I have to question the validity of any ranking that puts San Diego in the D tier along with Fresno and San Bernardino. Orange County spends all of its transit money on freeway widening, but Santa Ana and Anaheim rank higher than San Diego? When you did your assessment of San Diego, did you look at any of the neighborhoods south of Mission Valley or west of I-5? Doesn’t seem like it as there is no shortage of walkable neighborhoods. And despite all your footage of the San Diego Trolley, you don’t seem to give it much credit in your assessment. Compared to the LA light rail, the San Diego system is actually more efficient since it doesn’t run in traffic, except Downtown. And also in contrast to LA (and several other cities on the West Coast), it hasn’t seen as much of an upsurge in crime and nuisance incidents. Your look at rents doesn’t take incomes into account. I’d be surprised if the high rents in SF aren’t easier for people to handle than the low rents in Bakersfield and Fresno. Incomes in SF are much higher.

If we could do the interstate highway system, we can do this.

Make bus lanes with some physical separation then.....

I was a little bit waiting for a discussion of PATH train near NYC …

Both. I want both. Getting out of a lightrail station and then getting the last leg of my journey done on a street car sounds like heaven~

You’ll have a beautiful view of dilapidated buildings and food deserts on one side and overbuilt highways on the other

> quicker and more reliable > silver line footage mfw

Solution: make an autonomous tram

I get that this video includes only cities you've visited, but it's kinda odd to see a US transit tierlist without NYC on it

As a child we went to Milwaukee from Chicago on the North Shore RR. Even at that age, maybe 4 or 5, I was struck by the fact that our train was running in a Milwaukee street.

Baltimore has light rails but like others have said a ton of light rails drive within traffic too.

i'm riding a bus on a bus lane everyday. and it's very useful

I kind of disagree. Although it is true that "Light Rail" systems try to always have their own right of way, most of them occasionally are running across or indeed down roadways. There is hardly a distinction.

Speaking of Fort Worth, I have read complaints that next-door Arlington (which has major sports venues) doesn't even have any bus service at all! Seems intentionally foolish.

7:52 The decrease in ridership reflects a state bill allowing illegal immigrants to get drivers licences, and a similar decrease can be seen in other systems in cities with high populations of illegals like fresno and los angeles

One reason it is the most traveled LRT system is its connection between Tijuana and San Diego. Most of the ridership is in between those two points on a daily and weekly basis. People from Mexico and points north use it a lot to commute to their jobs or shop. But once you go north of downtown San Diego, ridership is less especially east of SDSU. It has a lot going for it and the Blue line extension to La Jolla is a much needed improvement. But the system needs more. For one thing there should be direct service to the airport from downtown, service to Balboa Park, Navy Medical Center, the zoo and the I-15 or 805 corridor (They could be good candidates for heavy rail or a high speed rail line to LA).

Why's the one bus rolling like a trolly? Where is that?

Wrong ! They are forcing us to take the bus. Them so called bus lanes only restrict drivers who need to get around. We the tax payers don't need to be told to use another road 😮

That’s if everyone follows the rules of the road

That’s nice now tell all the people in cars and riding their bikes to gtfo of the bus lane

Is that why our transit is always empty? Waste of money

Reality: bus driver beeping, cursing, and shooting poisonous darts at uber drivers for using their lane

American climate change challenges could be solved if Americans all used scooters instead of pickup trucks, or SUVs or cars. 24 mpg vs 120 mpg. You do the math 😅

I'LL RIDE TRANZIT!

The only way to make busses tolerable would be to make people sit quietly, not boom their music players' base louder than shuttle launches, shower more than one per apocalypse, and not be high/drunk. Impossible? Yes. So is riding busses.

Yep SF has screwed its self royaly

Yes, it does alleviate some of the mobile road blocks that are buses. Doesn't make them any more useful, though.

Remove the bus lanes and open it up to traffic. I didn’t buy a car to be harassed by an entitled bus driver blocking the turn lane 90 percent of the time.

I actually live in a city where bus lanes failed. In Baltimore the buses are actually still late just as often because in any city the bus has to stop and sometimes return back to base anytime there is a dispute, someone throws up or there is a fight which happens all too often. In fact im the kast three years 3 MTA employees got killed from violence on duty. Also, these bus lanes where put onto roads that where already at max compacity. So now every road that was near max is now overfilled and it takes longer for anyone eith a car to get around. Forcing them to use the bus lanes to get anywhere at a decent time. I can literally be at a light for multiple cycles and not one bike and at most one bus will pass me while im stuck in traffic waiting in backed uo traffic because they added a bike/bus lane. Also, the only roads thay can support a bus lane still force the busses to merge into traffic slowing them down? Why? Because the delivery vans and trucks that are on the major roads use the bus lanes to park. Bus kanes also took away a lot of public parking spots in a city where some have to park their cars blocks away from thier Job or they have to take a bus or drive to a car pool meetup point because they literally have no olsce to park and the city doesn't care. Everyone said the idea would fail and now law abiding citizens are stuck in more traffic and we never see a bike and the buses are still an hour behind. You also have ti remember only one bus on a route jas to have an issue and thay will overfill a different bus causing them ti stop at extra stops and then when full it bypasses stops. The problem never was them needing s bus lane. I highly doubt this program has worked in any city.

Busses are great big business. Usually with a single supplier and always a single consumer: the government employees. Thus, high cost, waste and fraud are the primary results. What's next? How great toll lanes are for allowing richer people and government officials to get where they're going on time while the rest cram into the remaining 2 lanes of backed up traffic?

No one in LA respects the bus lane😂

This is San Francisco and most likely bus lanes have fully engulfed the whole city. I mean it’s cool for people commuting but like it’s not cool for people who are just trying to drive. Like you don’t have to close off a whole road for a bus lane you could just take one or two lanes or just put the bus lane in the center like that one street.😂

But what was the area of the road before it became a bus lane? I'm guessing they don't widen the streets for them.

The only people who say this are people who didn't grow up with mass transit. People think mass transit goes to where you need to go. It does not. It will get you within a mile of where you need to go. Be prepared to walk in all types of weather.

The USA loves to combine bus lanes with bike lanes, but people on bikes are expected to just suddenly not exist when a bus comes along.

They're also great for entitled drivers who want to get around traffic. LOL.

But if theres an emergency vehicle coming with lights on, people move to the right. Wont this put them right in the bus lane?

This all assumes that drivers actually respect bus lanes….

I wished the US had adopted these modes of transportation years ago and stuck with it, now we’re stuck literally in traffic because there are no better alternatives. Trams or trains and buses could have been great for longer distances and better zonings as well as better walking and biking infrastructure coulve meant short commute times to the grocery store or coffee shop.

i learned something new

😂🤣🚂👌🥹😎🤙🏻🤙🏻☃️💨⚡️

5:34 why so bad?! Charlotte’s transit is amazing with the lynx!

Im hoping it extends out into St. Charles county

@ 5:00 Van Noooys 🤣🤣 sorry it’s called Van “nice” great video tho

If only there was enough space to allow every mode of transportation a dedicated path with no at grade crossings. You could put a passenger train, a light rail, a street car or busses pr evem F250s, with no crossings and a dedicated path there would be no traffic.

Not to nitpick too much, but light rail is a class of vehicle and track (vs heavy rail). Streetcars, trams, and what you're calling light rail are ALL light rail.

WMATA in DC also runs a bus service with pretty extensive coverage and respectable frequency (it varies by line, day, and time), and clean busses. There is also the Circulator with $1 fares and service to popular locations.

Tucson Arizona. Yes the buses are free,for now, but if you had to pay it's awful. The unhoused camp in them. You have drivers who don't care (as with everything). The worst part? If you want to go from one corner of the city to another it takes hours. If you are lucky, the buses will interlock and you are waiting a few minutes. If you aren't, you are waiting up to a half an hour in the heat. The streercar goes downtown which is great for the University students, but for everyone else it's worthless. There's talk of extending tje line but they can't decide where.

I moved to Sacramento about 5 years ago, and I've only taken the light rail once - to try it out and pretend I was in continental Europe. The nearest station is probably about a mile away. There's a bus station right outside of my apartment. I tried using it a couple of times, but it was *way* more of an ordeal than driving. I didn't know where to go so I just tried Arden Fair Mall and back, which I have walked to, but it's an ordeal, and I've also driven to, but there's usually annoying traffic, especially near the mall itself. I got there, and back, but driving was just easier. I feel like I would use the bus if I was taking classes at Sac State or SCC, and I could use it as a regular commute. It's just not as useful to me for spontaneous traveling. Also, I wasn't sure how the card scanning worked. In some cities you both scan to get on and then scan to get off. In others, you only scan to get on. Nothing really tells you which system to use. When I was visiting San Francisco, I think I may have double scanned, because I was in that mindset.

I'm a san diego resident. One of the biggest problems with MTS is the lack of integration between the busses and trolleys. For example, the rapid 235 bus crosses over the Green Line in mission valley via the 15 but there is no interchange between the two. In fact, the 235 does not stop at all in mission valley. As someone who lives in city heights and works in mission valley, this makes the 235 useless for me.