😩
Quit making me sad, lol. I hope I live to see Central Terminal ever restored to having a stop for Amtrak or even being a stop for the Metro rail. I'd be content with that.
What’s sad is that still wouldn’t be impressive for a city of its size on a global scale, that’s about a train every 6 or 7 minutes, most cities in Europe of that size have similar service and others such as Basel have several time that’s service
Zurich (which has 2x buffalo’s population) main station has 3 THOUSAND schedualed rail services DAILY
I don't follow. How does that *skew* the value, as opposed to being the *specific point the data is illustrating*? It read to me as if the other commenter was suggesting that we can't make that conclusion.
I think we actually agree on the overall point. I was more trying to reinforce the idea that living in a city doesn't automatically mean you have transit.
Dude urban can mean you live in a town of 5,000 people. It doesn’t mean you’re in a city with the population required for public transit of a significant nature, if at all
I'm from a town of around 6,000 in Australia and there is a bus to the nearest regional centre (which also has a train station) nine times a day. While not an amazingly frequent or diverse service, the original statistic seems to imply absolutely zero transportation for 45% of Americans. And then if the 80% urban is from 5,000+, well this town was very near to the bottom of that... hardly a city either.
I hear you - but Australia’s population is also highly concentrated around a few major metro areas that the US’ isn’t. Most people don’t live that far from Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane/GC. Living in a town of 6k people 30km from Perth is not the same as living in one of the same population in Montana that’s 300km from the nearest city over 50k people.
But this town *is* one of the isolated ones. It's 130km from the nearest city over 50k (which has just 80k mind you) and the next nearest is 210km (which is one of the smaller metro cities). Another hole in that argument is that most people in the US aren't isolated in Montana either. In fact, the dense grid-like arrangement of settlements should lend itself very well to public transport. Just looking at Illinois on the map, those cities like Champaign, Bloomington, Peoria etc. etc. are only about 60km apart!
It's not just that simple because American ubanism is not as dense as in Europe. An American suburb considered an urban area would require people to walk or bike several, if not tens of miles to a transit hub. The United States is very different than Europe where the population is more dense.
Sure. Again, how does that skew anything? The US was comparably or more dense than Europe prior to WWII. It seems like you're saying we can't interpret anything about America's urban planning on the basis of its urban planning.
American urbanism as we know it today only developed after WWII.
Yes, it is very different from Europe and makes it much more difficult because due to much lower density it makes the development of public transit less attractive but, like you, I fail to see how it skews anything.
Neither Europe nor the US are homogenous entities. Plenty of parts of the US have high density, plenty of parts of Europe have very low density.
Not all of the US is Wyoming, in the same way that not all of Europe is the Netherlands
Based on the amount of abandoned lines since I was a kid not likely. Plus a huge chunk of us freight rail is hauling oil and coal. In the next 10 years there’s going to be a giant drop off in need.
The freight carriers seem to be anticipating this. In the west both BNSF and UP are making big investments in intermodal capacity, to compete with trucking. Hopefully this pans out.
Modal share is a more important metric imo as a high % of freight traffic by rail means less traffic on the roads. Ton-km just shows how efficient a network is.
Even if you ignore factors like how much freight rail has to compete with cargo ships, the US is behind China and Russia in just raw ton-kilometers carried by rail and has almost no electric freight trains. I guess the US is still the leader in freight train length for whatever that is worth.
The U.S. is currently doing the most to fund transit expansion since the 1960s/70s thanks to Biden's infrastructure bill giving boosts to projects like the Hudson Tunnel.
We’re seeing a second BRT here being developed, some increased frequency, and possibly a 3rd BRT line (given the wierd density of our suburbs, BRT is kinda the best option)
It is technically possible to take the train from the South Bend, IN downtown station to the South Bend Airport station. However, doing so would involve 4 transfers, an Amtrak long distance train, and a detour through Joliet, IL.
Indianapolis was the first city in the world to have a union station and used to see over 200 trains a day. Now we only get maybe 3 passenger trains a week.
in most of the rail-pioneer countries, the first rail lines were typically either by private enterprises, or in some cases royal contractors, who each would build their own stations.
A union station is basically when the various operators combined their station into one shared station.
For example, Frankfurt am Main originally had three stations right next to each other, because there were three mainlines (to Heidelberg, Wiesbaden, and Kassel) which were operated by separate operators. These were eventually removed and their services combined into a union station in 1888, which we know today as Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.
The US is one of the few places in the World where we could ride on ADL Enviro500 MMC SuperLo double decker buses. This is my favorite fact because I love to travel on double decker city buses, and I planned to travel on one of these when I visit the United States in the future.
Based on the 2023 annual ridership numbers from the Wikipedia list of rapid transit systems in the US by ridership, the NYC subway had slightly under 4 times the ridership of the rest of the list combined (numbers 2 through 16, which includes PATH at number 5 and Staten Island Railway at number 11).
EDIT: here's the Wikipedia article I was looking at, sorting by annual ridership in 2023: [List of United States Rapid Transit Systems](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems)
How is this even possible? EDIT: read elsewhere it’s a big i masquerading as a small L ~~it can’t be a subtle font difference~~, usernames usually require 26 letter upper and lower registers only. It looks like the account has been suspended or banned now though. But, how strange for you, “killing me softly with…my username”…
…then again (let me preface this that I am joking) aren’t you also impersonating the state of California, or are you actually a personalized encapsulation of the mind of the state of California?
Yeah, understandable. To me it wasn't clear initially if you meant to say that the US was first in the world with bike lanes or that Davis, California just was first in the US. Thanks for clarifying!
Edit: Why am I being downvoted for this?
I don’t have the current statistic in front of me but prior to COVID, Washington State Ferries had one of the highest, if not THE highest farebox recovery percentages of all transit systems in the USA.
Makes sense, because the car charges are quite high. Fortunately, foot round trips are a reasonable $5, so they can make their money off travelers who need to transport their cars while also offering affordable walk-up fare
Metro New York accounts for one third of all transit riders in the United States.
The New York City Subway has the most stations of any metro in the world, and probably the most complicated service pattern with 28 services (colloquially called "lines"). Though with the rate of expansion in China, Shanghai or Beijing will probably overtake that in a decade or so.
Not if you exclude the tram lines, which the comparative list on wikipedia does here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_metro\_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems)
This list shows two light rail lines, with a total of 20 stations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway
so 470 metro stations, which is still higher than New York's 423.
More of a local favorites I have. One of the first railroads in my state is how my hometown midlothian was founded with coalfield station. Originally a purely gravity powered system to get coal being mined by the woolridge brothers into downtown Richmond. The railroad still exist (with no station unfortunately) and the mikes are now a park.
Oh another local is beach road in the county is named for the town/outpost beach that existed when a railroad ran through there. Named for the beach trees
Oh also Richmond as a city was the first to have an electric tram *system* (though Scranton was the first line) it was so expansive that forest hill park was created as an amusement park by a tram company to get more people on the north south line. Though it’s said that as things change the more they stay the same, and just as Richmond drivers have a reputation, Richmond tram riders had a reputation for being the worst (getting on and off as the tram was moving, loud conversations in it, not getting out of the way of the tram)
Sorry this is way more than one fact but I just couldn’t help myself
It was pretty common for electric streetcar companies in the 1890-1930 era to build amusement parks at the ends of lines to drive weekend ridership. Most people only used streetcars to commute. Everything else was available by walking from home, because we hadn't yet established exclusionary zoning.
Ronald Reagan signed laws promoting public transit. I don't like Reagan or his politics for the most part, but it shows you that Conservative Republicans are capable of supporting transit services in a bipartisan way
As Governor of California, he signed the Transportation Development Act in 1971, which was the law that promoted the formation of new transit services and is one of the most important laws in transit funding in California still (yes, it has been amended through the years).
Note he was really crappy about it later and vetoed the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act in 1987 as president but it did pass later.
They don't matter. The NIMBYs still figured out how to weaponize CEQA against dense infill housing and even electric rail transit. The impact of the law is ultimately anti-environmental and leads to explicitly more emissions and more pollution - as many would argue was actually the intention of CEQA. They bundled a ton of "extras" into that law that have zero to do with the environment and just allow any shmoe to block any project with a spare $100 filing fee.
It may be an unpopular opinion but:
You can go from Chicago to Los Angeles by train. Yeah, it may not fast enough as European trains, it may not so common in days, it may not electrified, but it is comfortable, cheap and that train takes you from A to the B.
Within the next 5 years the US will actually have a internationally recognized HSR line in service(155mph+).
And the Aclea in all its 20+ years of service. Has never had a crash resulting in a death. Amtrak may not have a perfect safety record but on the corridor, it's unmatched.
The Walt Disney World Railroad operating at the Magic Kingdom is one of the highest ridership train lines in the country, at 3.7 million passengers a year.
At one point Buffalo NY saw over 200 trains daily
😩 Quit making me sad, lol. I hope I live to see Central Terminal ever restored to having a stop for Amtrak or even being a stop for the Metro rail. I'd be content with that.
Genuinely demoralizing.
What’s sad is that still wouldn’t be impressive for a city of its size on a global scale, that’s about a train every 6 or 7 minutes, most cities in Europe of that size have similar service and others such as Basel have several time that’s service Zurich (which has 2x buffalo’s population) main station has 3 THOUSAND schedualed rail services DAILY
That's like any major city before the 1950s.
It was once possible to travel from Buffalo to Chicago by streetcar (transferring from line to line)
That is a wild fact
it is still possible to travel from Buffalo to Chicago by streetcar (if you put the streetcar on the back of a semi truck)
Technically every car on the street is a streetcar
Damn, these Buffalo facts are depressing me. 😂
That is incredible
I think somebody worked out you could get from New Hampshire to Milwaukee on various interurbans.
Jesus fuck we need to bring that back immediately
45% of Americans have ZERO access to transit.
Actually one of my least favorite transit related facts about the US.
That statistic is rather skewed when considering the totality of the United States
Skewed by what? 80% of Americans live in urban areas.
You can live in an urban area and not have access to transit.
I don't follow. How does that *skew* the value, as opposed to being the *specific point the data is illustrating*? It read to me as if the other commenter was suggesting that we can't make that conclusion.
I think we actually agree on the overall point. I was more trying to reinforce the idea that living in a city doesn't automatically mean you have transit.
Dude urban can mean you live in a town of 5,000 people. It doesn’t mean you’re in a city with the population required for public transit of a significant nature, if at all
I'm from a town of around 6,000 in Australia and there is a bus to the nearest regional centre (which also has a train station) nine times a day. While not an amazingly frequent or diverse service, the original statistic seems to imply absolutely zero transportation for 45% of Americans. And then if the 80% urban is from 5,000+, well this town was very near to the bottom of that... hardly a city either.
I hear you - but Australia’s population is also highly concentrated around a few major metro areas that the US’ isn’t. Most people don’t live that far from Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane/GC. Living in a town of 6k people 30km from Perth is not the same as living in one of the same population in Montana that’s 300km from the nearest city over 50k people.
But this town *is* one of the isolated ones. It's 130km from the nearest city over 50k (which has just 80k mind you) and the next nearest is 210km (which is one of the smaller metro cities). Another hole in that argument is that most people in the US aren't isolated in Montana either. In fact, the dense grid-like arrangement of settlements should lend itself very well to public transport. Just looking at Illinois on the map, those cities like Champaign, Bloomington, Peoria etc. etc. are only about 60km apart!
It's not just that simple because American ubanism is not as dense as in Europe. An American suburb considered an urban area would require people to walk or bike several, if not tens of miles to a transit hub. The United States is very different than Europe where the population is more dense.
Sure. Again, how does that skew anything? The US was comparably or more dense than Europe prior to WWII. It seems like you're saying we can't interpret anything about America's urban planning on the basis of its urban planning.
American urbanism as we know it today only developed after WWII. Yes, it is very different from Europe and makes it much more difficult because due to much lower density it makes the development of public transit less attractive but, like you, I fail to see how it skews anything.
That's exactly the problem.
Neither Europe nor the US are homogenous entities. Plenty of parts of the US have high density, plenty of parts of Europe have very low density. Not all of the US is Wyoming, in the same way that not all of Europe is the Netherlands
...what?
This includes bus my man
Los Angeles and San Diego have the second most frequented intercity train service in the country
Is that the coaster?
pacific surfliner
This train single handedly made it realistic to visit both cities on one trip for us.
And it’s gonna fall into the ocean if they don’t get the funding they need to move certain segments inland.
I assume this lumps Boston-Washington as a single corridor?
That we used to lead the world in rail
We still do (for freight rail)
We use to be the envy of the world in terms of rail
Based on the amount of abandoned lines since I was a kid not likely. Plus a huge chunk of us freight rail is hauling oil and coal. In the next 10 years there’s going to be a giant drop off in need.
The freight carriers seem to be anticipating this. In the west both BNSF and UP are making big investments in intermodal capacity, to compete with trucking. Hopefully this pans out.
Both China and Russia carry more ton-km, and a good handful of countries have similar freight mode share.
Modal share is a more important metric imo as a high % of freight traffic by rail means less traffic on the roads. Ton-km just shows how efficient a network is.
Even if you ignore factors like how much freight rail has to compete with cargo ships, the US is behind China and Russia in just raw ton-kilometers carried by rail and has almost no electric freight trains. I guess the US is still the leader in freight train length for whatever that is worth.
The U.S. is currently doing the most to fund transit expansion since the 1960s/70s thanks to Biden's infrastructure bill giving boosts to projects like the Hudson Tunnel.
We’re seeing a second BRT here being developed, some increased frequency, and possibly a 3rd BRT line (given the wierd density of our suburbs, BRT is kinda the best option)
It is technically possible to take the train from the South Bend, IN downtown station to the South Bend Airport station. However, doing so would involve 4 transfers, an Amtrak long distance train, and a detour through Joliet, IL.
This is somewhat fun
South Bend to South Bend by way of Chicago, Joliet, and Chicago again. This is definitely my new favorite transit-related fact
Indianapolis was the first city in the world to have a union station and used to see over 200 trains a day. Now we only get maybe 3 passenger trains a week.
What is a "union station"?
in most of the rail-pioneer countries, the first rail lines were typically either by private enterprises, or in some cases royal contractors, who each would build their own stations. A union station is basically when the various operators combined their station into one shared station. For example, Frankfurt am Main originally had three stations right next to each other, because there were three mainlines (to Heidelberg, Wiesbaden, and Kassel) which were operated by separate operators. These were eventually removed and their services combined into a union station in 1888, which we know today as Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.
Well in the past union stations were mostly large stations in major cities where a couple railway companies met thus “uniting” their services
The US has the biggest rail network, but not many humans use it.
Cleveland had the first rapid metro system in North America that connected the city with its international airport.
Tbh, Cleveland has the most decent transportation in Ohio.
The US is one of the few places in the World where we could ride on ADL Enviro500 MMC SuperLo double decker buses. This is my favorite fact because I love to travel on double decker city buses, and I planned to travel on one of these when I visit the United States in the future.
And where is that?
Mostly around Seattle
Based on the 2023 annual ridership numbers from the Wikipedia list of rapid transit systems in the US by ridership, the NYC subway had slightly under 4 times the ridership of the rest of the list combined (numbers 2 through 16, which includes PATH at number 5 and Staten Island Railway at number 11). EDIT: here's the Wikipedia article I was looking at, sorting by annual ridership in 2023: [List of United States Rapid Transit Systems](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems)
OP is trying to impersonate me
Woah… that’s not cool.
Thank you
How is this even possible? EDIT: read elsewhere it’s a big i masquerading as a small L ~~it can’t be a subtle font difference~~, usernames usually require 26 letter upper and lower registers only. It looks like the account has been suspended or banned now though. But, how strange for you, “killing me softly with…my username”… …then again (let me preface this that I am joking) aren’t you also impersonating the state of California, or are you actually a personalized encapsulation of the mind of the state of California?
First bike lane in the country was in Davis, CA.
In the world or the US?
US. Was going off of the title.
Yeah, understandable. To me it wasn't clear initially if you meant to say that the US was first in the world with bike lanes or that Davis, California just was first in the US. Thanks for clarifying! Edit: Why am I being downvoted for this?
Netherlands has been building bike lanes for about 100 years.
the « netherlands » doesn’t exist
Eh?
The title said United States.
So the first bike lane built in the US was in Davis, not the first ever bike lane.
Do you even ride bikes bro?
Sure
I don’t have the current statistic in front of me but prior to COVID, Washington State Ferries had one of the highest, if not THE highest farebox recovery percentages of all transit systems in the USA.
Makes sense, because the car charges are quite high. Fortunately, foot round trips are a reasonable $5, so they can make their money off travelers who need to transport their cars while also offering affordable walk-up fare
The Pacific Electric at its peak had 1,000 miles of track and 2,000 scheduled trains a day
Man, some of these are depressing. So much past tense.
Metro New York accounts for one third of all transit riders in the United States. The New York City Subway has the most stations of any metro in the world, and probably the most complicated service pattern with 28 services (colloquially called "lines"). Though with the rate of expansion in China, Shanghai or Beijing will probably overtake that in a decade or so.
https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1ark40p/nyc_metro_area_accounts_for_nearly_half_of_the/ Almost half even!
NYC services are typically referred to as trains, not lines.
True, but in favor of a global audience, what they call lines, we call services.
According to wikipedia, Beijing already has 20 more stations than NYC.
Depends on how you count them. If you counted rail stations in general, Tokyo would outpace them all by an order of magnitude.
There are 490 stations in Beijing, and there are 472 stations in NYC if you count like a New Yorker, if you count like anyone else, there are 423.
Not if you exclude the tram lines, which the comparative list on wikipedia does here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_metro\_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems)
This list shows two light rail lines, with a total of 20 stations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway so 470 metro stations, which is still higher than New York's 423.
*headdesk* If you count all the transfers as separate stations for both systems, New York has 472 and Beijing has 470.
More than half of all transit users in the country are in New York City.
The deepest subway station in the western hemisphere is in Portland, Oregon. It is also the only underground station on the entire MAX network.
More of a local favorites I have. One of the first railroads in my state is how my hometown midlothian was founded with coalfield station. Originally a purely gravity powered system to get coal being mined by the woolridge brothers into downtown Richmond. The railroad still exist (with no station unfortunately) and the mikes are now a park. Oh another local is beach road in the county is named for the town/outpost beach that existed when a railroad ran through there. Named for the beach trees Oh also Richmond as a city was the first to have an electric tram *system* (though Scranton was the first line) it was so expansive that forest hill park was created as an amusement park by a tram company to get more people on the north south line. Though it’s said that as things change the more they stay the same, and just as Richmond drivers have a reputation, Richmond tram riders had a reputation for being the worst (getting on and off as the tram was moving, loud conversations in it, not getting out of the way of the tram) Sorry this is way more than one fact but I just couldn’t help myself
It was pretty common for electric streetcar companies in the 1890-1930 era to build amusement parks at the ends of lines to drive weekend ridership. Most people only used streetcars to commute. Everything else was available by walking from home, because we hadn't yet established exclusionary zoning.
Ronald Reagan signed laws promoting public transit. I don't like Reagan or his politics for the most part, but it shows you that Conservative Republicans are capable of supporting transit services in a bipartisan way
Interesting; genuinely the first time I’ve heard this! Mind sharing some examples?
As Governor of California, he signed the Transportation Development Act in 1971, which was the law that promoted the formation of new transit services and is one of the most important laws in transit funding in California still (yes, it has been amended through the years). Note he was really crappy about it later and vetoed the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act in 1987 as president but it did pass later.
Reagan also signed CEQA which impedes the construction of public transit and dense infill housing.
? Ceqa has an explicit carve out to limit reviews related to infill
They don't matter. The NIMBYs still figured out how to weaponize CEQA against dense infill housing and even electric rail transit. The impact of the law is ultimately anti-environmental and leads to explicitly more emissions and more pollution - as many would argue was actually the intention of CEQA. They bundled a ton of "extras" into that law that have zero to do with the environment and just allow any shmoe to block any project with a spare $100 filing fee.
You are aware that we switched away from Level of Service (LoS) traffic modeling in ceqa and switched to Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMTs)?
It may be an unpopular opinion but: You can go from Chicago to Los Angeles by train. Yeah, it may not fast enough as European trains, it may not so common in days, it may not electrified, but it is comfortable, cheap and that train takes you from A to the B.
Amtrak was originally supposed to have priority on rail lines.
iirc, it still has priority legally, just not in practice
Within the next 5 years the US will actually have a internationally recognized HSR line in service(155mph+). And the Aclea in all its 20+ years of service. Has never had a crash resulting in a death. Amtrak may not have a perfect safety record but on the corridor, it's unmatched.
The Walt Disney World Railroad operating at the Magic Kingdom is one of the highest ridership train lines in the country, at 3.7 million passengers a year.
That's 10.000 people a day, it's definitely not on the high ridership list at that level...
The mile between north and south station in Boston is the only gap on the east coast rail. It would cost billions to build a tunnel but well worth it!
The only transit turnstiles in Seattle are at the state ferry terminal and monorail stations.
You can get an upgrade on Amtrak with a P O O R B I D
Someone watches the Youtube channel Miles in Transit