Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Best and Worst Places for Public Transit

Interested in seeing where the best and worst public transit is located? This articles shows where public transportation is efficient and type of public transit that is being used in that area. Please comment on what you think about the best-rated places, and why the worst places have failed.

7 comments:

  1. Who know that Honolulu had kick-butt public transportation? It is not surprising that 6/10 of low income housing and jobs are in suburbia because of A.gentrification and B. the corresponding service industry jobs.

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  2. The atlantic website seems to be down right now, so I can't see that article, but this is an article I recently read that is topical. I was also remembering this article in light of this week's reading which rank states for business friendliness and such.

    The point of the article is that its not easy to simplify something like transit, which is based on tradeoffs and tough choices to a list of best/worst. It's an apples and oranges comparison. Lists definitely still have a role to play, as long as their limitations are recognized.

    As an aside, if you're interested in transit, this is a really great blog to follow. They also have a 'basics' series which covers all the topics you need to know to begin understanding transit planning in layman's language.

    I'm excited for the Atlantic to fix their site though, I'd like to see which systems they loved and hated.

    http://www.humantransit.org/2011/05/top-ten-rankings-the-1-way-to-confuse.html

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  3. I was pretty surprised by this list. I would have expected at least one city from one of the more densely populated states in the Midwest/Northeast region to make the list.

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  4. I was not very surprised when I read this article because when the pictures of the cities and the information was given, it all made sense. The cities had good resources at the top of the list, and they were dense enough, where public transportation is the most efficient way of traveling during the work days.

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  5. I agree with Kelsey, it was definitely a surprise to me.

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  6. I agree with mark. the top cities also seem to be fairly large, yet not too big like New York or Chicago where it would be more difficult to cover the entire city.

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  7. Most of the cities in the list which have best transit are small. Hence, it is easier to develop public transport if city is shrinking. If the city's suburb is growing then there will be lot of difficulty in developing public transportation.

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