# 2nd Best US Rail System



## brianpmcdonnell17 (Oct 14, 2016)

Based on rail system alone, what US city has the second best train system? Based on sheer size, I thought it would be nearly impossible for NYC not to win so I assumed it as 1st. Include any train type from streetcar to Amtrak. I would define best by size, frequency, speed, and comfort with size being the most important but use any criteria you feel is necessary.


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## Palmetto (Oct 14, 2016)

Chicago's is extensive, and they run it well, even in the snow.


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## MikefromCrete (Oct 15, 2016)

I would also vote for Chicago due to its extensive L/subway network and Metra's routes that reach in all directions (plus the South Shore to Indiana). San Francisco, however, is very exotic with its Caltrain commuter rail, BART heavy rail, streetcars and cable cars. Plus Amtrak's Capitol Corridor on the East Bay side. It definitely ranks third.


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## bmjhagen9426 (Oct 15, 2016)

This was a hard and close one, between San Francisco and Chicago. However, Chicago gets the better edge, due to CTA's El Train services, Metra commuter lines, unusual railway infrastructures (think belt junction, CONO backup moves into/out of CUS, The Loop, etc), one of the larger railway hubs, among others. San Francisco is a close third, with BART, Cable Cars, Muni light rail, historic streetcars (E and F lines), and Caltrain, but did not get the third, due to not having a direct access to Amtrak trains (Capitols, San Joaquins, California Zephyr, and Coast Starlight), due to having to get to either East Bay or San Jose either by BART or Ambus for the former, and by Caltrain for the latter, whereas in Chicago you have direct access to Amtrak, commuter rail (Metra), and subway (CTA El Train) all within the city limits.


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## Philly Amtrak Fan (Oct 15, 2016)

BART is great (I've ridden it). So is the cable car. The one big negative of the city of San Fran is no Amtrak train service and it has been stated that there is no direct connection from the CS to BART.


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## bmjhagen9426 (Oct 16, 2016)

Philly Amtrak Fan said:


> BART is great (I've ridden it). So is the cable car. The one big negative of the city of San Fran is no Amtrak train service and it has been stated that there is no direct connection from the CS to BART.


The only downside to cable cars is that you need 7 bucks to ride the cable cars, so pretty much you need some cash every time you hop on, or you need to buy Muni Passports (I rode it on a Muni Passport that I got thru CityPass). As for San Francisco to CS, you need to either board the Ambus to either Emeryville to Oakland, or Caltrain to San Jose. I also was affected by a lack of a direct connection between BART and CS. As for BART at SFO Airport to CS (which I sometimes do), you have to go to either SF Caltrain station by BART (SFO->Embarcadero) then Muni (Embarcadero->Caltrain), or to Milbrae by BART (transfer at San Bruno necessary during weekdays) then Caltrain to San Jose. Ambus at Transbay Terminal has a similar routing: BART (SFO->Embarcadero) then Muni (Embarcadero->Folsom), and a short walk down Folsom St. after getting off Muni T or N lines. Riding BART all the way to Oakland to connect to CS is unrealistic. You either have to walk from Downtown Oakland (or ride the buses), get to either Richmond or Oakland Coliseum and ride the Capitol Corridor to either Emeryville, Oakland Jack London Square, or San Jose. As for CZ and San Joaquins from BART, it is easier than CS from BART, as both the CZ and the San Joaquins stop in Richmond. Connections between BART and Amtrak is the easiest for the Capitols, since it stops both at Oakland Coliseum and Richmond.


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## Green Maned Lion (Oct 17, 2016)

Philly?


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## Metra Electric Rider (Oct 18, 2016)

I think that people do forgot that Philly has an extensive commuter rail network, heavy rail subway-elevated, light rail and streetcars.


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## Eric S (Oct 18, 2016)

First Tier - just New York

Second Tier - probably Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco/Oakland, Washington (of these, maybe Chicago wins but I can see arguments for other cities/systems/networks as well)

Third Tier - perhaps Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle (not completely sure about each of those, nor whether to include anywhere else)


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## Texan Eagle (Oct 19, 2016)

SF Bay Area should get honorable mention for having the most number of disjointed transit agencies running things-on-rails in a spectacular clusterf*k of messed up connections.

They have so far-

BART

Caltrain

ACE Train

Amtrak California trains

VTA Light Rail

MUNI Light Rail

MUNI streetcars

Cable Cars

If this is not enough, coming soon-

eBART trains

SMART trains

Beat that, any other city!


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## Metra Electric Rider (Oct 20, 2016)

Eric S said:


> Third Tier - perhaps Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle (not completely sure about each of those, nor whether to include anywhere else)


You should probably add Miami, San Juan (heavy rail subway) and Minneapolis (two light rail lines plus commuter rail) to this or to a Fourth Tier.


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## Eric S (Oct 20, 2016)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> Eric S said:
> 
> 
> > Third Tier - perhaps Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle (not completely sure about each of those, nor whether to include anywhere else)
> ...


Yeah, it was harder to decide quite where to draw the line between what I was calling the Third Tier and either a Fourth Tier or just everywhere else. I was sort of thinking places with more of a network (multiple lines, not quite as comprehensive as the Second Tier but certainly more than the areas with just a couple-ish lines). Obviously it's completely subjective, since I wasn't really using size or ridership or metro area mode-share. Including Houston but excluding Miami/Fort Lauderdale and Minneapolis/St. Paul was probably a mistake.


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## BCL (Oct 26, 2016)

Philly Amtrak Fan said:


> BART is great (I've ridden it). So is the cable car. The one big negative of the city of San Fran is no Amtrak train service and it has been stated that there is no direct connection from the CS to BART.


San Francisco is somewhat a special situation because the Bay Area is generally decentralized. San Francisco itself is 49 square miles at the tip of a peninsula.

As far as a CS to BART connection, that's possible in Oakland right now with the free downtown shuttle. That might be possible in the future if a BART station gets built at Diridon. A couple of the options for San Jose are to put it in an intermodal station.

http://www.vta.org/bart/stationsphaseII


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## Palmetto (Oct 27, 2016)

Boston could go in the fourth tier. While it's quite extensive, it's a poorly-run, antiquated, and poorly maintained excuse for public transit. Just yesterday, for example, an Orange Line train went up in smoke during the rush hour. And if you read comments from folks there about their recent schedule changes, it's not very positive. I don't ride the system much, but on one inbound trip from up north, the engine ran out of gas. That's pretty unacceptable in any rail operation. Another time, more recently, a rush hour train ahead of us broke down, and our train had to push it to its destination. The whole show is generally shoddy--and sometimes shady, I dare say.


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## Eric S (Oct 27, 2016)

That's a good point about reliability, dependability, and consistency of service. Both MBTA and WMATA seem to be in serious states of decline - not entirely unlike CTA maybe 20ish years ago. (Mismanagement? Underinvestment? Combination of the two?) I guess, to me, it seems that WMATA is in a worse situation that MBTA.


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## Palmetto (Oct 27, 2016)

I would agree with that assessment, Eric. We might want to add cheating to your above list of questions.


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## Metra Electric Rider (Oct 27, 2016)

At least the CTA and MBTA have the excuse of having ancient, comparatively, systems, Washington's is newer and in the national capital - it shouldn't have been allowed to deteriorate as it has.


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## Eric S (Oct 27, 2016)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> At least the CTA and MBTA have the excuse of having ancient, comparatively, systems, Washington's is newer and in the national capital - it shouldn't have been allowed to deteriorate as it has.


This is true. And *some* of MBTA's problems will be ameliorated when new cars, already ordered, are delivered and start running on the Orange and Red Lines.


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## Palmetto (Oct 27, 2016)

You can't make this stuff up:

http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/12273818/t-replaces-officials-after-billing-errors-cost-600000


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## Metra Electric Rider (Oct 27, 2016)

Eric S said:


> Metra Electric Rider said:
> 
> 
> > At least the CTA and MBTA have the excuse of having ancient, comparatively, systems, Washington's is newer and in the national capital - it shouldn't have been allowed to deteriorate as it has.
> ...


It sounds like some of their problems are on the commuter lines too..


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## Palmetto (Oct 28, 2016)

Yes, I gave two personal examples in an earlier response.


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## NorthShore (Nov 1, 2016)

While not U.S., I almost think Toronto ought to be on the list, as it's the most significant comparable to a lot of major U.S. systems.


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## Ryan (Nov 1, 2016)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> At least the CTA and MBTA have the excuse of having ancient, comparatively, systems, Washington's is newer and in the national capital - it shouldn't have been allowed to deteriorate as it has.


 WMATA is in the unique position of being dependent on funding from several different jurisdictions that aren't known for their ability to cooperate and get along. Properly funded, the agency could have done much better.



Eric S said:


> Metra Electric Rider said:
> 
> 
> > At least the CTA and MBTA have the excuse of having ancient, comparatively, systems, Washington's is newer and in the national capital - it shouldn't have been allowed to deteriorate as it has.
> ...


The same can be said about WMATA with the arrival of the 7000-series cars.


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## PerRock (Nov 1, 2016)

People forget about Cleveland, OH as well. Very extensive network of light and heavy rail trains, Amtrak, buses.

peter


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## Eric S (Nov 1, 2016)

I figured Cleveland fell into my "everywhere else" fourth tier, although I wouldn't necessarily argue against someone putting it in the third tier instead.


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## PerRock (Nov 1, 2016)

I guess it would really depend on how the tiers are being sorted organized.

Here is wikipedia's list of US metro systems, which can be sorted (default is annual ridership):

Heavy Rail

Light Rail

I'm pretty bored today at work (not much to do), and playing around with Excel (Google Sheets really) is my job so I might see about combining the two lists & extracting some "Tier" systems from it. It'd at least look like I'm doing something job-related.

peter


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## MARC Rider (Nov 1, 2016)

PerRock said:


> People forget about Cleveland, OH as well. Very extensive network of light and heavy rail trains, Amtrak, buses.
> 
> peter


Of course, all of the Cleveland Amtrak departures are in the middle of the night, so it's not served very well by intercity rail.

How well do intercity buses connect to the transit system? I know that the rail transit system serves the airport.


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## Eric S (Nov 1, 2016)

PerRock said:


> I guess it would really depend on how the tiers are being sorted organized.
> 
> Here is wikipedia's list of US metro systems, which can be sorted (default is annual ridership):
> 
> ...


Ignoring for the moment the concerns over service quality or reliability, would you generally agree with the second tier (after New York) being Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco/Oakland, and Washington? So that we're then trying to see how to group the remaining areas, whether there's an obvious split between perhaps a third and fourth tier?


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## PerRock (Nov 1, 2016)

Eric S said:


> PerRock said:
> 
> 
> > I guess it would really depend on how the tiers are being sorted organized.
> ...


As promised, here is some Spreadsheet data from those Wiki tables. It's still a work in progress, but on the "Combined Systems" chart I laid out some tier-ing options.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wL-ushK-oMfimaLkG-RmDJl7liR4DesWnxai2ju9yCY/edit?usp=sharing

peter

Edit: Here is the form to submit systems I (well Wikipedia) missed: https://goo.gl/forms/VoPMZNYW6IuZH8AF3

And as a note I didn't include commuter rail, bus-based systems. or some of those oddball systems like the Memphis monorail or the Morgantown PRT.


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## Metra Electric Rider (Nov 2, 2016)

MARC Rider said:


> PerRock said:
> 
> 
> > People forget about Cleveland, OH as well. Very extensive network of light and heavy rail trains, Amtrak, buses.
> ...


I thought I'd read that the light rail service was cut back from the Amtrak station (can't remember if it actually ran that late anyways). Cleveland was first with rail transit to an airport though.


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## PerRock (Nov 2, 2016)

I don't know about the timetable, last time I was thru on the LSL there wasn't and LR meeting it. But the tracks run right next to the Amtrak line at the station and there is a stop, as both stations are next to the stadium.

peter


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## PerRock (Nov 3, 2016)

PerRock said:


> I don't know about the timetable, last time I was thru on the LSL there wasn't and LR meeting it. But the tracks run right next to the Amtrak line at the station and there is a stop, as both stations are next to the stadium.
> 
> peter


Did a little digging, and I was a little off in the above statement.

Service a few years ago was pulled back off from the Waterfront Line, but it was only temporary & has since been restored. Both Lines will stop at the Amtrak station by request. It is possible to use the Blue & Green lines to connect to the Lake Shore Limited. Although 4/49 is at the station when service starts, so in that direction it may be hard to get to the station in time. The CL gets in too early for decent access to the lines; although departing on 30 isn't that bad, you end up with an hour wait at the station. Of course this all presumes no delays & I'm not certain (yet) if the Waterfront line open at the extreme ends of their service schedule.

peter

Edit: well forget all that... The Waterfront line only operates between 9:30am and 7pm.


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## Metra Electric Rider (Nov 3, 2016)

Cleveland is one of the cities a few day trains would probably exponentially increase ridership to/from.


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## PerRock (Nov 3, 2016)

Metra Electric Rider said:


> Cleveland is one of the cities a few day trains would probably exponentially increase ridership to/from.


As it is, they would rather pretend Amtrak doesn't exist. When they recently redid the area around the station, instead of improving the shabby station; they literally decided to hide it behind some bushes.

peter


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## Metra Electric Rider (Nov 4, 2016)

PerRock said:


> Metra Electric Rider said:
> 
> 
> > Cleveland is one of the cities a few day trains would probably exponentially increase ridership to/from.
> ...


New definition of "Amshackle"?


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## Palmetto (Nov 5, 2016)

Metra moved a LOT of people Friday fairly expeditiously.


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## west point (Nov 9, 2016)

Boy this is a really subjective question. First is how well does the city's system(s) provide their services including speeds, reliability, frequency, cleanness, etc.? Second what percentage of population of the area that the system(s) serve ?

Level 1 Do have to go with NY area. MNRR & LIRR do a good job. MTA NY City does well also. Then NJT falls down on job and will not be able to mitigate that until the new Gateway tunnel bores are complete and old Hudson river tunnels repaired.

Level 2 Yes Chicago and Especially San Francisco. Seattle is coming up fast due to its topography and the growth already under construction. The passage of ST3 yesterday is a big plus. LAX great service but not enough persons served. San Diego same as LAX

Level 3s. SEPTA has a big problem of stops too close and very curvy ROWs causing slow service. As well often occurring cancellations due to lack of operators. Boston poor dilapidated equipment. Dallas good system but needs growth to enter level 2, WASH Reliability, maintenance failures, political, funding, incompetent persons are well known.. Does serve many persons. Phoenix good light rail but needs much expansion. Baltimore doing fairly well with what built so far. Denver A high 3 and once all the routes go in service thru 2017 probably in level 2. Salt Lake City Good, fast, frequent and many expansions in various constructions. Sacramento, San Jose, Cleveland.

Level 4. Atlanta MARTA has not expanded in decades except for two stations. Yesterday's vote will mitigate that somewhat but still not enough persons served especially the bus system. Miami somewhat better than Atlanta just because of TriRail. Charlotte trying . New Orleans good service for number of residents but systems too slow. St. Louis not enough persons served. --

Level 5s -- just junk so far... Sun Rail. Norfolk Tucson, Cincinnati.


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## neroden (Nov 11, 2016)

Judging by general usability in terms of "I can get anywhere by urban rail conveniently", Chicago, the Second City, has the second-best system after NYC -- hands down, no question.

After that it's a much tougher call. San Francisco is missing some lines in really crucial areas (Geary, anyone?). So is Boston. So is Los Angeles. So is San Diego. They're all pretty good though....


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## Palmetto (Nov 12, 2016)

Boston is so bad, they're borrowing engines from the P&W railroad to run some of their trains. What a joke.


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## Deni (Dec 30, 2016)

west point said:


> Level 4. Atlanta MARTA has not expanded in decades except for two stations. Yesterday's vote will mitigate that somewhat but still not enough persons served especially the bus system. Miami somewhat better than Atlanta just because of TriRail. Charlotte trying . New Orleans good service for number of residents but systems too slow. St. Louis not enough persons served. --
> 
> Level 5s -- just junk so far... Sun Rail. Norfolk Tucson, Cincinnati.


You would put Phoenix in 3rd tier with their one little (albeit nice) single line light rail but put Atlanta in 4th even though theirs covers much more significant area and runs much faster? Yes, they have not expanded the way they should have over the years but they are way ahead of Phoenix. If Atlanta is tier 4 (I would argue 3 myself) then Phoenix would be a tier 5.


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## Deni (Dec 30, 2016)

Palmetto said:


> Boston is so bad, they're borrowing engines from the P&W railroad to run some of their trains. What a joke.


Boston transit was so incredibly frustrating when I lived there. Just hated taking it.


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