Quote:
Originally Posted by Doady
The Washington rail goes far out to the fringes. It seems more akin to BART, more emphasis on the suburbs. That might explain the low ridership relative to the size of the network. The ridership per km is lower than the other heavy rail systems Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia too. If it is designed for different purpose, then maybe not really fair to compare to those other systems, let alone Toronto and Montreal.
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Right. DC Metro is more like an S-Bahn or RER-type system. Its closest North American analogues would be BART, MARTA, and that crappy system in Miami, and DC trounces all those systems in terms of ridership.
DC was a relatively small metro until the 1950's. The system mostly serves a suburban, sprawly population, and is more commuter-oriented than day-to-day oriented. Not really reasonable to compare to traditional urban heavy rail systems. I think, in that context, DC Metro is quite successful.
Granted, it's also because there are a bajillion DC-area federal workers and contractors, all of who are heavily incentivized to take Metro. The region works hard to ensure that major federal job centers are located next to Metro stations.