The 10 Worst Transit Cities: US Metro Areas Where Taking the Bus or Rail May Just Crush Your Soul

[@knutthompson7879]

I was totally expecting Texas cities to dominate the list. Anytime any suggestion of a public transit investment comes up, all the oversized pickup truck driving rancher cosplay folks show up to scream "socialism!" and it goes nowhere.

[@CityNerd]

Yeah, Dallas was #13. Houston was more like 18...I'd have to check Austin and SA.

[@moderatti]

@@CityNerd yeah I’m honestly shocked SA isn’t on this list. Largest city in the US with no rail infrastructure whatsoever. But we do have lots of bus ridership.

[@texaswunderkind]

Seriously. Austin has no problem spending billions on tolled freeways, massive flyovers, and pavement as far as the eye can see. But if you ask for a light rail line to the airport, everybody flips out like Karl Marx is being recited in the kindergartens.

[@dan_air_houston]

I mean Houston isn't so bad if you're inside loop 610, it's the biggest nightmare when you're inside beltway 8 and outside loop 610, and nonexistent outside beltway 8.

[@iseytheteethsnake6290]

@@dan_air_houston kinda same with sa. Inner sa like inside of 410 is generally better for walking and bus frequency. Not the best at all but much better than that “visitors entrance to sa” live oak 35. Heil naw!

[@Petey5]

As someone from KC, the streetcar really has made a huge difference, and is a lot more than just a tourist attraction. It's had double the estimated riders and increased city-wide transit ridership by 30%. If you did a list of top ridership increases in the past few years (with very recent data) KC would probably be pretty high due to the streetcar and it and the buses being free now

[@lcdabest]

agreed, the streetcar is also being extended.

[@CityNerd]

You really saved the kicker for the end of your comment, huh

[@anthony_hugo]

@@CityNerd definitely didn’t hurt ridership, eh? lol

[@rothjoseph]

@@CityNerd My city, Longmont, has free bus fares, but having 4 routes at hour intervals makes it borderline unusable.

[@spencer4732]

glad they're extending the streetcar to the plaza and UMKC

[@PaulMcElligott]

I live in Orange County, CA, and when I’ve tried to use public transit, I’ve usually found the routes and scheduling so maddeningly inconvenient that I give up. It’s almost like the transit authorities around here take this passive-aggressive attitude toward public transit: “Fine, you can have it, but we won’t make it useful.” People who don’t have the option of cars are screwed by a system that almost seems designed to punish people for not having a car.

[@PaulMcElligott]

And FYI, we don’t really pronounce the R in “San Bernardino.”

[@stevengordon3271]

I am sure they are not deliberately punishing riders. It requires a critical mass of routes with high enough frequencies to support convenient transfers. If you try to time it for some transfer points, it will just screw other transfer points. Is it better to put additional resources into more routes or higher frequency service on existing routes? Not a clearcut choice.

[@michaeloreilly657]

The people who organize it, don't use it.

[@stevengordon3271]

@@michaeloreilly657 That is true for many halfway decent transit systems, as well as other social systems. Not a success criteria.

[@qjtvaddict]

That’s US transit and transit in all shithole countries

[@Hawxxfan]

The state of Indiana made a genius policy decision to ban light rail from the entire state. This was done as a political "screw you" from one group of special interests groups to another, and had nothing to do with light rail itself

[@CityNerd]

Is that why there's no streetcar in Indy? Indy just seemed like one of those cities that would definitely have a modern streetcar.

[@gibb1991]

@@CityNerd It's a loooong story that stems all the way back from when the City and County first merged. The merger was non-democratic and wasn't put up for a public vote. It's real goal was to ensure conservative control over the City, which it did successfully for 40 years. Public transit was gutted as were sidewalks (banned for 16 years) and street lamps (banned for 35 years). When we finally got permission from the State to hold a transit referendum, they made the stipulation that none of the money could be spent on rail-based transit and limited the revenue source to a 0.25% income tax.

[@CharlesWillisBonsai]

@@gibb1991 yeah, this entire state is a joke. Maybe it the street cars ran on ethanol they'd ok them

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

Idk man, banning light rail is really just banning popular stupidity. Keep in mind that a ban on light rail DOES NOT prevent cities from building full Metro systems like NYC's (and actually, METRA serves much of Northwest Indiana pretty well, especially the Dunelands).

[@RishayanPorMexico]

@@gibb1991 My god, remind me to never go to Indianapolis!

[@calvinbarr6919]

The sad thing about Detroit is a quarter of the residents don’t own cars and rely on the bus. You’ll see many busses go by that say “bus full” on them and pass up a dozen or more people waiting at a stop. Then you’re stuck waiting at least 30 minutes to an hour for the next one…if it shows up…or if it has room. If the system had the capacity the ridership would not be as low.

[@dianayount2122]

right, but would the "car" city support a decent bus system?

[@calvinbarr6919]

@@dianayount2122 Ridership wise? Yes, and then some. Politically? Also yes. In 2016 there was a proposal for improved bus service and true brt that would have taken away car lanes on some of the city’s most famous streets through a sales tax increase. The city voted 86% in favor, but the suburbs (barely) are what killed it.

[@augusttierney3199]

@@calvinbarr6919not the suburbs, Macomb County.

[@JEK_VaNNNNN]

​@@augusttierney3199 it makes more sense when you consider that a few years later, Macomb County was 23 votes shy of completely getting rid of 100% of their SMART bus services. 800,000 people live in this county. It would've been unprecedentedly stupid.

[@tonysoviet3692]

I always love how economists and environmentalists are arch nemesis, but urban planning issues are probably the only area they all agreed on. Urban cities that have dense, walkable, AND affordable housing are always most optimal. It is always better to have cheap houses in cities than cheap houses in suburbs, and the best thing to protect nature is to stay the hell away from it.

[@terrygelinas4593]

Actually helping the environment is good business, too. Both short and long term.

[@angrydragonslayer]

Cheap apartments/condos Just the land is too expensive to have cheap houses

[@rileynicholson2322]

Idk. The university I went to had an environmental economics department and there was no antagonism between economics and the harder sciences. I think there's a pretty big difference between practicing economists and the political shill "economists" that the public gets exposed to through mass media.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

How do you have cheap houses in the cities though? It seems to me that the only way it's possible is with a monumental amount of economic decline.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@angrydragonslayer Yes, however once you get above about 4 stories or so, the land becomes cheaper than an additional story of building. The Metabolists in Japan tried to address this shortcoming of the system in the 1970's, but sadly, their ideas never really caught on, and the megadeflation of Japans Lost Decade obliterated what was left of their commercial position: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism_(architecture)

[@aleronupstill9816]

I'm a long haul trucker. I've attempted to use public transport from truck stops and commercial/industrial dropyard or abandoned mall parking on my folding bike. My success rate is 1%. Basically Portland OR.

[@danieldaniels7571]

Have you tried Phoenix? The main industrial district where most truck stops are is fairly well served by busses. I work at a huge warehouse and am able to easily (albeit slowly sometimes) commute by transit to my apartment on the other side of town.

[@joshuastarkloff9602]

May I ask what kind of folding bike you have? I've been wanting to get one when i ride Greyhound.

[@brakosjacob8019]

I've had luck in Salt Lake, and if you're brave enough to go to the TA in Albuquerque

[@HowManySmall]

@@brakosjacob8019 can vouch for salt lake city hell you can often ride it for free if you are going on the trains

[@carlgharis7948]

@@danieldaniels7571 okay my question would be. Dose it actually run all 7 days week?

[@snk_private]

As a German it is incredible what passes for good or decent service quality I live in a "metro area" of maybe generously 75,000 people and what you call nice BRT amenities is basically what 60-70% of our bus stops look like. The transit trips per inhabitants per year is around 156 for the statistics I could find.

[@CityNerd]

It's a different world!

[@fszocelotl]

The bus stops shown look like the ones set up in 70-80% of metropolitan area Mexico City, and we are not precisely a country that expends a lot on infrastructure... And I'm not talking about Metrobus or Mexibus.

[@spyone4828]

It's really very simple: if you make a transit service that would only be used by people with no other choice, you will have low ridership. The low ridership then justifies not spending more money on the transit service. And spending more money is how you change it into a service that might be used by someone by choice. Yes, the vast majority of bus stops in the US consist of a pole by the curb with a sign on it that says it is a bus stop and nothing else. This makes them very easy to move if you decide to change the bus route, which means that bus routes do absolutely nothing to stimulate development.

[@veziculorile]

Yeah and unfortunately burning my US passport doesn't help :( Sucks to live here without being able to drive

[@edisonz2006]

Ugh Europeans who think they are superior 🙄

[@jcmik]

"Do you even *have* transit in Cincinnati?" "Yeah... SORTA" Doesn't really inspire confidence 😂😂😂

[@CityNerd]

nope

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

@@CityNerd I know someone who lives in Cincinnati and doesn’t have a car and cannot drive because Of medical reasons but they get all around on the bus system but it’s only practical because they live not far from downtown instead of far suburbia and are Sorta limited where they can go.

[@michaelbrantley5941]

Cincinnati has Metro on the Ohio side and you can transfer to Tank on the Kentucky side

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

@@michaelbrantley5941 yes that’s true there’s also the possibility to transfer from the Cincinnati system to the one in Kentucky but if someone lives in Cincinnati and wants to go to the further suburbia of Cincinnati I think there’s less choices in public transport. I may be wrong I don’t live there just visiting people I know.

[@michaelbrantley5941]

It gets spotty depending on what part of the city you’re going to…….some suburbs have good bus service and some not so much…….it almost doesn’t make sense cause some of the suburbs that are heavily populated won’t have bus service 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@brucewilkinson8599]

This video is just another reminder of how much money is being devoted to the automobile. The crazy urban planning, or lack there of, which encourages people to depend primarily on autos is quite sad. Although I live in a big city (Atlanta) that didn’t make any of your lists I came from a city that had decent mass transit (Chicago). There’s just too must resistance to building in good transit into new developments. And then people complain about gas prices - geez.

[@CyanideCarrot]

People like complaining and if everything is good theres nothing to complain about so they block transit and complain about gas prices

[@fryphillipj560]

@Zaydan Naufal What's a speed-unlimited motorbike? Is it like a moped with the 50kph limit removed?

[@tonywalters7298]

I think a big factor are super wealthy and upper income people who wish to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Easier to do that with personal cars and gated communities than denser developments and public transit. Also, if you look at urban areas that started their growth phase after WW2, there seems to be a trend towards more car-focused development (pretty much all of florida, texas, las vegas, and phoenix)

[@blacklozy5826]

I also stay in the Metro Atlanta Area. Currently working on ways to advocate and change the narrative so we can actually get something done because while there are efforts to make transit more viable and include different types of transportation, the suburban sprawl developments are being built at large and plague both Atlanta and the Metro Atlanta areas.

[@fryphillipj560]

@@blacklozy5826 Stay add it, the world needs more people like you

[@HircusHircus]

Im a civil engineering student in Norfolk VA, I’ve done a project regarding the light rail here and it crushes my soul. Im working on other transit related projects in the area and Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Portsmouth, VA beach, etc) is easily the most disjointed political nightmare for any civil engineer to work in. Thank you for talking about my shitty swamp town. (update) - now working as an engineer here, its just as bad as i thought.

[@erikgustafson9319]

Personally much of it has to do to be the last springboard for republican politicians in Virginia,: especially Virginia beach the term toxic city is an understatement mostly having to do with people who definitely know the benefits of transit living all over the world(but do not know how to implement it) locked in a battle with Donors and strategists who fear that if Southeastern Virginia densifies like European and Asian cities or even something like what Austin wants to do its game over for the republican party in its current state because in their minds'' dencity=more Dems and that will destroy the morally defaulting majority''. GOYO only won because of them only be 56,000 mostly coming from VB Chesapeake. Nimby groups here are some of the most bizarre cheapskates claiming that 250 million dollar projects which are cheap by the US standards cost too much to build. Making up poppycockrys that make even the Cato institute blush, that you cant build unified light rail in a different municipality that didn't build at the same time. Hampton roads represent the crux of American transit woes: Where projects are opposed not for the good of the people but because of a dying corporate bases myopic view based on Niesen nuts and Popcorn policies often to keep them with a springboard to exploit. This HRBT expansion Needs to be the last time such con artery takes place to prevent it from turning into the East coasts version of Houston. We can start by looking into how to get the tide to NSN and build up an effective Commuter network that someday in the somewhat distant future dig under the James to our heart's content. But that plan at the moment is bone dry like NAS Fallon in a drought so until then we must unite like Prussia and just get on with it.

[@LoveStallion]

@@erikgustafson9319 The Tidewater core votes shockingly reliably blue, but the outer burbs of Chesapeake and Suffolk swung more for Youngkin. But so did Chesterfield County, for example. Prince William and Loudon were more competitive than they should have been. All in all, Youngkin latched onto CRT lies that resonated with parents, and McAuliffe ran a pretty anemic campaign.

[@erikgustafson9319]

@@LoveStallion Same GoYo fears the voter base of Nova and Richmond and a big swing in Chesapeake so he has to placate both and not let the VGOP completely embrace MAGA or else there toast

[@erikgustafson9319]

I also think that Virginia should have a more robust regional rail service for rural areas much like DB regio runs its branch line services.

[@kjhuang]

Did CityNerd's pronunciation of Norfolk bother you?

[@jonathansykes4986]

10. Sacramento, CA, 2:44 9. Tampa / St. Petersburg , FL, 3:40 8. Cincinnati, OH, 4:46 7. Jacksonville, FL 5:52 6. Kansas City, MO, 6:57 5. San Bernardino / Riverside, CA, 8:43 4. Detroit, MI, 9:46 3. Norfolk / Virginia Beach, VA 10:59 2. Indianapolis, IN, 12:37 1. Memphis, TN 15:56

[@jmchristoph]

Also, my grandparents lived in the Memphis area, & you can basically explain it as an extreme case of white flight to the surburbs that's still ongoing. Every summer or Christmas we went to visit our folks growing up, the "nice" suburbs had moved further out w/ new construction, what had previously been the "nice" suburbs interior to those tended to age pretty quickly, & traveling inward from there you'd see truly dilapidated sprawl that would have been vibrant only a decade or 2 prior. That's symptomatic of the ongoing capital disinvestment from Memphis proper. Although downtown has revitalized some with the streetcar, there's still a *lot* of neighborhoods within a 5 minute walk of that ROW which have been deliberately & catastrophically blighted, particularly for the Medical Center line. And then redlining just adds another layer on top of that: close-in pre-WWII single-family neighborhoods like Overton Park that are affluent & moderately dense but have basically zero transit service as a deliberate policy choice. In short, whenever I hear anyone mention how US cities are still as segregated as they were under Jim Crow, I think of Memphis, & how basically everything happening in that city to this day still boils down to white ppl still refusing to integrate.

[@BluePieNinjaTV]

This is incredibly depressing

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

What you say reminds me unavoidably of this video by Not Just Bikes. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXrWfpiBoZKGrJI Sounds exactly like the Suburban Growth Ponzi Scheme to me.

[@macgobhann8712]

Absolutely true for most southern cities. Here in Jax there’s a pattern of white flight that’s been happening since the 60s. Huge single-family developments start up on the outskirts, affluent whites move in, years go by and the development becomes harder to maintain and more integrated to the city, affluent whites look for a place to move again, then another huge single-family development pops up. Then the cycle continues. The worst part is that for the most part here in Jax those affluent whites hold most power in the city and Veto any development that doesn’t benefit them. We’ve been doing non-stop construction on highways, most significantly the belt road around the city, for lord knows, 30 years. We spend millions in tax dollars lengthening and widening highways so these affluent whites can zoom past and through all the blight and under-development their very own policies create.

[@jmchristoph]

@@augustvonmackensen3902 it's not. Chuck Marohn is fundamentally a conservative, & so has very little meaningful to say about the racialized nature of US suburbs. White flight is not a mere financial Ponzi scheme, it is Apartheid enabled by land theft. Rather than maintaining sprawl over many decades through subsidies from the city, white flight simply abandons the old sprawl when it's reached its lifespan & builds new sprawl further out. And that "keep going further out" dynamic is not a by-product of the financial insolvency of sprawl, but rather the entire point of white flight development.

[@augustvonmackensen3902]

@@jmchristoph But I think what you’ve just described is a key part the Growth Ponzi Scheme. Build new places to generate new tax revenues, let existing places decay and rot, rinse, repeat. The growth Ponzi Scheme inherently involves the non-maintenance of existing places as you describe above. As for the racial aspect, that’s an intricate issue and not one I know too much about other than the obvious. However looking at white flight without also looking at the unsustainable financial model which at least partially underpins it would seem a mistake to me.

[@MrRollercoastersRock]

I still find it amazing that Cincinnati used to have 222 miles worth of Streetcar track, one of the largest in the us, and all of that was torn down in the 1950s. Our new streetcar had some hiccups when it opened in 2016, mostly due to our Governor pulling funding for the Uptown Line in 2011(which sabotaged a lot of its ridership that would have come from connecting Uptown with the basin) but operating fare free since 2020 it is now being used as a legit transportation system between OTR and Downtown. Its last few months have seen the highest consistent ridership in its 6 year history and one of the highest ridership in the modern streetcar systems built. A study in 2008 found it would cost 100 million to bring the abandoned subway into something that is being used as a subway, prob would be more like 200 million now but the fact that we still have it and it is relatively cheap compared to building a brand new subway in the future, I hope Cincinnati finds a way to make a nice regional Light Rail and BRT network(BRT going in places that would be unfeasible to reach via light rail) with Streetcar extensions in the urban core to serve a the dense urban core (Clifton, West End, Camp Washington, Newport, Covington) as envisioned in the MetroMoves plan in 2002. Leadership of SORTA has been very very lackluster since they passed the 0.5% tax to increase routes. Our regional planning organization, OKI, had its CEO make comments last year that our region will always be car based(which is just asinine to think about). The levy has brought much more consistency now to Metro, but the other portions of bringing BRT have yet to even make it to the planning phase, which angers me. I truly believe if they would ask for a 0.25% increase in Sales Tax to bring the Metro Moves plan into full fruition combined with the prior 0.5% increase, Hamilton County would vote for it. Your comment about our urban fabric is very true, but the sad fact is that before I-75 and the horrible planning of a light industrial office park to replace a bustling impoverished but strong community into now vacant and decaying 60s industrial waste of buildings, our urban fabric was of the caliber of cities like Detroit and Philidelphia. At one point Cincinnati was the densest city in the United States outside of Manhattan and Hoboken in the mid to late 1800s. The 2-3 sq mile Downtown-OTR-West End urban basin in 1890 had a population density of 38,000 people per square mile (!!!). Look up the before and after pictures of the West End. The city displaced 26,000 mostly Black Cincinnatians for "urban renewal" and the highway. Ironically this was spinned in such a way that the ward of the West End voted for the bond measure funding it in 1956, thinking it would better the lives of everyone in the neighborhood. Even building the highway, a bit of the neighborhood west of the highway would have remained, they built Queensgate in its place in the mid to late 1960s. Worst mistake our city made, of the caliber of the subway remaining unfinished. Im glad a portion of the neighborhood remains, but it is sad to see it a shell of what it was before urban renewal tore it apart.

[@CityNerd]

Thanks for the detail -- would love a chance to get deeper into histories of particular cities, and Cincinnati is such an interesting one.

[@rayfridley6649]

Does the Cincinnati regional transit system include their Kentucky suburbs?

[@breadddie]

@@rayfridley6649 there are TANK buses that go just barely into downtown but from there you have to connect to a metro bus

[@vicepresidentmikepence889]

Americans.."THESE GAS PRICES ARE INSANE"!!!!!!!!! Americans "NO WAY AM I TAKING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION"!!!!!!

[@colormedubious4747]

Not true. Transit ridership tends to increase when fuel prices do.

[@stevengordon3271]

Just yesterday I saw more than a few cars idling waiting for somebody to do their grocery shopping while the temperature was a mild 75. Gas prices are still not high enough to make a difference if people are still doing that.

[@colormedubious4747]

@@stevengordon3271 That's a different issue. As Ron White famously stated, "You can't fix stupid."

[@macgobhann8712]

@@stevengordon3271 Yeah for the people who can afford to drive giant fuel guzzling vehicles gas prices aren’t nearly high enough. But like the other guy said, higher gas prices do force people to look for other options. People wonder why Europe has much less “car culture” but have you seen gas prices there? They’re much much higher and have been that way forever. Car culture is ridiculous in the US because it’s been subsidized for the past 80 years. Get rid of those subsidies and I’m positive lots of changes will start happening.

[@ChildrenOfRadiation]

@@colormedubious4747 If there's a transit to ride on, lol.

[@MrJamieBattle]

I’m from the Hampton Roads area and served on HRT’s riders advisory board for the majority of the 2010s. My final straw was Virginia Beach voting down the extension of the light rail and the local paper called it a 57%-43% landslide, which is absurd. I’m now a resident of DC and it’s a 5 minute walk to the orange line and a 12 minute frequency bus line to work. Beats an hour frequency back home ;)

[@MohondasK]

You have it right with Cincinnati: a beautiful urban fabric with sub-par (sub-sub-par?) public transit. What exists of the streetcar is great, there’s just not nearly enough of it.

[@CUB3Jsg22]

I wish every day that there was a metro system here lol. Would've made my life so much easier. Parking in OTR or by the Banks is horrendous when it's busy on a gameday or just a nice day. So frustrating.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@CUB3Jsg22 They tried to build one in the early 1900's, but the engineer was a moron: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Subway

[@bengriffin9830]

The buses are mostly fine, depending on where you are and where you want to go. I take them regularly downtown - zero complaints. Getting across town is another matter… At least they’re finally investing and expanding service.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@bengriffin9830 Yes and that's actually MORE of an issue with rail-based transit, not less.

[@orangeadventure975]

Cincinnati has been a victim of every bad Moses-era urban planner and corrupt Ohio Republican politician decision you can think of. I think we're on the up and up, the city itself is majority Democratic and the current mayor Aftab Pureval is pro-YIMBY and transit. We just need to end our NIMBY housing policies to accomodate all you coastal types moving here and jacking up rent. Don't get me wrong, i'm no "we're full get out" type, i want you guys to come here and make our city cool. We just gotta build the housing first!

[@mitchellbeyer416]

I'd like to see a video on cities that were built as suburbs but have been taking steps to truly urbanize. Aurora, CO is in some of the early steps for this and it would be interesting to see areas that have been able to make the switch.

[@qjtvaddict]

Don’t they have excellent regional rail service

[@rudinah8547]

Top fastest growing areas

[@gregfargo9325]

I like this idea. Is it gonna be almost all sun belt or do NE suburbs (which probably have small town bones already) work better? I guess there are just so many types of suburban municipalities, and the criteria chosen affect this list tremendously.

[@CityNerd]

@@gregfargo9325 Yeah, it's tricky but I'm up for it.

[@aidanb.c.2325]

This is similar to a suggestion I made a couple weeks back about looking at "invisible" cities - basically suburbs big enough that on their own geographically could/would be considered significant places. Funny enough, it's Aurora that got me thinking about this (I'm from Mass but I lived there for two years after college).

[@redstonerelic]

I will say that here in Cincinnati, we did have a ballot measure pass to increase service for METRO, there are now some 24 hr lines that run with 15 20 minute headways. Unfortunally back in the early 2000s we voted down 2 to 1 a plan for more transit (Metro Moves if you want to look it up) so thats sad

[@qjtvaddict]

Woah

[@danieldaniels7571]

Imagine if they actually finally finished the subway

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

Yeah that’s sad especially because I know someone there who depends on the bus to go everywhere because they cannot drive because of medical reasons and they’re not that old

[@wrestlersandiego]

Very sad. The building of I-75 on top of the subway right of way, pushed by the highway lobby was a disaster. Cincinnati could stand out as having excellent transit, instead they have highway lobby induced freeways. A good starter would be a pay parking garage at the end of the present Central Parkway tunnel with trains in to the city which would really be helpful for Reds and Bengal games as well.

[@davidneman6527]

@@wrestlersandiego The Cincinnati subway was constructed by draining the Miami and Erie Canal and building stations within the canal bed and Central Parkway on top. You can see the original portals on the east side of I-75, just south of Hopple St. It would be a piece of cake to extend tracks out of the tunnel and have the trains continue to run in the I-75 right-of-way. Unfortunately, a number of other circumstances make rehabilitation of the tunnels an expensive proposition.

[@nihouma11]

Dallas is currently making great improvements. We reworked our bus system to have actually frequent bus routes and more logical alignments, will be expanding our light rail capacity in the core soon. DART has also gotten serious recently about encouraging transit oriented development around stations, and just signed a deal to turn the surface parking lot near Mockingbird Station into a mixed use dense development

[@paulgardner5079]

I just left Dallas last year and I used DART. If you are in Dallas proper and some of the inner suburbs, Garland and Irving in particular, , its not hard to get where you are going, although sometimes time consuming.

[@deborahlincoln-strange622]

I live in McKinney and there is no public transportation here. It's terrible.

[@inoculatedcity]

dart within dallas is kinda decent but the political opposition to expanding dart in the suburbs is insane. the complaints i’ve seen on nextdoor whenever an expansion is suggested haunt me

[@slothgirl2107]

I live in Plano and use Dart paratransit but it's maddening how few cities they actually go to. Like they don't even go to Allen or Mckinney??

[@The-NSA]

@@slothgirl2107that’s not dart’s fault lol. They’re not going to expand to cities that don’t want them.

[@1nsertTitleHere]

I recently moved from Northern New Jersey to downtown Norfolk. The Tide (Norfolk's Light Rail) was actually voted down by Virginia Beach, and has to end in a really weird spot near the outskirts of the city. Hampton Roads in general (the name of the general area) has some very wild transit issues, mostly surrounding the fact that there is a massive bay it has to cross, and transit planners did a bad job considering the high amounts of military folks in the area. There have been plans to introduce a light rail that would connect the peninsula (Hampton, Newport News, Yorktown) with the southside (Portsmouth, Norfolk, VA Beach), but nothing has really worked out yet. The airport doesn't even want the light rail because all their money comes from parking. Downtown Norfolk can be really walkable and in some cases, you can actually get by without a car, but for the rest of the area, you absolutely need a car and it makes me miserable to have to rely on my car and deal with the constant traffic.

[@mattduffy7048]

Indy resident (& IndyGo employee) here - the southern portion of the Rt 90 you highlighted does not do the BRT line, and really, how transformational the line was for the City, justice. It was the first all electric BRT line in the country, 60% dedicated lanes, center running with left side level boarding in the norther portion. Future BRT lines are similar in style, converting stroads to transit corridors with center running transit. Next BRT line is under construction now (90% dedicated lanes along 15mi) and last BRT line construction anticipated to start in 2024 & open in 2026 (70% dedicated along 24mi). IndyGo is also doing a network redesign that includes substantial improvements to service hours and frequency :)

[@MuddyRavine]

Take a European city, like say Vienna, it has about 2.8-3.0 million people, about the same size as St Louis, Denver or San Diego. Vienna's public transportation is SOOOoooo much better than any of those cities. Metro, Trams, Buses... Metro trains arrive every 3 or 4 minutes, trams come every 7 to 10 minutes, there are so many lines, the whole place is covered. You absolutely do not need a car to get anywhere within Vienna. US public transportation is a joke, it is just terrible. I'm not even sure you could say NYC is as good as Vienna.

[@helenlittle7761]

I’d love to see a video about the worst and most expensive highway projects in large cities. The Texas Department of Transportation has been pursuing a $7B I45 expansion through the middle of Houston and has completely ignored data collected by the city government and local groups about the project’s economic, environmental, and equity impacts on the city.

[@danieldaniels7571]

TDOT gonna TDOT

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

The Federal Government already has very specific requirements for addressing economic, environmental and equity impacts in freeway projects that have existed since the Nixon Administration. I'm not saying the process works, but when you are already required to answer the 1500 page document of the Federal Government on the subject matter (that generally results in really strange, inefficient and expensive routes from new freeways, often in the shape of a giant U), you're neither going to have the time, the political/legal liberty nor the inclination to consider a similar written debate from community groups.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

Houston has horrible sprawl! !!!!! Took forever to drive through it and really depressing looking at the endless sprawl and suburbs and so many new apartments so ugly with so many gigantic parking lots and big box stores. Of course no mom and pop stores less it’s in downtown.

[@aygwm]

Houston is a terrible place.

[@ljacobs357]

@@aygwmonly if you don’t live here.

[@politicalhorizon2000]

Thank you for naming Tampa. As a resident I hate how bad public transit is. I have tried many times to influence public policy to improve transit to no avail

[@dolladp7769]

They’ve been talking about it for over 20 years and still nothing

[@Connie.T.]

I clicked on this video expecting to see Indianapolis, and I think the reason for that perverse desire to see one's own city shamed is because it vindicates our complaints, which are entirely ignored by the local gov, and your data is useful for demanding better transit. Thank you!!!

[@johnbiggs7181]

I love the positive spin you put on this list!

[@CityNerd]

It would've been too depressing otherwise

[@rlarsen000]

As a half-century resident of Memphis, I am not surprised at Memphis transit being “#1”. Growing up I was used to having (and using) the convenience of Chicago’s CTA system. I went to college in Memphis and discovered that you needed to get a bus schedule - something I had never heard of - and carefully plan any trip. Increasing suburban sprawl in the Memphis area has just made transit increasingly inconvenient and sparse. It’s a viscious cycle.

[@timothymutuma1249]

While cycling, nothing scares me more than large trucks, trailers or busses. Shared bike & bus and it's painted lane sounds like a horror movie plot for me.

[@Pystro]

Yes, cycling in front of a bus would really be scary (ask me how I know). Nobody would WANT it to be the best solution, but that doesn't mean that there aren't situations where it is. If you think about it logically, there are a lot of reasons why it should work; And I'd love to hear from people who have actually cycled on one if I'm wrong about the following: A: The average speed of buses that stop at stations and bikes (okay, my only data point is MY cycling speed) are very similar (except on hills). That means if a bike falls into a good gap between buses, you'd be able to go pretty far before one mode catches up to the other. B: The largest danger from long vehicles might be the situation when they do a right turn and a cyclist is to the rear right of them. By putting both the most threatened and the threat (one of the threats) in the same lane, you can guarantee that they are going through intersections behind each other, instead of besides each other. For the second threat (trucks), the priority signaling from point C2 would alleviate that (partially). C: The bus lane is mainly there to [1: ensure that they don't get hindered by slow traffic] and/or [2: to be able to provide an early green at intersections]. 2 is the same you'll want to do for bikes too. I thought for a moment that after the intersection, you'd need some length of separate bike and bus lanes to make buses not immediately lose that head start over cars, but in fact, the bus should be able to pull out into the car lanes (unless there's a car that has turned onto that road in the perpendicular phase and is doing something unusual). And 1 works as long as EITHER the traffic is slow enough that being caught behind a bike is an improvement over being caught in traffic OR the traffic flows well enough that the bus can pull out into the car lanes to pass any bikes. I'd insist on these 2 rules, though: Buses have to pull out FULLY to overtake bikes and Buses must not irritate cyclist by following too closely. D: If buses travel on combined lanes, their schedule should really be forgiving enough that being caught behind a reasonably slow bike wouldn't screw up their schedule (unless they're already late). So IDEALLY buses on such a lane wouldn't usually be in very much of a rush. E: Roads that these are put on are not an environment that would be very pleasant to be in on a bike, even in a separate bike lane. (Keep in mind that those roads would have at least 2 car lanes + 2 bus/bike lanes, enough traffic volume to warrant the bus lanes, and usually not slow-moving traffic.) E.1: A good network of cycle lanes would be dense enough and give you enough options that you don't have to go very long distances on such a major road. Then again, a good bike lane network would provide physically separated bike lanes on all major roads, so you really can't assume a city that deems the combined lanes viable has one. But for a city that DOES have a dense network, the combined lanes can be a good option for roads/streets that are too space-constrained for both bus and bike lanes. F: If you have both a bus lane and a bike lane they conflict anyways: If the bike lane is on the asphalt, the bus pulls into bus bays that are in the way of the bike lane. Or the bike lanes are on the pavement and pass on the outside of the bus shelters*, but in that case you have to rely on pedestrians to not make a sudden hook from the sidewalk to the the bus shelter* without looking. Or, worst case, the bike lane is on the pavement but crosses between the bus bay and the shelter*. In that case any cyclist that passes a bus with open doors is guaranteed to eventually run into an exiting passenger that wasn't visible until they were fully in the path of the bike. (*if your stop doesn't have a shelter, the same applies to the area of the pavement where most passengers wait.)

[@trainluvr]

When you see a bus coming behind you, just pause and let it pass. Small price to pay for having a 11 foot wide bike lane.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@trainluvr couldn’t agree more.

[@jensberlin3438]

@@Pystro actually in Berlin Bus lanes are shared with bicycles. And bus drivers learnt to deal with it

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

What you're forgetting though is most bus lanes are not 2nd Avenue in NYC. Most buses only come once every 30 minutes or so, so most times you are in the shared lane, there will not be a bus sharing the lane with you. You won't get a ticket if you do decide to share the lane with the bus, but you could honestly just wait a few minutes and start your trip after the bus is gone.

[@vavin6927]

The “The Tide” light rail is being extending to Military Circle Redevelopment but it originally it was going to Virginia Beach which got voted down by locals, Greenbrier which had commitments pulled after VB vote, and Naval Station Norfolk which was two expensive at a billion dollars which made them switch to a BRT. The 2011 transit plan for “after 2035” had it going from Huntington point in York County 50 miles down to Greenbrier with a Branches to Downtown Hampton and BRT to Suffolk. The whole area of South Hampton roads is scarred with Urban Renewal, immense sprawl, and Car dependency especially in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. I highly recommend Virginia Places article “Streetcars and Light Rail in Virginia” on the topic.

[@qjtvaddict]

Give up build monorail lines

[@vavin6927]

@@qjtvaddict Monorails are extremely expensive and require service lock in. Check out RMtransits video on it “Monorails are bad... Or are they?”

[@oldbikeguy411]

A Primer on Pronunciation - "Norfolk" Although in the colonial era Norfolk may have meant the 'The Folk of the North'; north bank of the Elizabeth River of the established ship building and major port industries in the mid-Atlantic coast; or it may have been a nostalgic reminisce of a people's home in England. The pronunciation, by the natives. The poem most often recited to share it's correct pronunciation: We don't smoke, We don't drink, Nor f*ck, Nor f*ck!

[@xavierdomenico]

@@oldbikeguy411 or just nawfick

[@robertcartwright4374]

CityNerd can not only do snark, (lotsa fun!), he can be gentle too! Highly enjoyable.

[@lanespyksma8402]

I think a video on transit oriented development would be interesting - though I'm not sure how you could find a metric for this. I still think it definitely has video potential. Great video as always!

[@LoveStallion]

Cincinnati really is a fascinating urban area. It's also the first purely "American" city - the first to develop after independence. But yes, major bummer that the subway never went anywhere, nor did they maximize their OG train station, which has an amazing design and intended integration with other modes of transit (dedicated tram and bus tunnels).

[@davidneman6527]

In contrast to Rochester, which built and abandoned its subway, Cincinnati's was never placed in service. Cincinnati also has an underground BRT transit center downtown that stretches several blocks. It is open only for home Bengals games and a few special events, some hours every year.

[@nihilistkiteflyr]

Also a shame that Cincinnati removed its public trams when it put in highways. Not a unique story to Cincinnati, but I always thought that its hilly geography lents itself incredibly well to streetcars.

[@andrepoiy1199]

Arlington TX, located between Dallas and Ft Worth, population 300k, be like: what's a bus??

[@qjtvaddict]

Pathetic

[@dwaynerichardson5380]

You can blame Jerry Jones for this. He wants no public transportation near AT&T Stadium. Even when I attended a U2 concert, my hotel shuttle had to drop us off a mile from the stadium.

[@ilta222]

arlington texas is the largest US city without public transit. which is ridiculous at this point, because its growth rate is rising like crazy. its set to become the new dallas.

[@garybacon659]

@@ilta222 Not just Jerry. Residents voted against public transport.

[@grahamturner2640]

Isn't it something they pride themselves on?

[@kian7055]

I grew up in Norfolk! That's the closest to a central city in the Hampton Roads area - Virginia Beach has nearly twice the population but is just massive suburban sprawl. As you noted, the light rail isn't all that useful. They've looked at extensions but rejected them for various reasons (service to the oceanfront in VB was planned but their residents rejected the funding for it in a referendum, so that's not happening, and others were too expensive) so right now it doesn't go much of anywhere.

[@295g295]

10:53 - Norfolk, Hampton Roads, Tidewater, Virginia Norfolk Tide Light-rail, built about 10 years ago : kzbin.info/www/bejne/hYvZhHyAn56frNk

[@qjtvaddict]

Why can’t residents just be ignored? We ignored em to build highways why not just build the damn lines and let ridership speak

[@josephbeattie7569]

@@qjtvaddict because these are wealthy white suburbanites, i.e. the only people who matter in this country

[@CityNerd]

Yeah, I think that's what I get tripped up on -- Norfolk is clearly more central, but VA Beach is bigger. What other metro area in the US is like that? SF-San Jose, but they're different metros, right?

[@qolspony]

True. But VB is the economic engine of the region. Especially the summers. THE BEACH and the development there is incredible.

[@paveladamek3502]

I am from a city of 450k in a Central European country. Seven universities, tons of research and science institutions, etc. We have 11 tram lines and a few dozen bus lines that run, on a weekday, every 5-10 minutes.

[@StupidStuff135]

I live in Norfolk, it's undoubtedly the downtown of the region. Chesapeake and VB are larger but entirely suburban sprawl, Norfolk has a walkable downtown and "good bones". There's actually fairly good regional express bus service between city centers imo, but the local and feeder bus lines are slow, infrequent, and not time synced so you spend as much time waiting for transfers as you do sitting on the bus. However as someone who's lived and used the transit in Norfolk for a number of years I was surprised to see it on this list, unquestionably needs improvement but it's definitely useable imo.

[@StupidStuff135]

The light rail line was planned to go between downtown Norfolk and the oceanfront, the biggest tourism area in the region. However after the Norfolk segment was completed Virginia Beach residents voted it down and the second half of the line was cancelled, leaving a half finished line to nowhere. It's kinda useful for getting around downtown once you're there but doesn't connect to anything regionally

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

Another thing too is Hampton Roads has an almost entirely industrial economy, which means traffic flow is unpredictable. A factory can go from having a staff of 50,000 to a staff of 50, or vice versa, in the space of a year.

[@JonReams]

Cincinnati might not have the most expansive transit but there are efforts to make the best of what we have. The downtown core is surrounded by steep hills and cliffs that used to have streetcar inclines in the before GM times. SORTA has chosen to focus on completing trips in as few transfers as possible. Local nimbys are particularly well funded though

[@dwaynebaker8580]

He's right about Sacramento . The whole bus/light rail service is basic but ok . It's good from 9am to 7pm but people work or do some night grocery shopping after work , so SACRT needs to extend regular service until 9pm , add night service until 11pm/12am.

[@gmkgoat]

I used to live in Jax, FL. Went to college at the campus across the street from the main bus terminal downtown. The low capacity of the skyway is a legit complaint but I found the bigger issue was that it just doesn't go anywhere. If you need to get from Rosa Parks to the convention center, it is relatively quick and completely free, but otherwise it's kinda worthless.

[@M3rw1ck]

Moved to Ames, IA from abroad for college, and just assumed that the vigor of the CyRide bus system there was a normal sight throughout the country. I soon realized how wrong I was.. Being a college town, the buses run for free at night around the weekends till the bars close, so people don't drive drunk. On school days, the buses broadcast messages on their LED boards. My favorite being "Call Mom, Call Dad, Send Love, Ask for Money".

[@sethtriggs]

Interesting list! With Detroit, there is also the segregated bus service; there's still Detroit Transit (which serves the city) - DT. SMART is mainly for suburbs. So that is an issue. The People Mover was an early demonstrator 'gadgetbahn' if I recall correctly.

[@thaabstrakt]

Just about to mention most of this. Also, there are plenty of issues with it, but I’ve made a ton of use of the QLine.

[@agntdrake]

Yes, the people mover is a gadgetbahn, but it's also the same system that most of Vancouver's SkyTrain uses, and Vancouver would be up at the top of the list of most transit friendly cities. I think its success (or lack thereof) just comes down to a combination of poor urban planning and urban decay. Good transit was always going to be a hard sell in Motor City though I think.

[@alewis0519]

The other thing about SMART is that the suburbs within the system pay for continued coverage. If any of them choose to pull out of the system (like what Auburn Hills and Macomb Township are trying to do) service to them will stop. And SMART already has disjointed coverage and low frequency as it is.

[@crotchwolf1929]

The Q Line really has performance issues due to being built on the shoulder as opposed to the center of Woodward. You have a car accident, a lazy driver or an ambulance that has to stop on Woodward, it's blocking the line. SMART or NOT SO SMART is sporadic at best and suburbs are allowed to drop out if they so choose to do (Auburn Hills just did that.) This leaves an already poor system with spotty service that can ultimately be useless if the place you live/work is in a community without bus service.

[@nom5358]

i was surprised when i got on DDOT buses while visiting Detroit (as a white guy) and everyone looked at me like i was from another planet. one guy even said “i didn’t know white people still rode DDOT”… like people gotta get where they gotta go, right?

[@MrAflac9916]

I’m shocked Columbus, Ohio wasn’t in the top 10

[@chispitablanca]

Came here to say this. COTA is hot fire garbage and the city makes ZERO attempts at any form of transit aside from buses. They wasted millions of dollars on the “smart city” project and achieved absolutely nothing except paying like 10 ppl a six figure salary with all that money.

[@TheRetarp]

Yup largest metro area in the USA with no passenger rail service.

[@rossbleakney3575]

@@TheRetarp Never mind that. Most American cities have tiny rail ridership. The problem with Columbus is no one is riding the buses: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_local_bus_agencies_by_ridership

[@ernothorp9893]

In the UK even rural buses are more frequent than ones in Memphis

[@Pakatak2147]

Hit the nail on the head with Cincinnati. I'd like to see something where you can talk about how awesome Cincinnati is

[@CityNerd]

I'll work it in where I can. Big fan

[@BaggyMcPiper]

Cincinnati being on these lists always feels weird. While the existing infrastructure is overwhelmingly geared towards cars, a fifth of Cincinnati households don't even own a car, which is remarkable and shows that the city itself is at least somewhat walkable. With some smart transit investments (and the bell connector is a great start) I think Cincinnati could become a great transit city.

[@ztl2505]

Situations like this make me wonder if “highest percent of trips by car” would be a better metric for evaluating poor urban fabric. This video is specifically about transit so I can’t fault it, but I personally find cities with the highest percentage of walking/biking commuters even more desirable than those with high transit ridership.

[@ajjordan5596]

Agreed. Cincinnati was the BEST city I've lived in car-free. It was so easy to get anywhere because it's so walkable and the few bus lines connect to strong urban neighborhood centers across the region.

[@neilworms2]

Cincinnati is very walkable, there just is no transit to connect the many very walkable nodes the city has.

[@shinnam]

Hate visiting Cincinnati suburbs. Yes it sorta has buses, but it not even one bus an hours. I don't have a driver's license because I don't need one in Europe. My sister can't understand how an adult doesn't have or want a driver's licence.

[@haj8579]

Lived in Cincinnati for a year before the bell connector was completed. It was a total pain in the ass to use buses there, no matter regular or express buses.

[@eric8295]

Kansas City doesn’t need separated fare systems because the whole system is free!

[@DanTheCaptain]

Wait actually?

[@somethingsomething7712]

Yes the entire bus & streetcar system was made free in 2020

[@tomfields3682]

Has it improved ridership,?

[@KyrieFortune]

@@tomfields3682 according to people who live there, it exploded in ridership, so ye

[@BillLaBrie]

Might as well make it free. Transit systems lose enormous amounts of money worldwide.

[@royvandermarel3953]

Growing up in Amsterdam, where the tram-system is so dense we could call one of our teams the TramDodgers, I have a biased view on public transit. Knowing how much our city benefits from public transit make your videos painful to watch. The quality is great, it's just sad to see a rich and developed nation rely on car ownership and care so little about the people less fortunate.

[@RBzee112]

That's how the Brooklyn Dodgers got their name. Dodging street cars in early 20th century Brooklyn before moving to Los Angeles.

[@royvandermarel3953]

@@RBzee112 😉

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

Actually, the freeway-oriented development of the US has tended to help the less fortunate. More freeway-oriented cities tend to have significantly lower living costs overall, mostly because it tends to lead to more land to expand upon (which, given the small size of the Netherlands and the tremendous value of rural areas as highly productive farmland there, is, understandably, something the Dutch don't really have as an option). Yeah you don't have to pay for car expenses in a transit-oriented American city, but the increase in rent (from around $1000 a month in a not-transit-oriented place, to about $3000-$4000 a month in a transit-oriented place) is larger than the car expenses. It basically costs the less fortunate $2000-$3000 a month to live somewhere with transit, as opposed to around $1000 a month to own a car, and that's because the downside of upward development is you're always having to demolish something else to put up the taller building, which leads to both monumental (pardon the pun) expenses for the property developer, and significant legal and political pushback from the community being redeveloped for a larger number of people, whereas to put up a suburb, you're literally just buying one farm and putting in houses or low-rise apartments. Suburbs are separate governments because the land usually didn't even have a city government before you bought the farm.

[@royvandermarel3953]

@@alexanderfretheim5720 I'm no expert in this field, but to me it sounds like you are merely looking at the positive sides of non-transit-oriented development. Neglecting the fact that freeways cut communities in half, reducing the nearby opportunities of its populations and turning walkable/cyclable commutes into car commutes. There's the environmental impact it has on cities, which influences healthcare costs and carbon footprint reducing costs (some mandatory). And, as you did mention, it saves a lot of space which we Dutch don't have, though we rarely build higher than 5 stories except for offices. Next to that: no one is paying $4000 p/month on rent. Amsterdam is going for $25 per m2 on avg. Nobody in the city lives in a 160m2 house without owning it. And for these kinds of houses that's only an option for the richest 1-3%. Cut your estimates in half and you'd be closer to realism. As our living standards aren't worse than most US cities, I feel affordable transit-orientation is a choice. Though not owning multiple cars might sound like a distopian, communist hellhole to some of your countrymen. 😉

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@royvandermarel3953 That's not a fair assessment. I actually don't support an excessive focus on freeway-oriented development, but the fact is that the expansion of non-transit-oriented development in the 1950's led to a TREMENDOUS increase in middle class prosperity and a huge DROP in poverty rates. Many misinterpretations of that history are the product of redlining and racism, rather than cars. This doesn't mean we should build Levittowns everywhere, only that any consideration of transit-oriented development needs to be balanced by the fact that transit-oriented development can result in a certain amount of economic elitism and a colossal SURGE in poverty rates, as it has in California. In other words, we should support transit-friendly development for reasons that have nothing to do with the poor, and balance it with a concern for the poor that requires us to still have non-transit-friendly development in places. My argument against you is in your false belief that mass-transit is for the poor, or necessary for the poor. Your argument is sophistry, and in recent times, such bad arguments have ruined perfectly good democracies and served as a collective cancer on the brains of the masses. "Neglecting the fact that freeways cut communities in half, reducing the nearby opportunities of its populations and turning walkable/cyclable commutes into car commutes." Freeways only cut communities in half if you build the freeway through the center of the community. If you build freeways on the edges of communities, while retaining the more traditional roads as transit-friendly walkable thoroughfares with DECREASED speed limits, as we did with US-20/I-90 east of Wyoming, they don't cut anything in half. "There's the environmental impact it has on cities, which influences healthcare costs and carbon footprint reducing costs (some mandatory)" Poverty tends to increase poor health more than air pollution. "And, as you did mention, it saves a lot of space which we Dutch don't have, though we rarely build higher than 5 stories except for offices." Indeed. The whole point of that parenthetical statement was to say that I wouldn't actually recommend it for your country, but for America, Russia, India, China, even Turkey? It has a place. The Dutch are making a very logical decision for the Netherlands, but you should not misinterpret the intentions or outcomes of other countries, as you clearly have with the United States.

[@notthemama9986]

I live in Sac and yeah, SacRT sucks. They're "trying" to modernize but doing basically nothing to take those steps. Their idea of modernization is just to purchase new low-floor vehicles with like pretty much no other development. Maybe it's because there's not a whole lot of money propping them up, but it's an ineffective and incompetent transit agency with seemingly no urgency to actually build anything useful. The Green Line had a little one-station extension about 10 years ago and they haven't even finished the draft EIR for the rest of the extension to the airport. Pretty embarrassing. The 65th Street station only is getting those nice new buildings because it's a 5 minute walk from Sacramento State, and RT claims to be working on TOD, but it looks like they've just passed that task off to the County, which is known to be pretty negligent to their basic duties so it's probably not coming anytime soon.

[@wiski2]

I live in Sac too and the light rail is a joke! From the way the tracks were set up, they could've easily built a real metro train if not for the short segment downtown where the tracks run in street traffic. And the north end of the blue line stops in-between the two sides of I80 (literally built themselves into a corner) so it would be impossible to extend from there without bridging or tunneling around the freeway.

[@alexbutler9343]

@@wiski2 ha that Paul Ryan photo shoot still makes me laugh

[@notthemama9986]

@@wiski2 It's almost insulting the way they've designed the light rail. The south portion of the Blue Line is a disgrace, runs completely on a freight ROW and stations are just plopped on the side of the tracks with no regard for whether or not they will actually attract ridership. Most people in South Sac don't even know they live within a .5 mile of a station!! And for the amount of "effort" they've been putting into the Green Line and the streetcar to West Sac you'd think somebody would suggest running a line up Watt or Sunrise lol

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@notthemama9986 What's wrong with a freight right of way? Sounds like a good way to build passenger service to places that don't have enough passsengers to serve. In fact, why not put freight on any right of way anytime the passengers trains aren't using it?

[@eddie7923]

Seems like SacRT has had a lost decade and a half since 2008-ish service cuts? I feel like they built quite a lot of rail in the 90's/ early 2000's (albeit with many of the design mistakes typical of that time period) and then went into a ridership/ financial nosedive they've never recovered from

[@leowehner3000]

The Hampton Roads are extremely bewildering. Someone already mentioned that Norfolk is the center - before industrialization it was one of the largest cities in the South, and had great urban fabric. Now pretty much all of the CBD is beneath one giant indoor mall. It’s also a strange area because huge swathes of suburbia are incorporated under these giant cities, which in Virginia’s unique local government system operate completely separately from counties. So you have ~300,000 population cities like Chesapeake which lack even a notional or historical walkable core. I think the key to understanding the Hampton Roads is that the major job center is no longer downtown - it’s a single employer, the United States Military. There are 15 separate installations, including Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world. Essentially, at some point in the middle of the twentieth century, the historic cities of Norfolk, Hampton and Portsmouth morphed into a megasuburb feeding workers into the one of the biggest concentrations of military-related jobs in history.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

"It’s also a strange area because huge swathes of suburbia are incorporated under these giant cities, which in Virginia’s unique local government system operate completely separately from counties. So you have ~300,000 population cities like Chesapeake which lack even a notional or historical walkable core. " Not as odd as you think. The Manila suburb of Quezon City is technically the largest city in the Phillipines by population. Of course, Manila very much has a urban core, and is the indisputable commercial center of its region, but nevertheless, most people commute from Quezon City.

[@jasonreed7522]

Earlier today i was following train tracks in cities near my hometown (city is a big stretch) and i noticed the housing density of the on base housing. It was disgustingly low density suburban, like the rural hamlets adjacent to the base are denser than those stupid winding cul-de-sacs. (Admittedly this is NY and hasn't grown significantly since the car was invented so all the towns have a dense classic mainstreet and 10-15 mile spacing while also being located on a river/waterfall) So yeah, no hope for the military to encurage sensible development strategies in their surrounding settlements.

[@spyone4828]

@@alexanderfretheim5720 Yes, but do you have a city where the biggest industry is agriculture? At almost 460,000 people Virginia Beach is the most populous city in Virginia, and at almost 500 square miles (almost 1300 square km) it includes a huge amount of farm land and 172 different farms. In the southern half of the city population density drops sharply to nearly zero. Which ties back to the whole "What's the central city" problem: Norfolk is the most centrally located and most historically important but is third in the region and if there is one thing the other cities can agree on it is that they are tired of Norfolk being treated like it is the most important. Virginia Beach has the largest population but also is on the edge of the region being largely bounded by water and is economically different due to a huge tourism industry. Chesapeake is the fastest growing and second largest, Suffolk is the biggest in terms of land, ... everybody has a reason why they should be the king. So we are stuck with Hampton Roads, a body of water between some of the cities that is of some historic import, or "the seven cities" which makes us sound like a myth.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

@@spyone4828 Oddly enough, Hong Kong actually has a decent amount of agriculture. Farmland varies a lot in population density, ranging from the Western United States Ranch all the way to Chinese and Korean farming villages with midrise apartment buildings, depending upon what the land has been optimized for. There's a natural tradeoff in agriculture between producing more food in the same land area and lowering labor costs by having fewer workers.

[@eriklakeland3857]

Indianapolis metro area shot itself in the foot with its rail-to-trail obsession. The Monon Trail and the future Nickel Plate Trail are ideal alignments for transit to truly get a foothold in our metro area, anchored by an urbanized adaptation of the Indiana State Fairgrounds to give Indy a proper focal point of Midtown.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

I don't think Indianapolis even can be a transit city. The population densities are extremely low, and traffic flow is nearly evenly distributed along every direction of the compass. There just isn't a mass to transit. I realize they had streetcars before the Model T, but that was just a case of technological necessity.

[@eliza2070]

That may be true, but the benefit of the Monon and Nick Plate Trail is much needed pedestrian and bike infrastructure. You can bike from the suburbs all the way to downtown

[@sebastianjoseph2828]

Rails to Trails can be converted back though. In Maryland, the purple line light rail (despite significant delays due to bogus environmental reviews that are actually NIMBYism) is being built on an old rail trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring. Yeah walkers lost a nice trail for a few years, but when it reopens there'll be light rail and a path. The temporary bike path is circuitous but manageable.

[@amfentre]

@@sebastianjoseph2828 I hope they purpose this idea. The cyclist community in Indy wouldn't know how to handle this

[@AndrewBehm]

No argument from me on Cincinnati’s historic fabric. I was blown away by it last time I was there. Underrated for sure

[@ellie6192]

Oh my god! First time I’ve seen Memphis on a list for ANY transit channels and we made NUMBER 1!!! Seriously though, as a resident, we have such a cool downtown, and such horrible, illegible, and infrequent bus service - it has choked the life out of much of the city. It’s starting to improve but it’s certainly been a struggle.

[@trubin12]

The public transit in Memphis is indeed bad. The bike infrastructure is developing but it's still seems need more investment

[@smokeheavystudios]

KC's public transit is getting better, and I know a lot of the surface parking is getting developed hopefully we don't make lists by 2030. The North Loop removal, and South Loop deck look promising as well to help alleviate the scars. Great video!

[@AnotherConscript]

As someone who grew up in dallas, when the DART light rail system got expanded in the early 2010s it was the greatest thing this city has done for its people in a long time

[@TheStengso9o]

Cincinnati specifically OTR is such a hidden gem. And maybe one of the cleanest urban areas…. What about a list in regard's to cleanest urban cities? Cindy Still needs to work on that public transit though FOR SURE. Such a nice compliment thank you

[@Styster]

I really think you undersold the KC Streetcar. It’s been wildly successful on a ridership front, and the city is dabbling with free transit.

[@CityNerd]

Yeah I've heard! It is a good route -- they did a nice job on selecting alignment!

[@iknowdeweybrudda6564]

No , really it has raised sales taxes more and only has ridership because it’s free

[@harveyschwartz6789]

I always thought Cincinati had a great neighborhood in town in Over the Rhine but supposedly they have trouble getting middle class people to live there. Their light rail was supposed to extend up the hill to the large University of Cincinati campus area, but they ran out of money. San Juan's metro was supposed to go into downtown and old town but corruption and then bankruptcy did in that plan. Bus routes were cut in half and frequency of service reduced to every half hour on most major routes. They do have a nice indoor like terminal for the buses in old town which itself is very nice.

[@EnjoyDallen]

Right when I saw this on my home page, I KNEW Memphis would be first. It’s a deeply depressing city from a transit perspective because downtown and midtown are perfect for good transit.

[@madskittls]

Show/series idea: what might a concrete plan look like to improve transit on specific city archetypes, big city, small city, growing moderately sized city. And since this was my idea, I think you should start with Spokane, WA. Home of the Zags. I think a lot of people are on board with improving transit, but have no idea what might create a transit improvement positive feedback loop.

[@Pystro]

With the abysmal state that some transit systems are in, I wonder if you could have an agency (either government agency or a subsidized company) on the national level that comes into cities that want to improve and puts temporary measures into place: * know-how gathered from previous transit improvement projects where best to add capacity, * giving a massive temporary boost of capacity by lending buses and providing bus drivers who are willing to move to a new city every quarter, * planning, and mobile signage for temporary bus lanes and bike lanes, * mobile license-plate-scanning toll bridges to charge people for driving into downtown, * possibly even signage (and temporary speed bumps) for speed reduction and signage and barricades/street furniture for temporary road pedestrianization, * agreement by all municipalities in the metro area to not oppose any of the temporary measures (Locals shouldn't be allowed any "we don't want poor people to be able to ride buses into our suburb" or "we can't afford to pay the road toll for a whole quarter" nimby-ism, until you've seen what the benefits would be.) * and most importantly, the ability to take some losses if their measures don't end up increasing the transit agency's profitability (or - let's be real - reducing their losses). And then at the end of that "trial period" the city or transit agency they came to could see which measures were successful and decide which of them they want to make permanent (by training their own bus drivers, upgrading a temporary dedicated bus lane to a trolleybus or streetcar line, ...). And then afterwards, that agency might even be able to market their know how by helping cities stay on a more "European" budget for their transit projects (looking at you, Minneapolis' "4 years late and 3 billion over budget" green line extension). I mean, if it's a virtuous cycle in one direction (and a vicious cycle in the other), the best you can do is give a good kick-start to the dynamics.

[@matthays7800]

Extend the aerial tram. There, I did it. JK. Go Zags BTW.

[@madskittls]

@@matthays7800 Honestly, having that actually connect to Kendall Yards would be kind of cool.

[@alexanderfretheim5720]

I think you need more than three archetypes. Actually, in terms of the traffic flow and transit potential, Charleston, SC has more in common with NYC than Phoenix or LA.

[@jalapenobomber]

I've lived in Hampton roads, in Hampton specifically. And as a cash strapped college student getting around without a car sucked!

[@christopherbaby3842]

Man these videos just keep getting better. Having lived in Memphis for a year the poor little trolley thing feels like kids train ride instead of something that humans are actually supposed to use. A mountain of optimism went into getting it approved you can tell.

[@marcelmoulin3335]

Thank you for the video! I am overjoyed and deeply relieved that I live in the Netherlands where public transport and cycling/walking infrastructure are second to none. Albeit Dutch, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have travelled a good bit in the US, and I know how lacking public transport is. The Americans could, once again, have dynamic transport opportunities; however, a major cultural shift in the approach to city planning and attitudes to walking/cycling/utilising public transport as opposed to driving everywhere are requisite.

[@enjoyslearningandtravel7957]

I am envious. Wish I was born in the Netherlands. I visited there and rented a bicycle to get around on one of the islands. I really enjoyed my time there.

[@NickCBax]

I’m envious. I’m working on getting my Italian citizenship documented, then I want to move to the Netherlands.

[@roomiemcgee8899]

I'm from Louisville, and I love Cincy. Beautiful topography and architecture. Most of the downtown and adjacent Over the Rhine are very walkable.

[@laitentierdotcom]

the bus-bike lanes were always filled with cars when i lived in jacksonville in college. i used to try to ride my bike down beach blvd to hang out at the beach on weekends and the “bike lane” was always infested with cars making the worst right turns you’ve ever seen. JTA buses COULD be something good if the city ever did anything to develop the areas around the stops, but they’re in mostly inconvenient locations and i think i probably only took the bus 4 times (when it was too rainy to bike). eventually i had to get a car because there’s no shot you can get around that city without one.

[@Rollermonkey1]

Oof. Hampton Roads, where to start? (I was stationed there in the Navy for a few years.) Yes, it's a collection of cities, with major populations from 97k for Portsmouth, 99k for Suffolk, 137k for Hampton, 186k for Newport News, 238k for Norfolk, 249k for Chesapeake, and 459k in Virginia Beach. (Many smaller cities fall within the Metro area, as well) There's a huge military concentration here, with 20-something military facilities including the largest Naval Station in the world, NAVSTA Norfolk. Big industriy, and shipping facilities, plus NASA, DoT, DoE, and other Federal agengies have large presence as well, so non-military employment is rather distributed, rather than concentrated in one or even six downtown areas. . It all adds up to over 1.6 million people, (over 2 million in the CSA) and a rush hour that occurs on about 9 different axes. Major chokepoints are everywhere due to the expansive natural harbors and rivers. Besides all of the bridges and tunnels, I think one of the other bigger transit challenges is that so many of the area trips start or end in a military base, but transit can almost never be routed onto a military facility Many of these are just really, really large, meaning you kind of need to drive to work. .

[@speedzero7478]

I'm from San Francisco. My best friend and neighbor moved to Sacramento and bought a house, and I used to go visit him. I felt like I was on another planet out there. Everything was so spread out and the scale of everything felt huge, just the distance from one thing to the next. I met a lot of cool people out there but I'm glad I never ended up moving there, it just wasn't for me. I haven't been there in a long time, so I dunno if it improved. It seemed like it has a lot of potential out there so I hope they can make more walkable spots, improve the speed and reach of the rail system and that.

[@megangibson5170]

I’ve lived in Sacramento my whole life and I like visiting SF partly because I don’t need to drive everywhere (though some areas are better than others). I’d like to see more transit in Sacramento. Midtown is fairly walkable but I have to drive there from where I live and deal with parking.

[@ThePhillyPharm]

KC transit is now free! Also the streetcar is being expanded all the way down to 55th or so by 2025!

[@CityNerd]

I wish I had metnioned the FREE part in the video!

[@TheHonorableAngelinaNordstrom]

You hit the nail on the head with Memphis being number 1. Its transportation or lack thereof and its frequency was one of the reasons why I moved away. It's ridiculous. Looks like it got a lot worse since I moved with those times. 30 minutes between buses? I made the right call.

[@TheScourge007]

After a bummer vid (which still is cool to be clear), maybe it makes sense to do a video on improvements? Like what cities in North America have seen the fastest per capita growth in transit ridership say the past decade? That could get a view into how to move forward. As a for instance of how not to move forward, my city of Atlanta got a bunch of money for transit and decided to try and extend out MARTA rail lines to the northeastern suburbs. That got shot down in a referendum there, but seems to me we could get a lot more ridership by using that money to improve service times than to make more commuter rail stations.

[@CityNerd]

Excellent

[@JasonB808]

I used to used the city bus in Oahu Hawaii as my primary mode for transportation. This was over a decade ago but I don’t think it has changed much since. I remember that if I was coming home from Downtown Honolulu to my home neighborhood, I would need to transfer to another bus in Waipahu transit station. At night the bus home would come every hour and the bus I took from town was an “express” bus so it just skips some stops making it marginally faster than a normal bus. The biggest problem was it was rarely synced with the bus going to my home neighborhood meaning I would have to wait a whole hour for the next bus. I can’t count how many times I arrive at the Transit center and seeing the bus route home leave just before the express bus stops. If the waiting wasn’t bad enough, I had my share of run ins with young punks that call you out for fights, I nearly got highjacked by a group of young punks but fortunately there was a convenience store nearby where the clerk called the cops, who came a full 6 minutes later. The punks were long gone by then. The most recent experience with my home states “wonderful” transit system was a ride from Aiea to my home neighborhood during a normal work day with light traffic. I had my car stereo system being upgraded at a Best Buy (the worst place to do that, I could make a whole rant on how the moronic workers screwed up the install). Instead of waiting their for hours for my car I decided to take the bus home. I caught the first bus that arrived that stopped at the Waipahu Transit center. It was a normal bus so it stopped at all the stops. It took a whopping 45 minutes to get to Waipahu, and another 20 something minutes to take the transfer bus home. I was lucky the transfer bus comes every 30 minutes during the day or the trip would have been 2 hour long. The same trip takes only 20 minutes by car. It’s beyond ridiculous. Most people where I live just accept that this is how mass transit works and they absolutely need a car, but this is not true if we really had good mass transit. I visited my brother in Japan 3 times and I absolutely love riding the train there, well except for when it is crammed tighter than a sardine can. I never thought about needing a car while I was there. In our mass transit stations there is nothing around to do or see, just big empty parking lots. I have been to massive Japanese train stations that put many airports to shame, and they are filled with countless restaurants and shops all within walking distance. It’s a place where people want to go outside of just for transportation to and from work.

[@kirkfleming1041]

I live in Indy and I was waiting for it to pop up on the list. I cannot imagine a "city" having worst public transit than Indianapolis.

[@nat5656]

Not surprised to see San Juan making it to this video lol. El Tren Urbano is not great or really even useful unless you live in the heart of the city. Even so, I think you’d need to drive or catch a bus to the main station. I grew up there for several years of my childhood, but then my family moved to the west coast of the island. Even when we lived there, we never used the transit system because it was dangerous in certain areas and I was quite young. I’m sure it’s gotten better now. Unfortunately, San Juan is the only city in the entire island with a “functioning” rail system. Puerto Rico used to have an amazing railway that circled the entire island. It was called el Ferrocarril and began 19th century, but it was taken down in the 1950s and we just never looked back. The younger generations now including myself truly long for a system like that to be reinstated, but it doesn’t seem possible with the current economic interests leaning more towards replicating US infrastructure.

[@mdhazeldine]

After your comments about streetcars in this video, I feel like you HAVE to address this in more detail now. In particular the statement about streetcars being the "lowest ridership per capital dollar of investment you can make". This deserves it's own video. I would like to see a comparison of ridership per capital dollar of investment between a bunch of different transit modes. including cars too (for context). It would be interesting to see walking, biking, cars, buses, BRT, metro, light rail, streetcars and maybe regional rail (although that may not be fair if we're talking about travelling between cities). I'm thinking more like suburban rail within a very large city. I also wonder if the comparison would differ if you compared North America to Europe or Asia, where the culture of transit use is quite different and the land use/urban fabric is less car orientated to start with.

[@ianwinkler5562]

I reside in the Sacramento Area, and from my anecdotal experience I can confirm what you say in this video. Public transportation is okay on downtown, but outside of it it is pretty terrible. A 20 minute car ride can easily be an hour or hour and a half on SacRT, so considering that you'll most likely need to drive to a station or bus stop anyway, why not just drive to your destination in the first place. Frequency is garbage (every 30 minutes to an hour in some places), and coverage is shameful (many suburbs don't have any routes at all). Public transport "exists" if you are going downtown, but it is virtually non-existent in and between suburbs. If you want to be a productive person, it is really hard to rely on it. If it were up to the state government we would probably have good density and usable public transport on most places, but since that is delegated to counties and cities, and they're not really fan of or interested on either of those things, then we're stuck with what we currently have.

[@JimBones1990]

And it doesn't even go to Roseville/Rockin/Loomis.

[@BarefootCuer]

In Cincinnati, you can ride TANK from CVG airport to downtown Cincinnati for just a few bucks - you can't get a better deal than that! Have been on the new streetcars in Cincinnati and Kansas City - nice, but need extensions to become real transit. Also love Phoenix'sValley Metro Light rail and the new Tempe streetcar. I see them as starters for what could be in the near future. And Pittsbugh's busways arer just itching for putting rails on them and achieving a nice commuter rail system! Virginia Beach needs to wake up!

[@FrostyDog9186]

I live car-free in Dallas, and I can assure you that DART absolutely sucks.

[@stefanschneider3681]

So much fun to watch a video where you had do go to galicia in the north-west of spain to find a stadium small enough - and now you‘ve given up on finding one that‘s big enough! Well done as always, I admire your google-maps-streetview-skills!

[@neilworms2]

Cincinnati literally made me an urbanist - it taught me how a city could have so much and do so little to make it all work. Cincy's urban fabric is designed for way better than it has.

[@TheHorrorMasters]

From Cincy here: bus service is getting better - somewhat. We were lucky enough to pass a county-wide measure to fund transit through sales tax rather than a meager, city income tax fund. With that in mind, we now have 24 hour service (even if it is meager at every 30 mins until around 4 or 5AM, depending on the line), and we’re now set for BRT in the near future - if only our city council would push and try and take advantage of the public transport money that’ll be coming their way. I’d love to see the streetcar expand, and it’s ridership is doing wayyyy better now that it’s free, even with the pandemic affecting ridership. We honestly just need more equitable housing development in downtown and over the rhine, and we can handle it, too. Over the Rhine was once one of the densest neighborhoods outside of New York City in this country, at around 40K people per square mile. We can do that again - obviously not at the same scale, but it’s clear that better density is possible. It’s a matter of the right urban planning and transit investment, and the will to do it.

[@BoratWanksta]

Didn't realized that tax measure passed. That is cool to learn, since bus service also is every 30 minutes during overnight hours in Chicago. That's better than a lot of other cities, where those counties voted against expanding transit funding sadly to say. Particularly the Nashville and Atlanta areas. I forget what the Nashville measure was that got voted down in a referendum, but in Atlanta metro area counties it was called TSPLOST if I remember the acronym correctly.

[@bryanCJC2105]

Good call on Sacramento because it really typifies some of the biggest mistakes in planning light rail. Sacramento uses an abandoned freeway ROW and multiple RR ROW's for its light rail alignments. While a cheaper way to go, RR ROW's typically miss major activity centers and the freeway ROW goes through the middle of nowhere. Sacramento's light rail does connect to Cal State Sacramento (close but could've been closer), Sacramento City College, and Cosumnes River College and that's good. It also connects the gov't heavy downtown and that's good too. But it misses almost all of the major activity centers like major shopping areas, large medical centers, large office parks and the major commercial streets by 1/2 to 1 1/2 miles largely because of the RR ROW. An example would be UC Davis Medical Center located 1/2 mile from two very lightly used light rail stations located in a quiet residential area with no bus connections and on the other side of a freeway. That huge medical complex would have deserved a half mile deviation from the RR ROW for the sake of connecting a major activity center. This is a common scenario in Sacramento. In fact, of Sacramento's top 10 employers, the light rail misses 5 of them and they are largely within the light rail mile to 1 1/2 catchment area. Sacramento can have summer temperatures of 100+ degrees and nobody is going to walk that last mile, let alone want to wait for a bus in the heat. At least run frequent shuttles to/from the light rail stations instead of relying on infrequent city buses (up to 1 hour headways). So, Sacramento represents the pitfalls of relying on RR ROW's for mass rapid transit usage (yes, I'm talking about you Los Angeles).

[@CityNerd]

To be fair, just about every city that builds light rail does this to a certain degree -- it just seems most pronounced in Sacramento!

[@wren7300]

I believe Davis Med has a shuttle to 39th st station.

[@iantreat3745]

Totally right, Bryan. I think something else that hurts SacRT’s revenue stream is all the government buildings that don’t pay property tax. I’d love to see the city actually focus on TOD rather than just expanding Natomas.

[@JimBones1990]

And it doesn't even go to Roseville/Rockin/Loomis.

[@BoratWanksta]

Sacramento strikes me as being like Norfolk. With limited light rail systems that don't cover a lot of areas, and I fear probably limited bus service as well. I wasn't as aware about San Juan, Puerto Rico's system, but I wish that had been built further north to go to the Old Town area. At least San Diego built out their light rail system to some extent, with even a line going close to the US/Mexico border

[@Jasoncw87]

Regarding Detroit: - The QLine was privately built, owned, and operated. The city doesn't have anything to do with it. - The People Mover was built with federal funds with the state providing the local match. The city didn't pay anything to build it. The People Mover's operating costs are 0.3% of the city's budget, while a majority of the city's tax revenue comes from downtown. If you quantify the benefits of the People Mover it's definitely worth the investment. - DDOT's bus service is not ideal but it isn't that bad. Major routes are 24/7, 12-15 minute peak headways (better than a lot of the light rail lines around the country), other routes have 20-30 minute headways. Most of the other main routes are 20 minutes. Unfortunately the pandemic has exacerbated the driver shortage and so service had been cut back. - The problem with Detroit's transit is that other than a handful of good routes the suburbs have incredibly sparse and infrequent service. Which unfortunately is also common among American cities.

[@t.a.k.palfrey3882]

Sir, I greatly enjoy your video presentations - at least most of them. Having lived over six years each in London (50s/60s), Montréal (60s/70s), Northern VA (90s), and Bayern (2010s), as well as at home in E Africa, I have tried to use public transport wherever viable. I have kids & grandkids whom I see regularly in Brisbane, Edinburgh, and Greater Vancouver too. Only in the US have I found it necessary to use my car each day. This is surely one of those areas of daily life where your country trails far behind most nations. Please don't claim this backwardness is based on geography, either. As China, Australia, and Canada display, public transit can work well in huge countries too.

[@Vergence]

As someone from sacramento, yes the lightrail constantly yeilds to traffic, and it has a whopping ONE LINE. The bus system is ruined by our rampant homelessness issues. and yes the zoning is an absolute nightmare, more suburban R1 than ive seen anywhere else. It really sucks because we have some walkable onclaves, roseville fountains, HoweBoutArden, and DOCO come to mind. but each of those areas are 20 mi apart with no public transit link between, only our like seven highways and freeways.

[@Vergence]

also davis, which made the top 10 small cities, is only 30 miles away from our nightmare.

[@raney150]

My city made the small cities with good transit list, and my brother's city made the list of big cities with bad transit. Big win for me.

[@leftcoastguy1]

Found the channel and videos recently. Love the deadpan delivery style. Just wanted to say, I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce the second 'r' in San Bernardino until today.

[@ActNormalKid]

Totally agree with the Florida mentions. For as many large metro areas they have, only Miami has respectable transit services, in my opinion. Orlando is getting there, but not close enough. I’d have to think it’s a mixture of reasons, one main one being that you can’t have tunnel systems because the water table is so close to the surface (most Florida homes don’t even have basements). I think it’s also because Florida was very underdeveloped until the second half of the 20th century, and of course by then it was all about cars. You also mentioned that some areas like Jax are investing in autonomous transport, which is cool- I guess. But it’s not going to take cars off the road in the way that good train and bus services do.

[@AssBlasster]

Yeah Orlando built a lightrail, but it goes to exactly nowhere, like the airport or downtown or the parks. The Brightline may be the saving grace in a few yrs. I relied on it for years but it was a terrible transit city that could easily fit on this list. No surprise that Tampa/Jacksonville beat it

[@BoratWanksta]

I researched the Jax people mover system once, since I was bored. What really puzzled me on that system, was the limited hours it runs for. Which is only on weekdays till like about 9pm, and no weekend service! The people mover in Detroit has much greater hours, in comparison.

[@Imminentslug]

I did my thesis on Tampa's dismal bus service! The bus gets stuck in daily standstill traffic just like the rest of us. In middle school my friend and I made youtube videos about riding our bikes all the way to the grocery store because to us, that was the craziest adventure to be had. kinda sad in retrospect!

[@beback_]

Once again I'm amazed that Orlando didn't make it to the list.

[@carlgharis7948]

Tampa and St. Petersburg HART and PSTA are 2 different systems. You can only get between the 2 during weekday rush hour. So on the weekends you have pay the $12 to ride greyhound to the next stop. Oh and on the St. Petersburg side all busses are done at like 6:00/7:00 pm on Sundays

[@micahkoenig8472]

I would love to see a top 10 bike ways/green ways in North America.

[@fluffy13bondjames92]

Well my city wouldn’t make the list since it seems hell bent on making them cross a 6 lane stroad every 3 miles...

[@robinrussell7965]

Los Angeles has a great system of river levee top bike paths. One is over 45 miles long with no interaction with cars. Completely isolated.

[@toordal]

Hi, I live in the Midtown area of the worst city on your list: Detroit. While I would agree that overall, the transit situation is pretty much as bad as you made it out to be, I would say other than buses just being way behind schedule, transit IN THE CITY(not the suburbs) is kind of adequate. Between bicycling or walking short distances and the buses, you can get pretty much anywhere in The City of Detroit that you want in a reasonable amount of time with public transit. However, one thing you didn't mention is ultimate deficiency in public transit in the Metro Detroit area: public transit to/from the airport, or lack thereof. If you are living in the City of Detroit, there is exactly 1 bus route to the airport. It's run by suburban bus system and will take 1 hour from downtown to the airport. If you have to make a connection to get to that bus, it's of course even longer. Even worse, the hours of this route are only from 5:30 am to 11pm. If you have a flight before 8pm, you either get a friend to drive, get an uber, lyft, or taxi(which are rippoff right now), or believe it or not take the bus to the airport the night before and just sleep in the terminal. I have actually done the latter, and yes, that's a disgrace.

[@parkpark8715]

"Someone explain this [SacRT development] to me" Me, a Sacramento area resident for 15 years who doesn't have a car and who has worked in city government: "I can't"

[@JimBones1990]

And it doesn't even go to Roseville/Rockin/Loomis.

[@lh457725]

You are so thoughtful and your words are excellent. Thank you. I am really enjoying these videos of yours.

[@stevengordon3271]

SE Virginia is a distributed metro. The only difference is the lack of a single inner city. Even the American large metros with an inner city also have multiple "business districts" distributed 5-20 miles in every direction. This is what makes the Chicago transit model ineffective today. You need a network rather than forcing everybody to go to the center and then back out again to get to where they are going (especially jobs). This requires many more lines and miles to achieve the necessary critical mass to replace auto traffic.

[@davidallen2058]

Thought that tram looks familiar. At 16:44 an ex-Melbourne (Australia) W-class tram. Nearly 100 years old. It would have originally had a pole rather than a pantograph. The poles would sometimes come off the overhead when cornering. Great memories.

[@ActNormalKid]

Adding another comment about the “Hampton Roads” area in Virginia. I used to live in Newport News and yeah- navigating around there is a mess. I’d say Norfolk and Virginia Beach are the two larger cities that function as the ‘main’ cities. There’s a good handful of colleges down there, and the area is heavily populated because of the naval base and the beach. There’s a huge missed opportunity for transit to connect those cities, but the state of VA itself seems to prioritize northern Virginia in the DC metro area- “NOVA”.

[@Dave-gw6wh]

I live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and seeing these videos, really made me glad I am haha!

[@CityNerd]

You're just jealous of our absurdly large parking lots and huge personal vehicles. It's OK, we understand. (Amsterdam just might make an appearance in next week's video, BTW!)

[@cparkes92]

Detroit being the home of the Big Three automakers definitely contributes to its lack of transit ridership

[@dex_kun_fails]

No vehicle inspections in Michigan either, so sketchy sub-$1000 beaters that wouldn't fly in other states are fairly common here.

[@deadcorpert619]

Cinci / Over The Rhine is interesting but strange. I visited this summer. The difference between literally one street is just astounding. One street is completely gentrified, one street is completely empty. This is probably common in many American cities but up close I was pretty stunned.