Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
I thought the argument is that there's no point building light rail until you have a good bus service with corridors of high ridership that can take advantage of the higher capacity of rail.
Especially in recent years as the cost of light rail construction has ballooned to levels that will cripple the finances of most cities if they don't get good ridership right away.
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Excellent points.
I just wanted to add a few more when it comes to ranking city sizes. The US governments totals population three ways; (1) City, (2) MSA, and (3) CSA.
The CSA is best used for economic ranking, MSA is best used for ranking commuting traffic, and city best used for determining transit usage.
Why do I believe we should just use city population numbers for transit usage? Because few transit lines extend beyond the city' limits, if they do they do not extend far beyond, and that is also where the vast majority of the users of public transit reside.
Having stated that, there will always be a few exceptions to that rule of thumb. Some cities annex frequently, some cities are surrounded by suburbs and can't annex anymore. Not every city grows in the same way.
So, as far as public transit is concerned, we should be comparing OKC with other cities with populations between 650K and 700K. Here's such a list:
21 Boston 695,506 (443.6K)
22 El Paso 685,434 (30K)
23 Nashville 678,448 (27K)
24 Oklahoma City 669,347 (10K)
25 Las Vegas 667,501 (185K)
26 Detroit 664,139 (99K*)
27 Portland 662,549 (277K)
28 Memphis 651,011 (40K)
I have also added the latest daily ridership data to the list. Note* Detroit was averaged from a yearly total.
OKC does not fair well in comparison with its sisters.