10 Cities Where Buses Are Normal and Good, Actually
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Don't be a snob. Buses are cool.
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- The Best Union Stations: • Union Stations: The Be...
- Small City Transit: • Smaller Cities With Gr...
- The Port Authority Bus Terminal and the XBL: • What a Tunnel Should D...
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Resources:
- en.wikipedia.o...
- www.transit.do...
- trimet.org/fx/
- www.reviewjour...
- www2.census.go...
- honolulutransi...
- Hawaii Bicycling League! hbl.org/advocacy/
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Images
- KC Metro Rte 49 By SounderBruce - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Sound Transit Rte 512 By SounderBruce from Seattle, United States - Sound Transit double-decker on Route 512, Seattle, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikime...
- CT Rte 116 By Oran Viriyincy from Santa Barbara, United States - CT XDE40 11111 Rt 116 Silver Firs, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikime...
- RapdiRide By S.S. Sol Duc - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Pierce Transit Rte 500 By SounderBruce - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- KC Metro Rte 36 By SounderBruce from Seattle, United States - KCM 4317 in Chinatown, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikime...
- KC Metro Rte 12 By SounderBruce from Seattle, United States - KCM 4318 in Downtown Seattle, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikime...
- KC Metro Rte 49 By Steve Morgan, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- Muni Rte 5 By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Muni Cabrillo and La Playa Loop By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Muni Rte 6 By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
- AC Transit Buses By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (TH-cam music library)
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I grew up in Hawai'i. I can attest to the bus system being pretty solid. I used it exclusively while I lived in Honolulu and studied at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
I look forward to seeing how the rail develops. It's been in development for a long time and people are already super negative about it's limited scope in Phase 1 - it needs longer hours of operation and better stops/development around those stops.
Why would you ever leave Hawaii?
@@boxingandbulldogs6341 i grew up in Hawaii as well people leave for many reasons. I felt trap because you eventually explore most places on the island, cost of living, it's not always "paradise" (I grew up in a poor neighborhood), lack of job opportunities, so on so forth. It's similar reasons why you would leave your hometown, the main difference is we're leaving a tourist destination.
Also, people look down on you when you take the bus in Hawaii. People see it as transportation for low-income folks.
Yeah my father lived in Ewa Beach and I used to stay in Waikiki when visiting, the Bus definitely punches above its weight.
@@dubphotek Ewa Beeeach! Haha! That's where I'm from too. That's a long commute, especially with traffic!
I agree, I used it a ton while I was in Hawai'i and working at...well, UH Manoa, actually. It spoiled me, it was pretty good--at least for what I wanted to do--and I never really had any desire for a car or even a bike while I was there. Ah, I miss it...
Muni planner here. San Francisco actually has very little rail service given its built form (I know you're looking at the urbanized area, but the bulk of ridership is in the city). So you end up with buses running every 2-3 minutes and ridership on bus routes higher than most American rail lines (pre-COVID, a couple of corridors were ~50k daily riders). Wilshire in LA has always been a similar situation; of course it's getting a subway extension now.
The issue is how slow and unpredictable Muni buses are. As I’m sure you’re aware as a planner, Muni buses now take around double the time to move the same distance as the streetcars they replaced.
And also, from someone who used to depend on this system, a frequency of every 2-3 minutes is laughably unrepresentative of even the “frequent” core of the bus system. Maybe folks get that on the 38 for an hour or so a day (and they better, since as you point out the 38 has the daily ridership of many rail lines). But if you’re not on that specific corridor, and especially if you need to make a transfer, god help you - I would describe frequencies more as “nice if they show up at all.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to turn to Uber or Lyft to get to work or an appointment because there was a 20+ minute gap until the next 22, 28, or etc., even during commute hours, and those are supposed to be high-frequency lines.
We are never going to get people out of their cars if the alternatives remain this slow and unreliable. It is a travesty that transit in one of the absolute wealthiest and most ostensibly-progressive cities in America remains this terrible.
Muni Metro light rail radiates out from Downtown SF to 6 corridors in the south, southwest, and west parts of the city. BART covers another one, and this is in addition to purely street running rail-the historic streetcars and cable cars. There isn’t a line out Geary in the northwest part of the city-the Richmond. That got progressively scaled back from BART to a BRT to a rapid bus. Still, it seems like pretty good rail coverage in a city that’s relatively small geographically.
sounds like they need some metro lines or dedicated corridors along the busy routes.
I used to be a "train only" transit nerd. But all that changed when I started attending college in Blacksburg. I used the bus far more often than I did the metro system back home in Washington DC, and it was really convenient, fast, affordable (I mean it's free so), clean, and actually a very pleasant way of getting around. It was what taught me that excellent bus service, even if not as glamorous, is just as, if not more, important than rail service for transportation needs.
The automotive industry "thinks" the same way, btw....
Go Hokies! Blacksburg transit was great :)
As a resident of Mission Viejo, thank you. I've been working with city council to try and expand the bicycle infrastructure. Please message for the Strong Towns style urban planning map I built for the city.
For those wondering at home, this is a bus stop in Mission. We regularly get summers with 85+ weather and this is just a bench with no shade at the college, a place where many transitors need to go.
www.google.com/maps/@33.5578228,-117.6634739,3a,73y,220.1h,75.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUPHSCiXamJTtb5JWSe38gw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
You know where the Best Buy and Michaels are, in that stroaded commercial center between the OC rail line and the 5? Well, when that times out on depreciation, that will make an excellent mixed used development right on the OC line. Speaking of that, the Irvine Company is setting up for a ton of infill projects right now, including at the Tustin Marketplace where they are tearing down some vacant commercial for high density residential. They're doing that in Brea and Orange as well. I guess they ran out of land for single family so this is what they have to do. And I'm perfectly fine with it.
@@VulcanLogic I've brought that up to City Council and the Planning Committee. The city is financed by the medical center. I'd like to share the link but YT auto deletes YT links in comments.
@@gideonvictorthanks for sharing, I was a student there and hated driving but the alternative was 40 minutes to an hour by bus or bike. It’s truly sad how transit riders are treated like second class citizens.
@@samshultz9009 Blame the 55+ community. Some of the lowest revenue/acre parcels in the city but the most active against net positive revenue development.
I salute your sacrifice, to spend 4 weeks in Hawaii for a good cause, so noble.
The things I'm willing to do for this cause
In my eight car free years in the Washington, DC area (DC and Arlington,VA), I made use of both buses and the Metro, getting very often to Tysons Corner for work using the 28A. All this was using paper schedules, a bunch of which I kept in a basked in the kitchen.
Hey! That's my local bus! It literally stops right in front of my apartment!
Funnily enough, depending on the day (and if I'm stopping somewhere in Falls Church) it's more convenient to take it from Tysons than the metro!
@@Madwonk you would take the Orange Line to WFC and then the 28A to Tyson Corner Center. Other bus lines that I used regularly were the D2 DuPont Circle to Glover Park and the L2 Connecticut Avenue Line. Just had my Sony Walkman and a good book. 😊
Even though I also own a car, the 28A bus is my preferred way of traveling from West Falls Church metro station to either Tysons Corner or Old Town Alexandria & points in between. It's relatively frequent and not overcrowded (at least when I've used it).
As an SF resident, I love the trolley buses. They do well on the massive hills as compared to gas/hybrid options. And SF continues to make improvements, most recently with the wildly successful Van Ness BRT. It is packed literally every time I have ridden it.
Most of the bus routes in NYC are literally just the trolley routes established before the 1920s. It's insane that they've never been updated to modern development patterns.
Same as the new haven ones. A recently saw a trolley map in a bar and it was crazy how simular it was to the bus map. Like from my quick look only 1 line was different.
The trolley routes were well laid out and the development they supported did not go away. Quite a few extensions and modifications have been made over the years (like the Q88 and half of Staten Island). There are major studies to overhaul the network in all boroughs.
It is neat how little has actually changed in the routes, but it does make sense considering many North American cities developed around their streetcars before they were removed.
Similar deal here in Philly from what I can tell. We even have some real trolleys (and trolleybuses) running still. And some just barely hidden trolley tracks are all over town basically begging to be refurbished
Perhaps in the other boroughs, but the recent Bronx bus change has allowed for faster routes while reaching out to a wider base of passengers.
Being able to stand in any corner in Chicago and having a bus stop by every 5 mins to take me to my destination or a connecting bus/train in less than 20 mins just changed my entire perspective of bus transit forever
I lived in Chicago 25 years as a non-driver. And that was before apps made Chicago's public transit more reliable.
Ah, not having to wait 30 minutes for a bus that might not show. living the dream!
Any city can become a bus city very easily.
Timestamps please!
More preferably, Trolleybuses 😂
@@spookysenpai7642wouldnt that create trolley problems?
Has to be better than the alternative (driving) otherwise it’s just the poor people option. Dedicated bus lanes!
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Almost every US suburb has a bus system. It is publicly funded by taxes and turns no profit. The catch is, of course, they are school buses intended to take children to school and back home.
If we had the will to make a bus system work, we could.
Pittsburgh again! I love living here. Many of the bus routes are literally the same routes the trolleys used to run. I live right on the busway and it's magic. 10 minutes into town on the bus, vs. 25 minutes at least driving, plus you have to find and pay for parking. With 5-10 minute waits for the bus on weekdays it makes absolutely no sense to drive.
List of the top 10 cities:
10. Baltimore 3:13
9. Pittsburgh 3:45
8. Portland 4:10
7. Los Angeles 4:41
6. Las Vegas 5:31
5. Washington DC 6:19
4. Seattle 6:43
3. New York City 9:39
2. SF/Oakland 10:17
1. Honolulu 11:05
Honorable Mentions:
Denver 8:07
Boston
Philidelphia
Chicago
Ames, IA
Dishonorable Mentions:
Mission Viejo, CA
I wish that he had a 2nd worst, because Mission Viejo seems to be an anomaly.
Killjoy
Thanks! I was hoping he would talk about some non-USA cities, but apparently he doesn’t. So I won’t even bother to watch the video through lol
As a heads up, in Pittsburgh, Port Authority of Allegheny County renamed itself to Pittsburgh Regional Transit. There is a pretty big busway and bike lane project starting between downtown and Oakland (the hospital and university neighborhood).
What neighborhoods would you recommend in Pittsburgh for living car free?
@@donpetrossiI’m not the person you replied to, but I’d recommend checking out the WalkScore map. CityNerd has a few good recommendations mixed into other top 10 list videos, as well
I was just in Pittsburgh for vacation, and while I didn't have time to explore the whole city, the amount of bike lanes (some of which were protected and two-way) and busses (with protected bus stops) was fantastic to see
shadyside / east liberty near the busway is very nice, I lived there without a car for a year. There are several grocery stores, bunch of restaurants and bars all within 20 minutes walk max. The bus routes are also pretty good and it’s decently bikeable for most routes
Pittsburg must repkace most of it's bus roads with rail. Rail is better for long distances.
Just a correction. HART is not the transit authority for Honolulu. It is only responsible for building the rail in Honolulu and has always had its own website to provide updates and other information about the construction. HART then transfers ownership to Honolulu's Department of Transportation Services (DTS) which has a division responsible for transit on Oahu. DTS has a section on their website for Skyline. TheBus has also updated its website with connecting bus routes.
Agreed, buses are cool, though most people who can afford cars don't seem to agree. I'm a daily rider of the MBTA 64 from Cambridge to Allston, after taking the red line from Dorchester. I could take commuter rail from South Station, but the trains are so infrequent that I gave it up years ago. Who needs the stress of running 100 yards to make your connection when the red line is slow, knowing that if you're late you'll just have to get back on the subway as the next train isn't for an hour.
My city, St Louis used to have a decent bus service that has been making frequent service cuts since before the pandemic, but more severely since then. The result is terrible service now. Not surprising, the Missouri Legislature has barely funded public transit and our cities are in bad shape due to that.
Yes! I use to always take the bus to work. I have a vehicle, but enjoy saving on gas, not dealing with parking, and be able to read or watch TH-cam. It's been terrible the last several years. Even the bus stops om major roadways are not being used. Shame. St. Louis has so much potential for a great public transportation system.
I read an article in I think the Post Dispatch that said right before the pandemic they had actually identified several popular bus routes and got them down to like 15 min headways, but then the pandemic hit and now its worse than ever.
The Missouri legislature is confident that Jesus will provide you with all you need.
But hey, nearly $3 billion to widen a highway is significantly more important... right? /s
I would KILL for some good bus service in STL
SF's Muni bus system is so good! One thing that I learned when traveling elsewhere is that apparently SF is one of the only US cities with all door boarding on the buses, meaning people board much faster decreasing dwell time at stops. The network is very comprehensive in the city and is great at both downtown and crosstown trips. It's always wild seeing the buses tackle big ass hills that have tough turns with relative ease, shoutout to those drivers. The hills also give some routes (like the 37 Corbett) some absolutely stunning views! The city also shut down a big stretch of Market St where a majority of lines run downtown, making travel times downtown quicker. And the new Van Ness rapid bus lane has been super nice! Also trolley buses are way better than battery electric buses!
Biggest wants for me would probably better night service and improvements to the notoriously poor signage/lack of shelters in some outer parts of the city, but overall, could be much worse. On a semi-related note, would also love to see more non-bus Service to the Transbay Center, Caltrain or a 2nd transbay tube, where you at?
One thing I will say about AC Transit in Oakland, the new BRT on International is lovely. It's super quick when I had to get to downtown from Deep East Oakland, and nice to see a great benefit to an under-served part of the city. I would love to see another BRT route going up Telegraph to Berkeley!
NIMBYs killed the Berkeley portion of the BRT.
Im from Chicago and recently visited SF and I was amazed with how frequent and well run the Muni was. So many options between the buses, light rail, historic streetcars and trolley bus. I also really enjoyed the get on at any door and the lack of turnstiles for the light rail. It blew my mind that the Muni ran on the honor system similar to the metro in Vienna. If the planning continues to be well thought out I can see SF having a top 3 metro system in the country. Something I feel the CTA is regressing in.
Topic suggestion: folding bikes, e-bikes, and multi-modal transportation. The ability to fold your bike and bring it on a train or a bus and then add a cycling mode seems like a really great way to get around a city.
Yes, and please add on some analysis about the annoying, but increasingly essential scooters for many.
Dishonorable mention: Arlington TX, located between Dallas and Fort Worth. Population 390K. ZERO BUSES. They have literally no public transit service at all, other than a commuter rail line that happens to run between Fort Worth and Dallas.
Texans by in large seem to be transit-averse. Heck, a lot of their cities barely have sidewalks.
It's Texas dude, cars are literally an extension of a Texan's body
Jerry Jones wants ppl to drive to the cowboys games and other events so they can charge triple digits for garage parking. I wish I was kidding.
Someone from the DMV here. I wasn’t surprised that DC was in the top 5, since there isn’t really much “urban” action in the district because of how there aren’t skyscrapers there because of some old law, but because there’s so much urbanization outside of the district and in places like Bethesda, Silver Spring, Arlington and Alexandria (to name a few) and them functioning as their own cities in a way, they would obviously have lots of buses.
I lived in Portland for years as a teenager with no car and I took the busses every day. Wouldn’t have been able to have any kind of social life without them so I think pretty highly of the public transit in that city
Same. I grew up in Gresham.
The problem with Portland buses is that there are actually too many stops which makes them too slow. Good network though.
Yup. I took the bus to school downtown, to Lloyd center, to Washington Square mall, to Beaverton. Lots of places.
I ride the bus to work almost every day, but the pandemic hit us so hard. It feels much more unsafe now than it used to.
TriMet runs very good service for a US city of that size, IMO
Nice to see LA here. Our buses can definitely have a lot of improvement, but are underrated, especially because our rail network is so sprawled out and has issues with safety/cleanliness that the buses don't really have in my experience. The buses could use more frequency, and should have more dedicated bus lanes or signal priority, but the network is pretty good and I rarely ever have a bus that just doesn't come. Plus, a lot of the cities in LA have their own bus network that fill in some of the gaps of Metro. Some of them are pretty worthless, like only have a loop that comes once an hour during the weekdays, but others like Long Beach are pretty good on their own.
LA might be too sprawled out to ever make rail be able to pull all the weight, but if we could reduce road width and steal some lanes for bus-only lanes and improve frequency to funnel people into the rail network, then I think LA could have pretty good bike-bus-rail hierarchy that would eliminate a lot of car travel.
“Steal some lanes for buses”
Nah you earned those lanes by being a based bus rider
I really didn't ride buses at all when I visited last year, but it was pretty evident how strong some of the corridors are -- you see A LOT of buses! I'll have to ride next time.
What LA really needs, may I suggest, is a crazy increase in frequency on Metrolink commuter rail. They need to copy their Canadian friends with an x (Metrolinx) and triple daily departures in the next several years.
I have experienced sooo many ghost buses in LA the past 2 years, especially at night... you're lucky you haven't. The frequency is a big issue, as is the fact that they've eliminated and consolidated a lot of lines without replacing the service.
@@kurenable theyve been experiencing a pretty massive shortage of bus drivers ever since COVID, so theres definitely been a lot more missed trips bc of personnel shortages lately
Something that people don't know about Seattle is how strong our regional bus system is. Sound Transit runs 28 lines, King County Metro runs another 20-25, and Community Transit runs another 10-15. Getting around the eastern side of Puget sound is REALLY easy and a bunch of those busses service some great hiking and mountain biking
There are even public transit bus routes with Skagit Transit connecting Bellingham to Burlington/Mt Vernon to Everett. So one could ride public transit all the way from the Canadian Boarders in both Sumas & Blaine to Joint Base Lewis McChord
@@sarahkoenigo7 yep! And even on down South through Olympia (though it does admittedly get a good bit worse). Not to mention the Cascades corridor. The regional transit system in this region is absolutely fantastic and underrated, I think partly because busses aren't as sexy as rail
Check Alexandria, VA in the Washington DC region. They did an experiment increasing bus frequency and made buses free. They’re one of the only networks to have more current riders than pre-pandemic levels.
The Washington DC region is going through a change to incorporate buses and bikes.
Even though New York has an extensive subway network, there are plenty of neighborhoods it doesn't reach. That makes the buses very important and well used (often in conjunction with trains). There are also numerous express routes connecting Manhattan and the outer boroughs.
public transport makes areas less safe
@@DungTran-li2wnAnd what is it about the AUTOMOBILE that makes an area "safe"?! Hit-and-run drivers and road rage are nothing to laugh at these days....
@@CraigFThompson working class citizens are exposed to dangerous demographics prone to violence on public transport. They can avoid these interactions entirely in a car.
Baltimore has high bus ridership because there’s no East-west rail and relatively high poverty/low car ownership rates. Around 25% of the population doesn’t own a car I think.
New York makes a lot of sense since you often need to take a bus to travel within the outer boroughs. Also there is a free transfer from subway to bus or vice versa, so if you aren’t super close to the subway you can/want to ride, you can take a bus there.
Used muni while visiting SF last weekend and was surprised at how on time (and full!) the buses were for me. Also salesforce park (on top of the transit center) has a gondola from street level as well as beer garden featuring Barebottle brewing, which gets extra bonus points. Sidenote: I really wish the Capitol Corridor ran late enough to take it round trip from Sacramento. Last train back home around 9pm is such a bummer.
In my smallish city in Switzerland, the buses are wonderful. There's about 10 line going to the city limits and adjacent villages and they run on average every 10 minutes. Within the most bus-dense zone, they are trolley-buses (connected to electricity throuch wires above), but once they get to the end of the wiring they disconnect, turn on their engines and continue on. I like watching them connect and disconnect.
Buses here are used by everyone: kids, families, students, professionals, the elderly, disabled people, people bringing their cat to the vet, people going grocery shopping... it's great :)
"TRAINS ARE GOOD" I love your intro and yes it even made me smile. 😄
And yes we need trains everywhere in the United States.
Let's open all the closed train stations throughout the country and get back to business.
Love it! One thing I noticed that that no cities with “showcase” BRT lines are on here (Indygo, Richmond Pulse, etc). I’m really not a fan of BRT as a piece of branded showcase transit. These almost seem like they are telling users “hey, here’s our good bus line, the rest of them suck.” In our busiest corridors let’s normalize frequent articulated (bi-articulated busses would also be cool), in dedicated lanes (median lanes where able), with signal priority, all door boarding, and bikes onboard. You know, basically BRT, but without making a big production of it. Cities like London, Malmo, Lucerne, etc just have great bus systems without having to brand segments of them.
I've been on the warpath of trying to make riding the bus cool again. Buses are a great form of transit, and secretly, there's something I find really enjoyable about riding the bus home after a night out with good friends. I know everyone will get home safely since no one will be driving
They are also amazing for their flexibility allowing 1 city fleet to provide dedicated event shuttle service to a collection of distributed park and rides.
I have driven out of 1 concert and the experience sucked (understatement), and the next concert had the option of a shuttle bus and it was such a blissful experience to zip past that traffic jam.
These shuttle services have an additional benefit beyond the standard traffic reduction ones, they give people a positive experience with city buses. If someone who has a car has their first bus experience be getting stranded on the side of a stroad for an hour when they could have driven in 20min they won't trust the buses enough to give them a second chance, so providing people with a positive experience is a very important first step towards making buses "cool again".
You have succeeded: riding the bus is cool. The challenge is just that they're too many people who don't know that.
The only thing really "cool" about buses is that they do an excellent job of selling private cars; in fact, they advertise the advantages of cars over buses while in service!
0:30 I never realized that bridge is supposed to be the rialto bridge haha. really a romatic spot to put a replica of that, right next to this giant street must be a great vibe up there
I think one of the most important things for Bus's to thrive is cheap tickets, increased Frequency, cleaner with nicer and more comfortable interior designs and an intergrated ticketing service. These are integral to a great bus service.
Well said
Baltimore is on the list because it's the best city in America. Duh. But also, it has tons of late night routes that people actually use and driving in the city is awful because our road layout is dumb as hell.
I remember taking the light rail and it stopping at Patapsco and being pleasantly surprised how many people transferred off to buses waiting there. I do think with higher frequencies, operating speed, and stoplight priority downtown the LR could see a lot of more use.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 That scene that he chose (Baltimore Street) is where they should put the Red Line, on grade. It's not as if the existing stoplight operations downtown give traffic "priority" anyway...
I would imagine that people coming from the south use Patapsco as a transfer point because there's very little transit south of there.
If any Canadians are curious, I found Toronto's ridership for just the TTC and GO buses and the bus service for most of the suburbs. Dividing that by 5.5 million I get 71 riders per capita.
Probably not the same methodology but it gives a perspective.
If you do just the TTC, 2019's bus ridership per capita was about 158.
I found Ottawa's ridership for 2019 (pre pandemic, pre LRT) at 97 riders per capita for Ottawa, 90 for the CMA (including Gatineau). Also not the same methodology - but it's linked trips, which makes it almost certainly an underestimate compared to the list!
@@thomaspatricio are you sure? I got my numbers from the ttc but found a few false leads where they were also including streetcars or even subway rides. Your figure looks a lot like that one.
@@TomOmnom amazing! Makes sense given OCTranspo invested so much in making bus EVERYTHING, even the backbone of your network.
It would be great if you make a detailed video on Southern California's Metrolink.....I know you briefly touched upon in some other videos....But I feel with properly running frequencies it has great potential and also talk about recent extensions in San Bernandino..
I was getting worried that Honolulu wasn't gonna be on the list 😂
Honolulu does a great job at serving the entire island and should honestly try to lead the way in becoming a transit-friendly city
As a Twin Cities resident I appreciate the shout-out and am hyped for the content!
We're trying to build out a real BRT and solid bus network in the Twin Cities and I'm sure you'll have a lot to comment on it
I specifically watch these at parties with others, along with Patrick Boyle. This way we get urbanism, financial education, and more deadpan than is safe to consume in a day.
Thank you for setting an example
@@CityNerd
I only question if it's a *good* example I set …
I live in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and the bus situation here is just awful. There are so many bus stops that are just a post with a bus stop marker next to the sidewalk. No seating, no shade. It’s nearly 120 degrees this summer and there’s not even shade. The few stops that have a bit of shade or seating are commonly metal bench seating, which makes it useless for like half the year when the metal will be hot enough to give you actual burns
I’m glad you included Portland. My brother-in-law was a driver for 25 yrs with Tri-met, and he’s won many safe-driving awards and had a reputation for being the friendliest & most helpful drivers in Portland.
The Steel City doesn't have enough rail... letting that sink in
Nice list. As a longtime DC-area resident, I was very much not surprised to see the region on the list. When I lived in DC, the bus to/from work would often be packed. Now that I'm in Arlington, I ride the bus daily to get to the Pentagon metro station to ride the blue line into the city for work. Not as packed, but the Pentagon transit center is always busy, with Metro, Fairfax Connector, Arlington ART and Alexandria DASH bus service.
Lots of love for Ames, IA. I went to school there and really miss how normal it was to take the bus to do anything. I wish I could have that anywhere.
CyRide is proof that public transportation can be great when you don't treat it like an afterthought.
When I was a kid in Puerto Rico, I rode a few buses (there they're called "guaguas") and later in Miami Beach I took a city bus home from high school. I lived in Seattle when the only rail tranist was the monorail, and I was very impressed with the bus service, which even had bus stations on the freeways and dedicated buses to Boeing plants. It was the first place I ever saw bending buses and trolleybuses. And on my big Amtrak trip last September, I rode a number of buses in Los Angeles and Seattle and they were just fine.
I grew up in a neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY that has no subway lines. You have to take a bus just to get to the subway. There are a few neighborhoods like that in Queens also. And in Staten Island, basically it’s all his service to get around as the railway isn’t as helpful.
I have actually been to Washington DC and used buses there. There are two main types of buses in the city. There’s the metro bus, which is more useful for locals, has more routes, and stops more places. There’s also the circulator bus, which is primarily for tourists, although locals can, and do use it. It costs only one dollar per ride, has like three or four routes and goes to all the tourist hotspot neighborhoods. It’s smooth it’s comfortable and it is efficient.
I was surprised to see LA on the list. I live in LA now and I used to live in Seoul Korea. I think that LA is trying to provide a good public transportation system, but the general public is not ready to give up cars.
I'm in LA and bus stigma is bad. I think people in my neck of the woods, the South Bay, see them as rolling homeless shelters.
@@angellacanforaLA has always had a lot of strange and scary people on its public transit. I don't see this changing any time soon. When I take the bus in Europe everyone around me looks normal and feels safe and clean. I don't know what the hell is up with the US.
seoul public transit is so incredible. i was there earlier this year (stayed in namdaemun, not really near a metro station) and took the bus absolutely everywhere. if i missed my bus there were like 3 other buses coming soon that could also take me where i needed to go. american public transit is just so sad in comparison.
I think to get people to give up cars in LA the public transit has to be obviously way way better than driving. But it rarely is to be honest whether you’re talking about door to door time, comfort, cleanliness, flexibility, etc. as a resident I’m rooting for LA, but we have a ways to go.
@@ficus3929 I'm pretty cynical that LA will ever put public transit first. This region was literally built on oil, after all. As a geology buff, I've studied geo maps of the area and we're sitting atop oil fields which is why there are so many refineries in LA. I myself live about 2 miles due west of Torrance Refinery. Unless & until the oil fields cease to be productive & refineries end operations, LA will remain car-centric, I fear.
Trains can't go everywhere. My town as an okay bus system but the bus stops suck and it's very slow, but I like the relative ease of using the Muni in SF. I can tap on the CalTrain to get into town, transfer to BART, transfer to a Muni train or bus all the with the Clipper card on my phone.
I know Orange County and LA share a lot of services, but they are different counties. Orange County communities can be very wealthy and will make themselves insular, especially on the coast in the hills, like Laguna Nigel and Mission Viejo. I used to go through there all the time from San Diego county to Fullerton on the Metrolink or Amtrak.
Hey if Mission Viejo can be its own MSD why can't Half Moon Bay
As a former resident of the Maryland DC suburbs the bus lines there were horrible. The last bus left my town at 7:30 pm which was inconvenient as a carless college student.
Lehigh valley PA also had pathetic bus service for 3 relatively dense cities with a 1 million metro area.
How is Laguna a different municipality? *MONEY!* The people who live there are _well to do_ and are above buses. The riders are the house cleaners!!!
lol so true
I’m used to bus ridership being pretty low to the point it was normal to have few riders, having a row to yourself is standard, and having a bus so crowded that people stand or give up seats was something out of the movies + tv. I wonder what the fullness of the buses in these cities looks like
can we get a video ranking us light rail systems?
The thing about the San Francisco/Oakland area, is that we have a good regional rail system (or a few actually) but pretty poor local train systems. Maybe the new Chinatown line is the first step in a new right direction. It's kind of surprised me, when I moved to the region, how much people assume that everyone should just drive everywhere, while simultaneously congratulating themselves for being like an old-world European city (a claim I find hard to accept). Anyway, in SF one should be able to get to Richmond (the neighborhood in SF) or the Marina by subway, and ideally between them without having to pass through the Financial District, before the transit system can be considered sufficient. I will be taking no questions at this time, thank you for attending my TED Talk, etc etc etc.
I live in a city in Europe where, if I wasn’t taking my bike, I would be around 150/200 bus rides per year x)
I live 12 miles north of downtown Seattle and commute to work which is in downtown. While the bus and light rail systems are effective means of transportation. Security has become a huge issue, especially in the downtown corridor. Bus stops anywhere along 3rd and 4th Ave are just not safe anymore. I'm a first responder and our firefighter/EMTs respond to hundreds of EMS calls treating patients for reported assaults along those avenues every year. It's gotten so bad that KC metro often closes bus stops along that corridor if one of their drivers or passengers were recently assaulted.
As an Assistant Transit Planner for a small central Florida transit agency, this list is inspiring, and I'd love for us to eventually get on this list!
Florida in general seems to be a very crappy state for transit for some reason.
@jfwfreo Well, Republican-dominated sunbelt states are pretty much guaranteed to have terrible transit.
FL was a Jim Crow state until the 1960s. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act, many white people wouldn't ride buses anymore.
One problem with busses in my city is traffic. As a passenger, you are subject to all the harsh accelerations of agressive driving. It also makes working to a timetable impossible, so the timetable is padded, with faster busses spending 10+ minutes sitting at "timing points" along the route.
San Francisco’s bus system is generally reliable and high quality, both in routes and comfort, with some lacking frequency issues. I very much appreciated having access to Muni especially when it’s literally idiotic to drive a car in the city.
I wanted to make a note on the Salesforce transit center though - I was surprised to be as underwhelmed as I was. I’ve caught several Greyhounds there, and despite as many busways and busbays and bus infrastructure as you can imagine, I never saw it at a capacity more than 5% or so, for either people or vehicles.
Baltimore resident- one reason we have high ridership is because for some reason we don’t have city school buses so a lot of students use them to get to and from school. And our single metro line is almost useless so buses are the cheapest way to get around
I knew San Francisco was gonna be on this list. As a local resident, I can confirm that BART has a bad enough reputation that most people don't use it unless they really have to. And almost no one uses BART to travel within the city itself, it's really only used to get to there cities in the Bay Area. MUNI is much more well-liked though.
lol what are you talking about. Plenty of people use BART to travel within SF. Many people have an exaggerated perception of crime too, thanks to the narrative being pushed in social media and the news (especially news sources own by conservatives) lately. SF's violent crime rate is pretty low right now compared to past decades. It was three times higher in 1990. Oakland's crime rate was higher then too, as were the crime rates in many suburbs. No one was complaining about BART crime waves then, but now it's suddenly a huge problem?
@@punchnazis3498 I use BART frequently, so I'm not saying it actually *is* dangerous; I haven't actually felt any danger when I've used it. I'm saying that the public perception of it is that it's dirty and sketchy, at least among the people I've talked to. And people's perceptions fuel ridership more than reality. Again, this is all anecdotal, maybe my friends don't accurately represent Bay Area residents.
There is a lack of east-west rail in Baltimore so i would guess that is why it has has more bus ridership
That was going to be fixed, until Hogan decided to scuttle the Red Line plan simply because he could and to please his suburban voter base.
Good video! Also looking forward to some local content coming up from the twin cities!
Have to say, Honolulu is the only U.S. tourist destination I regularly go to where I take the bus. It's a combination of the bus being extremely convenient and a car being a PITA
Representing PDX here. Fisher’s Landing TC looks great from the air. I’m sure the designer had a great time, but the parking lot is very lightly used. Vancouver Mall TC has a similar issue. Few people want to leave their car in those places. These two TCs drop you off in the middle of a parking lot. Classic car-first design. Multi-modal transit can work. Gateway TC is my go-to, as it is the confluence of the Red, Blue, and Green lines, as well as several bus lines.
The East Bay has BART and the Capitol Corridor, but if your starting point and/or destination are not near one of their stations and you don't want to drive, your options are the bus or the bike. Oh, some people also commute by ferry!
I'd love to see a city "bang for your buck" video, comparing the city's spending on transit to ridership
I live in Douala, Cameroon. I watch this as I would watch science-fiction: will never see this (type of bus network) IMBY in my lifetime.
If you ever do a tour of cities where motorbikes are the primary form of mass transit you might cover Douala.
More Canadian stuff please? Kinda niche, I get it, but per capita Canada has pretty crazy high TH-cam consumption. Mostly I just want to hear more about Vancouver and Toronto. ❤
Reese at RM Transit covers Canadian topics quite a bit. And Not Just Bikes does as well if only to bash (Fake) London.
@@danielkelly2210 Oh for sure, I'm subbed. But I want to see CityNerd's perspective :)
In the UK i got the bus EVERYWHERE. It was so normal and people of all origins used it. When I moved to the states and used the bus the women I worked with looked at me with disgust and would say things like "ughhh, you wouldn't catch me dead on a bus!"
Great video, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it ❤
I grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia. Jakarta as a quite "americanised" car-centric city adopted an interesting Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System as a transition approach to change the pattern. It's actually cool how the network successfully expands. Maybe you want to check it out sometime.
Speaking as a native Washingtonian, the Buses go LOTS of places the subway does not, and connects many subway lines more efficiently than riding the trains. For example, from Columbia Heights to the National Mall, the 50 series and S series buses are faster than the trains to that part of the city. We locals totally get why the bus ridership is so high. Buses also shuttle us from neighborhoods to the Metro.
LA's bus system is 80% reliable during peak hours. Weekend service is 65% on schedule. Night Owl or Grave Yard shift reliability is about 30%. If you are a working stiff like me, it is fine. And cheap. Safety is kinda iffy at any time.
If you want to go out and enjoy the city at night, you'll end up taking a combination of buses, the subway, and Uber or Lyft.
I'm still waiting to buy my 10,000 electric car.
And you're right - SF/OAK is the closest we left coasters have to an eastern city.
As somebody who lives in Las Vegas, I really think the bus network here is horrible. I'm really surprised it has the ridership level that it does, because the buses (at least on my end of town) are typically late and an extremely slow method of transportation. I feel like maybe it's so bad because you have to travel really far to go anywhere in Vegas (because of the extreme sprawl) and traditional buses just don't seem to be that good for longer distances. Additionally, bus intervals are pretty lengthy here. If you miss the bus, you're probably waiting 30 minutes to 1 hour. The bonneville transit center is cool, and it seems like maybe the system is better in some areas, but the entire north end of Vegas has a terrible bus network. I think this is a case of good ridership not necessarily meaning a good bus system.
I guess the amount of tourists who go to Vegas with no car also skews the ridership number for Vegas buses upwards
As a bay area native I find that SF-Oakland's bus ridership isn't too suprising, but I think there's a massive caveat attached to that: ridership outside those two cities drops off a cliff. I grew up in the area that comprises concord, walnut creek, and pleasant hill and the county connection and tri-cat which provide the bus service in contra costa county have abysmal ridership numbers. the same goes for the local busses in south and east alameda county. I would really appreciate busses and the service they provide if they also weren't being forced to be so horrible on headways and routing. Hell I live a 3 minute walk away from a bus stop and the times I've utilized it I can count on my fingers.
Yeah, Seattle is #4! I grew up riding Pierce County's bus system, Pierce Transit. For those that don't know, Pierce County is south of King County (Seattle). Even then, Pierce Transit and King County Metro would have bus routes that crossed County boundaries. They recognized that riders lived in one county, but commuted into the other county for work or school.
I rode 14 from Jackson into downtown for years for work. Still have nostalgia for all the books I read on that route. Really consistent in the morning and all around a great experience.
I wonder how Canadian cities if they brought into the mix fare, especially the TTC with having a bus terminal for a lot of it if subway stations
probably a lot higher as there isn't "public transit is socialism, communism and any other bad -ism" nonsense. Maybe even a bit higher than many European cities, as cycling isn't exactly on the same level in Canada?
I replied in another thread that in 2019, Toronto's TTC alone had about 400M bus boardings for a covered population of 5.5M. That's nearly 73 per capita, not even including GO Transit or any of the surrounding city bus services, many of which overlap or feed into the TTC. I'd guess Toronto would be close to 100-110 all-in.
100% agree with your characterization of SF being East Coast-y. This was my exact first impression when first visiting SF over 30 years ago. I hypothesized that this was due to its smallness combined with the sensibilities of its original 1840s - 1890s onslaught of new people: Europe-enamored yet adventurous young adults from all over the Eastern Seaboard and Mid-Atlantic. And it had a precedent of fun, sorta, with Levi the outfitter and Ghirardelli the chocolatier being among its first famous upstarts. All this, along with its architecture, and a 'Great Fire' - a mandatory crucible for any aspiring big city worth its salt -gives it a distinct old-city vibe.
It's also due to being boxed in by geography. Seattle is the same way. Both cities are relatively small (size wise) compared to most US cities. This requires them to build up. Both these cities are also extremely wealthy, allowing them to actually make changes and build public transportation (like many east coast cities were in the early 1900s).
We moved from Brazil 18 months ago to the Twin Cities in the middle of the brutal winter.
But, we were used to the Sao Paulo buses, always full, slow and etc.
We used to bike a lot, and came here hearing about the bike infrastructure of the city.
So far, we only used the buses for everything, didn't buy a car yet. No need.
A neighbor gave us bikes. So, for near places we go by bike. For far places, we take the bikes in the bus.
Also, the bike network is amazing.
We just bought our electric bikes and 60 minutes comute by bus became just 20 minutes.
It was funny the way Americans were telling us the public transportation were bad, with lack of lines, far from home. We we were enjoying it a lot! Always empty, on time, with amazing bike racks in the front...
Also, the people that says winter is not for bikes, are the people don't bike in winter.
When we started, we got amazed with the huge number of people biking in the "-40 brutal Minnesota winter" hahaha
Today we enjoy parking right in front of the front doors of places, see the car people getting stressed looking from "a near parking place".
People complaining they have to pass us number of times in the big avenues because of traffic light and stop signs hahahahaha
Also, beautiful areas like the France & 50th, you can park the bike right in the middle, and the cars need to park out side.
The twin cities and the state bike paths network really deserves a special chapter.
OMG, I used to ride the bus in Pittsburgh. It was not pleasant. The only time it was OK was in the middle of the day. Most of the time I had to stand up the entire way trying to keep balance. Sometimes there were people of questionable sanity. Scary.
I'd be curious to know how the boroughs of NYC would have performed as independent "cities" in this analysis.
Awesome video as always!
I think the Bronx and Queens would have performed best, since the Bronx is seen by the MTA as the most efficient system, and Queens has a lot of places which aren’t served by subway
A little surprised that Boston wasn't ranked higher, on a per-capita basis, but we also have an extensive subway and commuter rail system, too. I also wasn't thinking about Honolulu at all...
I'm impressed by your selfless dedication to Hawaiian bikes.
As a regular rider on Metro in Seattle, I have to say that bus transit here sucks, at least on the routes I use most often. Almost daily there are service holes lasting 30 minutes or more, during which certain buses are MIA. Weekends are the worst. The problem is a combination of infrequent scheduling and car traffic. The pandemic brought two blissful years in which traffic was light, but now the nightmare is back. Big cities need subways.
Carless Seattleite here. I work from home so I can't speak to the commuting from the 'burbs part of it, but love the transit here. Before moving here I lived in El Paso, TX and I'm from Denver's suburbs... that might color my opinion. You mentioned the Northgate extension on the light rail and its effect on buses. Some of the longer routes that serve the cities on the north end of Lake Washington used to come into downtown. I live in Capitol Hill (about a mile from the lightrail station) and could take a bus that ran by my house to downtown and catch a fairly quick bus to Woodinville (it went on the freeway for a section of the route). With the lightrail extension, the bus route from up north now terminates at the second-to-last stop on the extension. So now I have to walk to the light rail or take a bus there (and the one that ran by my house got axed during the pandemic, which is a shame as I have become partially disabled)... then I catch the lightrail to Roosevelt, then the final bus to Woodinville... which now isn't a nice coach type bus, but a city bus that runs on surface streets and stops more frequently. It added at least 35 min to my trip. I can't imagine if you were doing that as a daily commute. That said, the transit here is some of the best I've lived with.
None of this is looking at delay's and canceled service.
I'm so grateful to live somewhere with great buses and trains, I spent a lot of my time growing up in a place where the bus and train network wasn't nearly as good (although by the sounds of i still better than many US cities) and it felt so trapped by having to rely on my parents or taxies which are expensive to get anywhere. As a result of that I just stayed at home most of the time and lived an unhealthy lazy life style which affected me negatively both physically and mentally.
As a New Yorker, there's more to why our bus ridership is so high than just New Jersey commuters. There are neighborhoods and entire boroughs that the subway doesn't reach (South & East Queens, Staten Island) or the LIRR is too far to reach by walking, so those people have to use busses to get to the nearest subway line (or use busses as their entire commute).
All Praise City Nerd
If you’re ever in need of a topic (and feel like looking at college towns with a population of less than 50,000) you should check out San Luis Obispo! In many ways it punches above its weight in terms of transit quality, but, as a resident, it leaves a lot to be desired. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!
Orlando has a really high number of bus ridership but its mostly private and not reported. Between UCF (the 2nd largest university in the us) and the buses between disney, the airport, universal, seaworld, and the" trolleys" on Idrive, you would think we would be high up there. Lynx (the public buses) are low and terrible. Its almost an inoperable system.
In most parts of Europe, only larger cities will have a rail transit (some exceptions exist, like smaller cities and towns with a tram line) and most smaller cities will just have a bus network for all their transit needs.
For larger cities, the bus network adds connectivity and capacity, and also feeds the rail lines in a kind of cascading network, where suburban centers connect use the buses as a local network".
While in the US, even our larger cities often don't have rail transit.
@@danielkelly2210 Yeah, I live in a medium-sized city with a metro area population of about 110k, and we have a bus network of about 20 lines, with the most popular route having a bus every five minutes during peak hours. It feels so weird to see US cities with a much larger population have way worse transit.
Providence, RI and Rhode Island in general has a pretty good bus transit agency: RIPTA. Almost the entire state has some from of bus service. It compliments the MBTA commuter line Boston to Wickford Junction.
It is great to hear about busses. Busses are like the capilleries of transit. Big shiney rail projects get a lot of attention but although trains are fantastic at shifting lots of people quickly and very efficiently, they just can't get most places. Without a good bus service there isn't really transit.
The unfortunate problem that bus systems in the US have is that busses are always shoved down transit riders’ throats regardless of whether busses work there or not.
US transit planners always reach for busses as the default solution to any transit problem. They do this because busses have very low startup costs. No one stops to think that busses are actually wildly expensive to run for even a moderately popular transit line. So we end up with a bunch bus networks that are more expensive to run, slower, less comfortable, and less useful that they need to be. This leads to poor, slow, and unreliable service that riders generally loathe.
This and the awful bus stigma issues combine to make bus transit a last resort mode. I.e. you only take the bus if you’re dirt poor and have no other options.
Buses are often used as some type of “bargaining chip”. Transit opponents, for example, will often say that they oppose rail because “IT’S EXPENSIVE!” and “IT'S NOT FLEXIBLE!” and will extoll the virtues of buses. Once a rail proposal is successfully dead, however, their love of buses mysteriously wanes.
@@danielkelly2210 Ah yes, that "mysteriousl" transit afficionado that never takes transit but wants you to take the bus everywhere. Gotta love those!
You are exactly right! That's pretty much the NIMBY M.O. at this point. Downgrade any and all planned rail lines to a bus line and then try to cancel it because "it doesn't have enough ridership."
In all fairness, this is to some large extent the fault of our urban planners. They have completely abrogated their planning responsibility in favor of a bunch of busybody NIMBYs who want to block any changes to their neighborhoods. This leads to crappy transit that only the people who have no other choice would ever take. The same NIMBYs then can claim that "transit brings crime" and point at the poor people who take the bus. This gives them more ammunition to degrade the next transit line to a bus line, and the cycle continues.
The result is that we have a ton of defective bus lines that should have been rail, and no one but the most desperate riders actually use them. This is how the NIMBYs win and the rest of us lose!
I enjoyed playing CityNerd GeoGuessr when you showed that view of the metro station in Baltimore.
As a swiss, I can assure you, it's never "Bus vs Train" but "Bus AND Train vs cars".
The better the transit, the better the ridership for ALL forms of transit. A car in an urban area is just a stupid hassle. If there is good alternatives, people will switch.
And since trains and buses to not really compete for the same grid-density equilibrium, they are perfectly complementary.