Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
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Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#2All maps in the actual report: http://www.access.umn.edu/research/america/transit2014/maps/...
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#3It's hit or miss in Los Angeles. You have to live in a specific area that has a transit hub and then work near a connected transit hub for it to be feasible. For example, you could live in San Fernando Valley and commute to Downtown LA (Orange Line bus to Red Line subway), or Santa Monica and Downtown LA very easily (freeway bus), but San Fernando Valley to Santa Monica is impossible to do without going to Downtown LA first (a 2-4 hour commute each way). In heavy traffic those drives are 45 min to 1 hour max.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#4It's unfortunate that these are (or at least appear to me to be) raw counts, rather than percentages, normalized by each metro area's population or job totals.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#5They should adjust for the ratio of housing costs to the income earned from those jobs.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#6It would be nice to see jobs sliceable by median salary or industry or something like that. The part of Austin I live in is, according to the map, home to thousands of walkable jobs, but I guarantee you virtually none of them are information economy jobs.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#7I wish they had included Toronto. There's an ongoing debate about how to improve transit and being able to see various options compared against each other empirically would be damn useful.
As a philanthropic effort an open system that would allow someone to "play" with transit designs might be a godsend for all urban planners. Add in the ability to easily adjust schedules/stops (e.g. bus every 4 minutes, or add a stop between X and Y), easily add routes (more buses, streetcars, light rail, subway) and compare multiple configurations would be pretty kick ass.
Oh and all this in real time with instant updating ;)
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#8Having lived in Boston, SF, Seattle, and now NYC (and having visited LA on numerous occasions), not at all surprised to see this. Even considering the population differences, NYC wins by a large margin if the goal is 'best public transportation', and by proxy 'best metro area for commuters'.
NYC has (by far) the best public transportation system in the US. Nothing even comes close, though obviously MTA is not perfect. The BART stops running at midnight and doesn't go everywhere, the T is basically an east coast version of the BART, and King County Metro is just a shit show in general.
Granted, NYC obviously has the population to support such a great transportation system. But I wonder if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy: NYC public transit is good, and so more people are willing to live in the metro area and commute. Commuting from Westport, CT to NYC daily isn't a huge deal. Commuting from Brentwood to SF every day would be a nightmare.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#9One thing that this report didn't really take into account is the ratio of car travel time to metro travel time. Sure, you can get to most places in San Jose on the VTA in under 2 hours, but you can also drive there in under 30 minutes.
Re: Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit
#10Additional excellent analysis by transit planner Jarrett Walker: http://www.humantransit.org/2014/10/access-across-america.ht...