it to other systems in the US.
@@russelldinkins5801 I moved to Philly from GA/Atlanta, this is spot on. We absolutely take for granted SEPTA compared to the meager offerings of MARTA or being trapped in an automotive hellscape.
SEPTA has great bones and if we can fund them like New York or DC, we could have the best public transit in the country (tbh its a testament to how much spite can overcome a lot of gaps in money.)
My only Bone to pick is that WMATA has not learned from it's mistakes and actively goes against Federal Recommendations when it comes to its safety issues. But the network itself, when not crashing, is great
As a Bostonian who used to be obsessed with the trains mostly but also founded the whole T for nearly two decades, I can confidently say it’s the least reliable organization humans have created. For years I had to leave for work at least an hour and a half early knowing there would be a decent chance I get there an hour early or just on time. My second day of one my most recent summer jobs had me check the app to see no maintenance warnings listed or posted anywhere to find out halfway through my train ride that the line was cut off early to be replaced by shuttle busses that didn’t even cover the remainder of the line before having to get on a second shuttle bus. This was to get from Fenway to park st, no more than 7 stops. Trains are sometimes completely replaced by shuttle busses that don’t run on schedule or at the frequency listed. The only pro I’d give the MBTA is that their bus routes run pretty far throughout the city and somewhat on time but I’ve def had a handful of busses passing by me waiting for them because they’re listed as “express busses” when their app lists them as a typical “on time” bus. In addition I’ve seen people who work for the org tell me replacement shuttle busses headed to certain places are lined up outside certain buildings only to find out they had no clue and were getting payed to watch homeless people crowd stations, not even tell them to leave becuase no trains were running. My sister had carried a knife on her since the orange line had that hard turn that used to tilt 45 degrees because of the untrustworthy people. Downtown stations smell like a kindergarten boys bathroom. As of late, trains have been running slower than usual to avoid the late dilemma of trains derailing. This initially happened on the green line after it took a couple months to realize most of the derailments came from the new, UNDERSIZED AND UNSAFE tracks to tufts that were placed AND CALLED BACK in the past two years; yet somehow this problem regularly occurs on the red line too. There are no direct lines to certain places from different sections of the city; you must go inbound, to connect to a railway that takes you outbound in the direction you were looking to go. It’s the opposite of a grid. On top of all of that. The majority of the city isn’t within walking distance of the train. Roxbury and Dorchester are the most minority based communities and it’s no coincidence a city with some of the greatest reputations for being racist only has the lousy silver line to help integrate these communities. The majority of the green and red lines connect to Brookline and Cambridge. Two much more white and wealthy communities. I may be unaware of how bad other transit systems may be and that could be screwing with my perception as to the tier the mbta should be in, but honesty I’ll die on this hill. The mbta deserves its own tier of JUST SAVE FOR A CAR OR BIKE.
Im sticking to the train thank you very much.
Ps. For the love of God please learn how to separate paragraphs.
DC definitely deserves its spot in S tier. I sold my car after moving here because it is just more convenient and often faster than fighting traffic.
I went to school at NAU for 5 years with no car, and the buses were either wonderful or horribly scheduled. I truly can't even argue with your ranking, but I'm pleasantly surprised that you visited!
figure u know this by stats, but this came up on my recommended and I loved it! Was surprised u haven't been to NYC yet but I'm sure it'll be a blast for ya, just wanted to lyk the algorithm is working!
Also everyone loves a good tier list
Boston has definitely improved drastically since you visited, thanks to an amazing governor and GM. Although breakdowns are somewhat common, the subway and light rail is completely slow zone free for the first time in many years. We've also increased headways, although some parts still could use work. Most trains on the subway are newer, although we're still working on upgrading trains on the light rail.
As a Californian, those are pretty respectable placements. LA is getting better, but has a ways to go, San Diego is doing alright, and SF is just on another level. Overall, I’m very glad to see a pretty fair ranking of those. (Also, I don’t entirely know about the other cities outside of the state bc I haven’t visited yet, but I will scroll to see what yall are thinking)
I grew up riding the DC metro a lot whenever I'd travel there on many weekends of the year going to the zoo or Smithsonian several times in the year. I can say out of many other rail lines I've ridden, it has some of the most beautiful architecture for the tunnels for the underground stations. The waffle like structure with huge vaulting ceilings is just amazing. I don't understand how or why anyone who visits the area doesn't use the Metro. As a former local(ish) to the area, I can say even in my final years before moving out west(prior to 2016) WMTA network is by far the best way to get around DC and wherever the metro can't get a bus connected to a nearby station will. Truly is a testament to design and operation that many should strive to achieve if they can learn from the mistakes the network made over the years and improved on.
Hope you can get down to Atlanta and experience MARTA soon! It definitely has it's problems but I'm reminded what I could be stuck in every time my train passes over one of the freeways during rush hour 😬
MARTA sucks done
Atlanta Gang
One thing about MARTA is that it's rail stations are over built in a dystopian brutalist style but I love your Beltline
I saw from Freeway Jim's videos that your 75/85 freeway downtown is a 14 lane monstrosity. When it gets that big the weaving and lane changing slows down the traffic, a lot, so I wonder why they didn't have 4 narrower roadways, 2 express through the city and 2 local.
If you live OTP in ATL, You mostly have no transit. ITP, the Train service is great but it just doesnt go to enough places.
Bus Service generally sucks. As for Biking, it's great from a recreational perspective, but it's not a realistic, nor Serious component of transit.
if you really want to enjoy Atlanta, live near where you work or work at home. Take Uber, Lyft or just drive & be done with it.
ATL will never be a DC or SF for transit. Again, people ain't moving here for the transt, but they are for the other major Quality o Life reasons,
Despite its transit & traffic, ATL is a great place to live which gets better every year.
RAHHH WMATA ON TOPPP
literally never had a bad transit experience in Washington DC. The VRE can be a bit slow at times, but the Metro has always been there, through and through, as not just a reliable ferry to DC from the suburbs, but also an amazing interlink between regions in the DMV area.
It really does deserve that S tier, and I'll always be there to defend it
stay hot WMATA 🦾🔥
Bro thank you so much for thinking of SF as its own city, and not the Bay Area. I was excited to see your review of the city, I personally love it. the Ferry service is absolutely incredible and as of today the MUNI system has come back online in Sunset. The biggest issues with Muni are costs for me. They have been on top of cleanliness as of late. S tier is fucking beautiful.
Can confirm public transit inside San Francisco is pretty great. I ditched the car and took public transit everywhere and it was easy and got me to wherever I needed to go. Also, at least for the lines I regularly used, it was also clean.
Here in Baltimore, construction for the Red Line has restarted.
Slow down there, buddy. It has been approved for funding, but this was the same phrasing under O'Malley til Hogan was elected
As someone from the DMV I’m rlly happy with the ranking of the DC Metro. To be honest, my absolute favorite part about it is the architecture.
DC’s Metro makes you feel like you’re in Europe.
Yep
RE: Baltimore Transit: A previous commenter mentioned the Red Line, which they have revived since the inauguration of Gov Wes Moore. But as interestingly, MDOT MTA received federal funding for some improvements to MARC, which may help bring about service into Virginia and Delaware, but which is also allowing MDOT MTA to study a connection between the MARC (Amtrak NEC) and Camden (CSX Baltimore Terminal and Capital Subdivisions) which may see trains being able to operate between lines. That would be exciting and help to improve the area’s standing so far as commuter rail goes.
I've lived in both Boston and Philly, and I think the philly metro is much wprse. The SEPTA trains were frequently delayed, and most stations did not have digital signs, so you couldn't even get an ETA on your train delay. This is a lot more inconvenient than slow zones in the Boston subway.
You said that Seattle has the most diverse network, but I'd argue that Philly is just as if not more! They got trolleys busses, trolley-busses, subways, light rail (NHSL), commuter rail, hybrid subway-commuter rail (PATCO), Amtrak (!), and m SEPTA CCT (it's sort of custom bus routes for senior citizens & people with disabilities).
Seattle has ferries and the monorail though, so they get points for cool factor.
I think SF wins this one. Trolleybuses. Diesel buses. Heritage streetcars. Light rail metro. Heavy rail metro. Cable cars too. Ferries too!
Hope to see Atlanta’s MARTA on the next list. It’s doing good but has quite some faults
It’s a good system but the coverage is not the best, especially for rail. I would probably give it C tier. With all the new projects being constructed and planned (Beltline light rail, multiple BRT lines, etc) and also the fresh new subway cars, it may get up to B tier in 10 years
@@wwsciffsww3748 I agrée with that. It needs the expansiveness of the DC metro but I can only dream
Its needs to be expanded. The reach is very limited considering how large Atlanta and its suburbs are.
Bad reputation plagues Marta.
@@suprashank given the suburban sprawl and resistance from Cobb and Gwinnett county I don’t know it will happen soon. If anything I wish they would expand rail further in Clayton Fulton and dekalb county
I've only visited one city with heavy rail and that's Atlanta, so i give that A tier
Thank you for looking at Kansas City. As a transit lover and growing up in KC my whole life our system has taken several steps back since the pandemic to spite the free fares which may end at some point in 2024. We are extending the streetcar another several miles and our rolling stock is pretty good (with the exception of Johnson county ks buses) but we do need better frequency to some parts of our city , for our professional sports teams and to our amazing new airport.
I had issues on the Baltimore system. The light rail often never shows up and the Penn station to Camden yard shuttle had been shut down for a long time.
LA native here. I think LA is a B tier transit. Coverage for buses is extensive in LA city and most of 80 plus suburbs have decent coverage too with 18 different agencies. Metro lrt and heavy rail is still young and relatively new. It connects downtown and inner city to many suburbs with long fingers. Metro is open 4 or5am to midnight and many buses are 24hr even if just hourly after 10pm.
I'm not trying to be a biased Homer. Coverage for bus is A, rail coverage is a B or C but needs time to build it. 1.75 with 2 hr free transfers is very cheap plus capped at 5 dollars all dayis A plus. Metro suffers from cleanliness especially on train but can be fixed easily by hiring crews to clean at the end of route instead of quick return with no cleaning. But some passengers are disgusting and trash up transit. Platforms are pretty clean, safely is an issue especially with homeless drug addicts using and mentally ill. at night it feels scary when it's you and a crazy guy in a train car. But not sure how Metro can fix this problem except more security hoping to deter these riders. For land use in LA city is for a sun belt city built for car culture vs dense urban walking cities like Philly, Boston, San Francisco. there has been a push for more developments around Metro stations like pico station, culver city, Vermont wilshire ror example. More and more properties within rail stations are developed over time but I admit it's a slow pace often new apartments near transit to expensive for average transit users, more affordable housing for transit users
Overall LA city transit is B tier with good coverage, price, and hours but falls short in cleanliness and safely but many cities deal with also but get high tiers regardless.
Yes, LA Metro has issues related to safety and security but it definitely gets a "Most Improved" in terms of expanded rail coverage. Thirty-five years ago, there was nothing. Now you can go to places like Hollywood, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Compton, Pasadena, East LA and soon Westwood all on rail. The bus system is fairly robust in terms of coverage - but there just needs to be more service. While daytime bus service is reasonable in the core area, evening service in particular (after about 7 pm) just falls off a cliff, even on "frequent" routes. LA buses really aren't slow compared to other cities - but the area is so vast that it just takes a long time to go anywhere.
As a proud daily San Francisco transit rider.... it's absolutely bonkers to put us S tier but not put NYC anywhere. At the very least, NYC should be S tier and put us at A tier.
This is a pretty crisp survey, covering the essentials and minus a lot of the UA-cam logorrhea. Coverage of Sun Belt city transit systems other than Tampa -from San Diego to Miami and including Atlanta- would be a good addition, as would a list posted on a website, supplementing the versions that briefly appear on the video.
How do you include Flagstaff but not Denver?
When you are ready to tackle New York City, keep in mind you can also subdivide urban New Jersey too. Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City are all majorly represented by public transportation, and most people who live in these wonderful cities use it regularly. New York City conurbation is probably the best Public transportation web in the English speaking world next to London. There, I said it.
For St Louis, you forgot to mention that their light rail serves the airport, which is a plus!
Portland's light rail also serves the airport as well.
You gotta visit Charlotte sometime. Their light rail is very good! It runs to 1:30am, 7 days a week. There's quite a bit of density around some of the stations, but still has park & rides. And, it has its own right of way too. Frequencies though, not so good. Every 15-30 min
I'd separate KC from STL with STL transit being much better. D for KC and STL being a high C. For the negative reasons he mentioned, STL isn't B tier yet. But compared to KC, it's not close, STL's light rail operates more as a light metro with higher speeds and on a grade-separated network, even underground subway-like segments in parts. It serves Airport, intermodal Amtrak station, colleges/tech district, interring suburbs, an air force base, and the major sports venues. KC's streetcar is a small system around the CBD that doesn't connect commuters to places of work or entertainment.
Can you make a video specifically about NYC area transit? I understand why you didn't include it in this list. A dedicated video would be good in my opinion though. Thank you.
Most likely it would be unfair as it is literally the best in terms of US transit.
Good list! I will say (speaking as someone also from Chicago) I think the city should be bumped higher than A tier and Boston should also be bumped up. I think if you live in a city or are from the area, the negatives of a transit system become more obvious than if you're just visiting. For Chicago specifically, the rail/buses are markedly better than Philadelphia and really not in the same tier of functionality imo, ditto for Seattle. DC's transit also suffers from poor regional coverage/frequency outside of WMATA, and even WMATA has pitfalls of poor development around stations (particuarly the suburban ones) because Metro also has to function as regional rail to the suburbs. I know you didn't talk much about BART, but it also has similar pitfalls.
There's NO WAY Chicago is S-tier with the L's pathetic level of coverage. The buses are pretty decent but that can only get you so far.
@@beback_ How many of the cities featured on this list have you actually lived in or visited? The bar for U.S. transit, unfortunately, is not that high to be considered a top city in North America (sans NYC or Mexico City). Trust me, despite Metra and CTA's many shortcomings, they are quite ahead of SEPTA/Sound transit, on a similar level to DC and SF, and behind NYC. Realistically, the only North American city that can be considered S-tier is NYC, but this list doesn't include it, so that shifts everything around.
Is Chicago s-tier by international standards? Definitely not and a ton of work would have to be done to improve service coverage. However, in the context of just the cities he's visited (so only the ones on this list), Chicago would be alongside DC and SF.
Then why did SF get an S tier when it's behind Chicago?@@beback_
WMATA in DC also runs a bus service with pretty extensive coverage and respectable frequency (it varies by line, day, and time), and clean busses. There is also the Circulator with $1 fares and service to popular locations.
3:47 Thank you so much for putting my city in the S Tier!
Me too!
Man the greenline could learn a lot from the speed of the septa trolley drivers
This the first time I seen my home city Baltimore (a city and its transit system I believe to be ignored by many) in a video about public transit
Pretty solid list. I would’ve been a bit more harsh with my rankings, putting both SF and DC into A tier and Seattle into B tier, mostly because New York is truly the only S tier transit city in the US.
SF and DC both suffer from a lack of coverage in further out neighborhoods within their cities proper, and both Bart and Washington Metro are in this weird limbo of being true subway/metro lines in their urban cores but more like suburban commuter rail on their outskirts (highway median stations, massive park and rides, significantly less frequency, etc.)
Seattle has an amazing bus network but their light rail system (while actively expanding) just doesn’t provide anywhere near enough coverage to be worthy of A tier in my opinion. Maybe in 20-30 years if they build out their full plan for the network but not in its current state. Plus the issues you mentioned with a lack of off-peak service and general low frequency on their regional rail line.
Now I dont live in Seattle but I am 30 minutes North but you are right The Light Rail should be expanded for more coverage which I hope there Everett Expansion Brings because for the past decades they have been expanding that. Tbh I Wish the Sounder would be reworked since now WSDOT Just got awarded 500 Million by the FRA.
"SF and DC both suffer from a lack of coverage" I'm sorry, but this common misconception needs to be squashed. BART is not SF's subway system. It's an S-bahn that just so happens to have 4-minute train frequencies within the city. If anything, BART is more Oakland's subway/metro than it is SF's. BART is just one single line, one option out of many in SF.
SF's actual metro/subway system is the Muni Metro and it has great coverage. Muni in general has pretty insane coverage. Waaaaaaaaaay above what you see in NYC, Chicago, and almost all European cities barring Paris and maybe London. Yes, SF has very tricky geography and a ton of modes are needed to cover the whole city in its entirety. But that does not detract from the fact that Muni's motto is "no San Franciscan will ever be more that a 2 minutes walk from a Muni stop." And they actually deliver on that promise, in spades!
You can say that SF does not have complete Sure, that's true. A good chunk of the network consists of light rail, streetcars, cable cars, trolly busses, diesel busses, and even newly souped-up commuter rail. But pound-for-pound Muni's coverage is genuinely crazy dense. You literally have a transit stop on every other block and a transit line on every other street. Only a few cities in the whole world can match or exceed this level of transit density, and none of them are in the US.
@@TohaBgood2 Having spent significant time in both SF doesn’t even come close to NYC’s transit coverage, especially for high capacity transit with dedicated right of way. NYC has all of the coverage of lower capacity transit options that SF has while also having an insanely dense and frequent subway network across the whole of the city with very few areas that aren’t covered. Not to mention a significantly better regional/commuter rail network than any other city in the US besides maybe Chicago. SF is still miles better than most cities in the US and is making improvements, but it just can’t even be compared to what NYC offers. Buses and similar lower capacity transit options only get you so far especially for a city of its size.
@@JordanPeace Are you kidding? Which part of Brooklyn or Queens has anything even close to SF's transit density? SF is tiny and the whole thing is crisscrossed by lines of transit. There are entire chunks of NYC that are the size of SF that have no > 30 min frequency transit in them at all!
This is the difference between someone who visits a city and someone who lives there. As a tourist you only visit a few places on Manhattan island and think that that is all of NYC. That has virtually nothing to do with what it's like to actually live with that transit system day to day and have to go to doctors appointments and try to buy groceries on your way home from work.
@@TohaBgood2 Let me rephrase it then. Having literally lived in both SF and NYC, SF doesn’t come anywhere close to NYC’s transit coverage, especially for high capacity transit with dedicated right of way. Those far flung parts of the NYC boroughs that aren’t served by the subway are served by frequent buses that are comparable in frequency and coverage to similarly far flung parts of SF. And even then, comparing the two isn’t worth much because (as you have now implied) SF is at best the equivalent of just Manhattan in relative size to its metro area, and Manhattan has significantly more mass transit of all forms than SF (including much better connections to the suburban parts of its metro area) while the Bay Area has basically no reasonable alternative to driving for the significant majority of its population. Living in NYC owning a car was never even a consideration because it’s so much more convenient to use transit in every aspect of day to day life. Meanwhile in SF there are several neighborhoods where a transit option exists but is less convenient than just driving, in part because they’re slower and low capacity options with more frequent stops that interact with street traffic. Again, buses and the similarly low capacity transit options that SF has an abundance of can only get you so far, and NYC has a comparable amount of those while also having one of the best subway systems in the world and by far the best in the US. Meanwhile SF’s equivalent with BART is (as you said) one line that doesn’t even cover a significant part of the city and is usually used by commuters instead of people who actually live in the city. It’s not even a close competition and is why NYC is the only city that should be considered S tier for transit in the US.
I'm from Minneapolis and would definitely rank our local transit system, Metro Transit at a B tier. The pros are that the system consists of a good variety of modern vehicles: buses, BRT, and a few commuter and light rail lines. It also runs fairly frequently and has great digital payment methods. A few cons are uncleanly stations and transit officials having frequent problems with smoking and drug use on trains.
Cool video really appreciate seeing the other systems in the country. Just a note, it would've been nice to see the coverage maps so we could compare the different systems (you had something for Portland which gave me an idea). I love seeing people's opinions on transit.
Have you thought about doing a video on how you would improve systems? Maybe a video on your proposed expansions/improvements for each system. Let me take Columbus Ohio for example, it is truly a blank canvas and you could do research on all the great possibilities of transit corridors and tell us what you think would be best. Maybe then that city can learn something instead of adding more lanes to I-670 or I-270.
I also would love to hear what you think of Salt Lake City's UTA transit. Come out and visit! I think you would be pleasantly surprised, although it really needs more funding. Personally I think it needs expansion and a better central train station (cough cough the Rio Grande Plan), but I would love to hear what you think!
C tier was higher than I expected for baltimore. I live here and have for my whole life. The light rail and metro are fine systems and marc is good but there isn't enough of them. The buses might have fine schedules but their pathing is horrible. Wanna go 5 blocks? You likely will need to make 3 connections because there are only a few instances where the buses maintain a straight line for longer than just a couple blocks. Our rail is lacking a lot both due to nimbyism and lack of tracks. Nimbyism (and the "crime magnet/tax waste" people) prevents metros being added and the lack of existing rails prevent commuter rail service. There used to be a lot more tracks surrounding baltimore but were removed due to lack of use in the 50s and now new infrastructure takes its place meaning it can't be put back without going through houses and buildings. Adding more metro lines in baltimore would be best once we figure out how.
As a Puget Sounder. I’m grateful for LINK expansion to the Eastside, North to Lynwood, and south to Federal Way. However the Sounder Train should’ve extended their hours years ago. No reason for just limited Rush Hour times, since the majority of the Puget Sound dwellers don’t live in Seattle. As far as the city I always tell people that Seattle’s busses operate as efficient as subways since they go everywhere and are all night and all day. Plus our ferry system is the best in the US. They just need to improve with better security on the trains and busses. Snohomish Double decker busses are the exception, as well as the Sounder trains and busses, but King County Metro and LINK you better ride at your own risk depending on which neighborhood you’re riding to. Rapid Ride too.
You grew up in the Suburbs of Chicago and forgot Pace? Hah, I grew up there and often forget it too but when I was visiting the area last year it came in handy, even the funky BRT. My relatives think I'm looney the way I connect to where I need to go on transit anytime I swing into town rather than rent a car. But it works, and I love it. There is nothing like it where I live in the Sun Belt now, but there have been some improvements down here.
I always include little one frame rants in my videos there may or may not be one on pace 👀
I live in Winston Salem NC where we just have a bus system. The wait time between buses is too long, and certain people who can ride the bus to work can't ride it back because their work shift ended after the bus system closed the return trip too soon. It left the worker having to call a taxi, Uber, or a personal driver to take them home. I'm specifically addressing Hanes Mall. If you get off at 9pm, the bus system has already given its last rides. There's a lot of room for improvement. Only poor people use the bus system, while regular streets are crowded with parked cars in lanes not allowed for parking. This leads to having to drive through an obstacle course for cars. Something needs to be done now. There's no passenger rail to Winston Salem, but I've heard that it might return in the next 5 years.
Hey, great list. I have to say NYC is my favourite but I have yet to visit Boston and would really like to see how it compares.
I live in New York but have been on almost all of Boston’s lines. I will say that it is a very strong system. But, compared to NY, the frequency loss (besides the green line) and lack express services make my rating of it go down. Of course compared to any other city transit agency it’s amazing but, New York is New York. So to me, the MTA will always be the best American transit service.
The Antelope Valley line in Los Angeles ran by metrolink is increasing in frequency to hourly, which is certainly great! Expansive projects for the lines is also occuring as we speak, so hopefully we'll see this move to the B tier :)
nice also they need to add more servives on the weekend and end orange county line trains at 10 Pm and plus Most of the metrolink lines gets at least 2 to 4 trains each way and with the venture County line having 2 amtraks run the same route
@@Georgiarailvideos6325 I agree esp with the OC line time extension. Lots of people commute from LA to the OC, and having that time extension allows for more people to use it!
Hope you can visit the other transit cities in the US that are not on the list. Miami, anywhere in NJ, New York City, New Haven, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Denver, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Boise, Minneapolis/St Paul, Honolulu, Jacksonville, and San Juan.
The lack of Sounder south service is so frustrating and the problem is that the only sufficient track between king street station and Tacoma dome station is owned by BNSF and is very congested with container freight
10:55 I’d argue for Philly even being in S tier. Yes, the subway and EL stop running after 2 AM on weekdays, but nothing is open in PA past 2AM, even on weekends. Not even bars. Also, many buses and trolleys run 24/7. Philly is also a pretty small city (landmass wise), but it has more bus and light rail lines than many much much larger cities. Finally, I’ve lived in both Philly and NYC for a long time and in my experience, SEPTA is more reliable than the MTA. Less delays, less station closures, very rare to just sit idle on the tracks for upwards of 15 minutes. To be fair, Philly has about a tenth the population of NYC, but it’s still a phenomenal transit system. Probably my favorite thing about Philly is SEPTA.
Personally I'm impressed,the transit system in the United States varies by region, but generally, it includes options like buses, subways, light rail, and commuter trains. Major cities often have more developed transit networks compared to rural areas.
2:57 SF bay area, OMG! Can you please do some actual regional planning so there aren't 500 million agencies for one region? I swear, it's insane how many tickets you can collect just from the Bay area alone. Also while I'm ranting, please build some housing, rent is insane in any part of the bay.
I've ridden both Philly and DC's metro often and yeah, I can't say I disagree with what you've said.
In my opinion - the cleanliness of Philly is the biggest issue.
DC can be a little much to navigate at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Both have a reach that is crucial to being viable on the East Coast, and I rather like that.
I agree with San Diego being in the C tier. The system has been expanded with the Blue line extension of the trolley network serving La Jolla and UCSD. Plus more of the track between San Diego and LA is double tracked allowing for more frequent service via Coaster and Surfliner trains. But there are some glaring shortcomings. One, there is no direct light rail/trolley service to the airport terminals despite only being a few miles from the city center (that could reduce auto congestion at the terminals especially for those staying downtown if built) Plus big tourist destinations like the Zoo, Balboa Park and SeaWorld are not serviced by the trolley.
And there's only one bus route (#9) that even goes to Sea World. Another major problem there is that there's no rail route connecting San Diego to Escondido, which is part of one of the two or three major missing corridors for rail travel in Southern California, a line linking San Diego to the Inland Empire, which in turn could make both Escondido and Riverside major transit hubs in Southern California. Much of my time there was spent in the southern portion of the county (National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach), where transit service is much better than in the northern part of the county.
10:05 had me rolling on the floor 😭💀💀
I guess you might need to remake this tier list later tho as you missing many major US cities with transit network. Like, NYC+Newark, Miami (which somehow you made it to Tampa), Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, etc.
Hope you could visit them all for the update.
Added: I think Flagstaff, AZ deserves its own list as it is a complete different city size compared to the rest. Maybe a tier list of transit system for the small towns or the cities with only bus networks.
If you added NYC, there won't really be any point to the tier list. There is simply no other system that compares to it in terms of ridership, coverage, or frequency. Sure it still needs improvement, but it does highlight how underdeveloped a middling European transit network is to the rest of the US.
@@Demopans5990 Gotta disagree tho, I don’t think NYC would get the S tier that easy, it’s a falling apart system. Unless they could afford a major upgrade and implement new tech for the entire city at once which is impossible anyway as they can only fix it by small sections of the route. I personally would give it B tier, max, IMO.
And the other major cities I mentioned that has far better and newer systems than NYC, except the area coverage, of course, are possibly reach higher ranks if added.
As a native to Massachusetts I agree with it being B tier feel you misunderstood several of Boston's transit aspects. The commuter rail for one is a big sticking point you skipped over it mostly but it has some glaring issues that drag it down. It has 12 lines but most are disconnected 4 are out of North Station and 8 are out of South Station and is really only effective for traveling to and from Boston. So if you live on the outskirts of the commuter rail system you have to travel all the way into Boston and back to get to stations that might be only a 30 minute drive away. For instance Auburndale on the Worcester Line and Brandeis on the Fitchburg line are only a mile apart as the crow flies but to travel between them at their terminus's on the commuter rail you would have to transfer to two separate metro lines. The MBTA also refuses to consider Electric trains even on lines that are already electrified by the Northeast Corridor.
And in regards to the slow zones on the Metro and Light rail They have reduced them considerably since this video was published from 26% of the overall system length the day this video was published to just 6% now with two lines effectively having all their slow zones removed.
as a bay area native, thank you for putting respect on sf's name. i feel sf so underated when it comes to transit. i grew up in the east bay and once i moved to sf i was so amazed you could go virtually anywhere in the city from anywhere else by just transit alone
also you said seattle is diverse, but sf has everything seattle has exept a monorail lol
@@Jorge.2004and Seattle doesn’t have cable cars.
So, you've never been to NYC, Miami, The Twin Cities, Dallas and more?
Dallas sucks
Boston has S tier potential, but has horribly mismanaged themselves for decades. It's honestly sad to see because that system has incredible coverage and modes on how to get around.
Personally, my ranking for all of this is:
S: SF, NYC
A: Chicago, Philly, DC
B: Boston, Portland,
C: Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Diego, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis
D: St. Louis, Dallas, New Orleans, Buffalo, Atlanta, Miami,
F: Kanasa City, Las Vegas, Cincinatti, Orlando
NAH: Tampa, Phoenix, Houston, Flagstaff, Charlotte, San Antonio,
Thanks for the honesty about Boston's MBTA. It traditionally ranks high because it serves so many communities, but parts of it are held together by duct tape and spackle ...
You said the Market Frankford Line trains are showing their age, but doesn't the Broad Street Line have older rolling stock?
All of septa’s rolling stock needs replacement but the mfl cars have tons of reliability issues and when riding I feel like they could fall apart with how it shakes and jolts, while the bsl cars have good ride quality still.
I have visited numerous different transit agencies throughout the Midwest, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask or look through my playlist
As someone who lived in DC around the Northwest for 2 years, which is basically the closest you can get to suburbanity inside of DC proper, I was *really* surprised you gave it an S. I had to get from American University Park to National Harbor (in Maryland, technically, but still WMATA via the NH1) twice, and it took me 2 hours each way, during peak rush hour (AKA when the transit frequency is at its absolute *best*) and off-peak (when the bus traffic was virtually non-existent). That trip is 30-40 minutes by car. Bus frequency when you get to the suburbs is abysmal, once every 20-30 minutes for some routes and the stations are quite far apart geographically. The buses don't show up about 10% of the time too, which becomes more noticeable when you take the bus 2-4 times a day. Downtown it's excellent, don't get me wrong, but if you aren't in a really well-served or well-built area like DuPont or Capitol Hill, it can be quite the pain.
I visited San Francisco twice this year and while coverage is good, Muni is *really* slow, especially compared to BART. I went from North Beach to Mission on Muni buses and it took 35 minutes. The next day I took BART for the same destinations at the same time of day and it took around 12 minutes.
The problem is that most of Muni's buses and light rail are not grade separated, so they get bogged down in the same heavy traffic on narrow roads with lots of traffic lights as the cars do. BART has the opposite problem: it's grade separated so it's nice and fast, but within SF it only runs along one corridor, so not much coverage.
For anyone wondering what flashed on the screen around the South Shore Line, I did the work of playing this back at 0.25x speed so you didn't have to: "I know that Pace exists, it just mostly serves the suburbs."
Haha. Just saw it now. But the funny thing is that metra and the South shore also serve primarily the suburbs.
It’s nice to see San Diego’s system get a bit of love, and I’m honestly surprised it got to C tier lol, it does have really really good bones for a system, we just really need to improve the connections along the I-15 and CA-163 corridors
As someone who grew up in North County I always appreciated the downtown transit options. I think the fact that there isn’t any trolley connections to the airport holds it back though
as someone born n raised in san diego, i have always been fascinated by the trolley as a little boy when it first launched in 1981 to where it has come in 2023. i remember my mom took me on a ride when it first launched from downtown to the san ysidro border. just wish it went to more populated parts of the city including the airport
I agree with your list. What I gather is that there are at least 7 cities in the US that are in the B tier (New York wasn't ranked and neither was nearby Jersey City/Hoboken, but the former would be in the S tier and the latter in the A tier). IMO, that's already more "transit-oriented" cities than Canada... first of all, Canada's truly BIG cities are: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City, Edmonton, Surrey, Mississauga, and Hamilton, and their best system is in Vancouver or maybe Montreal, but they still pale in comparison to SF. Toronto is also mediocre compared to Chicago, and it's actually a bigger city (surpassed Chicago in population a few years ago). The rest of them aren't really remarkable.
IDK, Canadians like to rip on America for having "abysmal" transit when the reality is the opposite (they mostly chalk it up to ridership, but why is that more important than actual coverage, efficiency, and infrastructure?)...all it shows is a deep lack of self awareness, which is astonishing and mildly irritating. Fix yourself before you rip on someone else
How do you leave out NYC?
New York and New Jersey should've been on this list. It's a must, especially for New York since it has a lot of transit systems, such as NYC Subway, PATH(New York to New Jersey), MTA, and many more
Can you explain the ranking system? What is “s”.
Some sort of "super" tier or something that means the best of the best. Besides that, it's self explanatory. A=amazing, F=horrible