So, it seems that it's possible to take out road space to do accessibility retrofit to subway stations. When there is will...
Transit, housing, and safe streets for all š²šššš¶š½šš¹
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So, it seems that it's possible to take out road space to do accessibility retrofit to subway stations. When there is will...
Ahh true I thought all of East Link was grade separated for some reason, need to come ride it when the full line opens, at least it has less at-grade crossings than Line 1 on MLK it seems?
They can patrol the dangerous cities of the North Shore, I hear Winnetka has a bad burglary problem
Tbf the 4 car Link trains have the capacity of a typical CTA train but it's a shame it's not automated and has the one at-grade section
38% of Edgewater households don't own vehicles and only 15% own more than one; building apartments near the Red Line with no parking would not add 1000s of additional cars
š Ā” MĆ”s carriles de autobuses ya ! š¤ @gianndelrey Ayuda ahorrar dinero en la operaciĆ³n de guaguas @josecir
JB please go all Meigs Field bulldozer on all highways from the north shore
I support this just so Chicago regains it rightful place as second biggest city over LA
So just to be clear, Greg Abbott bussed migrants to Chicago, and now he's busing Texas soldiers to Chicago to round them up? Real piece of work.
Letās Get Buses and Trains funded Quickly
Great thread! Most of New Orleans is very walkable but the inadequate bus service is definitely a problem, sad to see bus ridership & service miles way down since Katrina, would loved to have visited before then.
Super interesting rail history, thanks for giving me the details!
Drinking game where you take a shot every time the guide says Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on a Chicago River architecture tour
What's the deal with these tracks on Carol Ave in River North, Chicago? A train would be way better use for this street than a parking lot
I saw just them at a free street fest in Chicago last month! Hope you had an amazing time here, love this epic journey you're on
Yeah the St Charles streetcar is wicked cool I love the Garden district, but the fake heritage ones on canal street are slower than the adjacent bus routes, but they run frequently and late enough to be a legitimate transit option at least
Love NOLA, probably the best urbanism in the South, just wish the streetcars were better!
The Free State of Florida is now trying to ban *sidewalk chalking*
Riverline isn't light rail, it's hybrid rail and it's not that bad, San jose, Norfolk, Cleveland, Dallas, Austin, Portland all have worse rail lines judging by ridership
I've heard this take a lot, but like, I've used transit in a bunch of cities and I have literally never been on a bus line that worked as well as even the LA metro light rail
My Chemical Romance's classic 2006 album Welcome to the Black Parade has numerous similarities to Pink Floyd's classic rock opera The Wall!
Welcome to the Black Parade is truly The Wall for millennials
Looks like Link was higher in 2024 around $11 per boarding calculating from their annual report, but hopefully it to go down when the full Line 2 opens www.soundtransit.org/sites/defaul...
I saw Taylor at Heinz Field too in 2023! First time visiting Pittsburgh and fell in love with the city, hope you have a great time at Oasis and in Chicago!
Weāre walking for transit. Weāre walking for our families. Weāre walking for a government that gives a damn about US!
I wouldn't be surprised if population loss on the South Side is a factor too
The Federal Way Link is a southern extension of Seattleās 1 Line. 2 Lineās connection to Bellevue will open in early 2026. At that point, will Seattleās light rail become the nationās most-ridden system? Right now itās tied for #4 with SF Muni.
Argyle, Wilson, and Cermak (Chinatown) are consistently three of the best-recovered CTA stops, while the rest of the Red Line sits at varying levels of average.
RT to scare a Floridian
RT to scare a Floridian
State Street, Madison.
These are great resources, thanks for sharing them! I really like how they differentiate betweens boardings and journeys in the data. They seem to only report unlinked trips or complete trips here in the States but don't separate them typically
Not with FTA data unfortunately but MARC may have the info in a planning document somewhere, the future plans for the system are promising tho, I'll have read some plans and see if I can find it
The US needs a national transit pass like the Deutschlandticket
Yeah I think you're right, LA and Seattle used to have 6 minute headways but are now only every 8, Boston Green Line branches run every 6 mins at peak but not consistently
Damn it just realized I typed MetroRail instead of MetroMover, I've brought shame to my beloved people mover. But Morgantown is an interesting place, need to visit one day
Most gun deaths are suicides too which is strongly correlated with access to firearms
Not sure the breakdown but labor accounted for 74% of operating costs in 2023
I always forget about the separate operating divisions, next time I'll make sure to group them properly, even tho I said that last time someone pointed it out lol
In 2019, CTA rail was $2.85 and CTA Bus was $3.47 per trip for comparison
Yeah it's both divisions combined, MTA NYCT is $5.75 per trip, broken out it's $31.66 for commuter buses, $5.47 for local buses, & $3.54 for SBS routes classified as BRT(over 50% dedicated lanes), while MTA Bus Co is $7.62 per trip
Yeah it's classified as Hybrid rail which only has a few other systems so I didn't bother making a chart although I could've just included it with commuter rail, but in 2023 it had a cost of $89 per passenger trip which is not great to say the least www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.do...
People who've never visited Tampa really have no idea how useful the streetcar is for tourists; it's amazing for shuttling visitors between the hotels in the CBD, the numerous attractions at Channel side, and the legendary nightlife scene in Ybor city
It's a good day when @naqiy.bsky.social publishes charts. For comparison, I tried looking at Vancouver's @translink.ca and came up with the following for 2024: Light rail (SkyTrain): $3.02/boarding Bus: $4.14 Note: my numbers are šØš¦dollars, so things are pretty cost effective up here!
Would probably just have to track down the data individually since they don't have a free centralized source for transit data, hopefully some Canadian experts chime in with their system data like my last thread which was very much appreciated
Added Ridership per revenue Hours for Streetcars and Automated Guideways to my last thread since I charted the category here! bsky.app/profile/naqi...
Finally, the Miami MetroMover is genuinely my favorite US transit system and a similar system in downtown Chicago would be amazing imo
Adding streetcars and automated guideways to this thread; tbh for all the hate the Obama era mixed traffic streetcars get some of them are performing pretty decent all things considered, especially Cinci & Kansas City
Finally, a marginal mode for US public transit, although private APM's & monorails likely move millions daily between airports & Disney, but it's funny that the US has exactly 3 useful systems in this category & 3 abysmal systems, altho not sure why the JFK AirTrain doesn't report to the FTA
I'm honestly surprised how cheap it is to run Tampa's heritage streetcar, it sucks the expansion & modernization plan died because of Florida politics. Tucson & KC do well on cost too; I eagerly anticipate the soon to open KC Main St extension. The STL Loop is astoundingly expensive per rider tho
Commuter rail is cost ineffective across the board but Denver's electric regional rail should be the model going forward. SEPTA's regional rail is relatively cost effective too, & not sure what Frontrunner's secret is. Will have to check on Caltrain's opex in the future now it's electrified
Vegas has the most cost-effective bus system in the US; the city has decent job & population density, real rapid transit would definitely do well there instead of Elon's bullshit tunnels. Not sure why East Bay is the worst for this metric, but their BRT does much better if isolated at $5.35 OE/UPT
It's shameful how economical SEPTA rapid transit is, yet PA Republicans are still hellbent on destroying it because of hatred toward cities. WMATA is likely doing better now for this metric with booming ridership; 2024 annual data comes out in October so will have to revisit this in a few months
Last time I looked at transit ridership per service hours but another vital metric is cost per trip which I've charted starting with light rail, where San Diego has by far the most cost-effective system. Good to see Phoenix & MSP do well on opex too, & VTA really does love lighting money on fire
Isn't this bus supposed to stop running soon? š
thank you to Milwaukeeās socialist mayors for building and protecting our publicly accessible lakefront for generations to come
When NYC was āfullā and Manhattan overcrowded at the turn of the 20th Century due to large numbers of immigrants seeking economic opportunity, public works and private industry collaborated to build the subway and settle the outer boroughs. Thatās the spirit we need to bring back.
It's crazy with US public transit service being cut left and right folks think it's good policy to deprive it of even more funding by removing fares
This looks amazing, I love your long-form writing! I sent it to my Kindle and will dig in later tonight
The LA Tenants Union really said āHousing for cars, not for peopleā but unironically.
I would do when I lived in Albany by pointing out it has a higher transit modal share than cities like Portland and LA
The Edgewater lakefront is the densest neighborhood in the city because there's no highway taking up valuable land. I believe Chicago down zoned much of the north side in the 70s to prevent more of these residential towers
The picture they included of Mamdani is so wholesome
Yeah the A & E lines have good ridership in the city but are less effective on the extensions into the east suburbs. The C line doesn't really serve much & the K Line is incomplete but will be pretty useful when the LAX APM opens, but overall I think the future is bright for LA transit!
Denver's light rail transit vehicles have automatic people counters on board
The entire Northside along the Red Line should look like the lakefront imo
the thing I love about Zohranās campaign is that instead of āthis place fucking sucks and I alone can fix itā his message is ābeing a New Yorker rules, we live in the best city in the world, letās make it even better togetherā show some damn pride in the places you want to govern
Useful article from Pew explaining how building new housing (usually more expensive) makes all rent cheaper, but most significantly for older homes www.pew.org/en/research-...
OMG I had no idea a people mover was planned for Rosemont, that actually would have been great. While googling for more info I found your blog too, thanks for writing about this interesting piece of history!
Santiago de Chile has an ongoing expansion program for its metro that will add 75 (seventy-five!!) km to its network by 2033 for 7.3 billion USD. It's like adding more than a second mƩtro of MontrƩal-worth for 50% more of the projected cost of adding 6km to the blue line.
George Michael
They had 19 UPT per VRH in 2024. I should have labeled this better, it's the top 25 highest ridership systems not the top 25 highest for this metric, but Cap Metro was #26 in the US for ridership so just missed being on this list!
Yeah that's a big part but also RTC has a dedicated funding from a sales tax while LYNX does not so Vegas can run much better service levels.
In 2019, Bus UPT per VRH was 32 for King County Metro for comparison www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.do...
They run pretty good service levels still but I think they have had worse ridership recovery because more of their past riders WFH than other systems is my assumption
Yeah that makes sense since they run only two car trains usually, I'm not sure where to find the data for per train instead of per car I just used the main monthly ridership dataset, I'll have to dig through their datasets more but if you knew where to find it that would be great!
Yeah agreed I was being kind of facetious, I just like to promote North Jersey because I'm a huge fan of the area and think it deserves much better transit and expansion of the light rail
2019 Agency report for citation www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.do...
Yeah! The Light Rail has almost the same service effective of 2019 which had a UPT per VRH of 59.8 but the system had only 60% of the service hours in 2024, so it seems ridership drops are almost entirely related to service reduction!
Orlando is not very anti LGBT, gay days has been at Disney since 1990 & it has a huge LGBTQ community. I lived in Orlando during Pulse & I'm glad they repainted the crosswalk but Obama won Florida twice & now it's not even a swing state due to FL Dem incompetence so I think they deserve criticism
Albany has a pretty good bus system for its size and is really walkable too! Hope you enjoy your time the capitol region, I miss it a lot!
A C2 bus heads into downtown Madison. The new Wilson Street cycle track to its right just had its ribbon cutting this week.
Yeah it runs a lot of trains for only 2000 riders daily, it's good it runs frequently enough to be useful but hopefully ridership grows over time. Here's the official FTA report from 2023 which has it at 5.1 UPT per VRH so 2024 was actually an improvement www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.do...
I don't get how Dallas hasn't built better urbanism with all the random rail lines it has. I was disappointed with Deep Elum when I visited & the best urbanism I found was in Uptown on the Mickinney streetcar. I stayed in the West End which has potential but was mostly devoid of life
The South Loop Spirit has some great decor for train fans
Good question, I'm not an expert on the topic but this is the FTA definition of Vehicle Revenue Hour if you are able to parse it better than me
Wells, fuck this city, I'm moving to Saskatchewan
I agree, it's a reference to @sandypsj.bsky.social's brilliant thesis advocating for regional rail that meet all transportation needs instead of just white collar CBD commutes like most commuter rail currently, but Caltrain's electrification is a great step in the right direction!
It would be cool to get a true regional rail system and connect Caltrain, SMART, and the Capitol Corridor together somehow but I'm pretty sure it's just gonna be BART if they ever cobble together the massive money required for a 2nd transbay tube
Yeah buses can be slow because of lack of dedicated lanes and Muni Metro could be better but overall it's one of the highest performing systems in the country by numerous metrics
I think it's more a function of not running enough frequency through dense areas, 20 min headways on the HBLR branches is not good enough for such a dense area!
You have to consider that the Subway runs 24/7 so it has a lot of lower ridership service hours dragging the average down, there's tons of different metrics to evaluate transit on, but no matter how you slice it SkyTrain is an amazing system!
Milwaukee really surprised me with its transit and relatively intact urban core compared to other Midwest cities, transit would be good if it was properly funded!
Tbf I didn't think DART had 1 frequent bus but they actually have 4, altho one is a 2 stop airport shuttle lol. Vegas has a decent bus grid to serve car-oriented density, not great, but I always compare it to Orlando, similar economy, demographics & population but 3 times the ridership
According to Translink's 2024 TSPR, SkyTrain had 105 boardings per revenue hour. Busses had 45 boardings per revenue hour and the WCE 48 boardings per revenue hour. www.translink.ca/plans-and-pr...
Awesome, thanks for sharing! SkyTrain is such an amazing system I'm so jealous
Tbh I didn't quit X because of the nazis, they have been around forever, but it really devolved into nonstop blue check click-bait slop and removing the character limits just added fuel to the fire. Bluesky has issues but far fewer trolls running rampant
I wish, they don't have a public database of transit information like the FTA does but you could calculate ridership per mile using APTA data, Toronto & Montreal have about the same system length & ridership. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_r...