Urbanized Areas ranked by transit ridership per capita

[Cirrus]

This thread is about urban areas, not metro areas. Please read the thread title, thank you.

QFT.

Urbanized areas and metro areas are not the same.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Doady

This thread is about urban areas, not metro areas. Please read the thread title, thank you.

Don't be a 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵. It's patently obvious from the numbers in the very first post that the original list is talking about some form of metro area and not high-density urban areas (which seems to be your point).

The very highest-ranked "urban area" is New York-Newark, and a good number of other areas on the list are also city-pairs that aren't actually touching each other's boundaries and are hardly (even in the case of New York-Newark) "urban" throughout their entire area.

This is a Skyscraper site - if you want to play word-games, go find a semantics site.

[Crawford]

These numbers don't correlate with APTA numbers, so yes, I think the numbers (and rankings) are suspect.

SF is somewhat too high, Vegas is FAR too high, and Chicago and Philly are a little low, for starters.

I'm surprised Texans didn't know that Houston has much higher ridership than Dallas. I suspect it's because of the light rail, which people are forgetting is not an indicator of heavy transit use.

Example: Seattle is almost 100% bus-only , but has good ridership, while San Diego has relatively extensive rail but poor ridership.

[Cirrus]

emathias:

1) This is an official warning for flaming. There is no need to call anyone a 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵. Learn to play nice or you won't be welcome to play here.

2) Next time try actually knowing what you're talking about before shooting off your mouth. Urbanized Areas are a real census designation, and are the basis of this list.

[travelinmiles]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

I'm sure not. I visit NOLA about once a year and every time I wish it had a viable transit system I could use. It has the streetcars (St Charles line, along the river and Canal St.) but those are mainly for tourists and cover only a very limited part of the city. The bus system is infrequent and it's very difficult for an outsider to figure it out since they don't have sell (or give away) maps or any other guidance that would help someone.

I must say that before Katrina New Orleans was one of the few southern cities (if not the only) that you could live a car-less life.

[mhays]

It would be interesting to pair the transit list with bicycling and walking.

Looking at some of the definitions on the website, it reminds me how many subjective judgements need to be made to create the list and its elements. "Urbanized area" is defined in one fairly consistent way (their term is "generally") but they could define it in a million other ways if they chose. Each transit system self-reports, obviously with wildly different methods, particularly in "uncountable" areas such as no-fare zones. There are countless gray areas for determining what's "transit".

[fflint]

Originally Posted by mhays

It would be interesting to pair the transit list with bicycling and walking.

I concur. There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between a well-developed transit system and walking, as well as bicycling.

Although it's really hard to find good data, I suspect bicycling is on the rise, not only in San Francisco but in many other transit-oriented areas.

The way the Census Bureau tabulates bicycle commutes is part of the problem in getting good data, as least as it was explained to me by a bicycle activist. If a bicyclist brings his bike aboard a bus or train for part of the journey, apparently the Bureau only counts the train or bus ride and does not register any bike trip at all.

Maybe that's not such an issue in calculating bike commuters in other cities, but it would likely be an issue here. The BART and Caltrain regional rail systems allow bikes at least most of the time, and SF Muni buses can each carry two bicycles on bumper racks, which definitely get used.

[mhays]

Worse, they only count commutes. But you could put a list together that mixes all modes.

I like the Census / ACS numbers partially because they put Seattle over Portland for transit and walking!

[zilfondel]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

emathias your stats look closer to the ones I have seen for linked per capita ridership stats for US cities.

Yours are much closer to the real use of transit in these areas.

forgive me for being ignorant, but is a "linked" trip when you consider a trip to work in the morning on a bus and home in the afternoon as one trip? I've heard this before...

but a lot of people here in Portland ride the bus, streetcar, or max an odd # of times. For instance, drive to town, take the streetcar across downtown, walk back, then take a bus somewhere else, etc, then drive home at the end of the day...

[KevinFromTexas]

I'm surprised by the Texas cities. Austin the highest ridership??? And San Antonio 2nd, higher than Houston and Dallas??? Jeez, when our commuter line starts this fall and if light rail passes (also this fall) then the numbers could become fairly good considering this is Texas. People do ride the bus here. I was leaving downtown the other night and I saw one that was packed front to back with people.