The Most Utilized Subway Systems in the World

[castevens]

This is for you, Van

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/web/trans0209takingthetrain.html

[vanshnookenraggen]

DAMN, that's hot! It's also at times like this I love having a wide screen monitor. Thanks for this.

[KentXie]

Damn, look at Tokyo. Nearly twice as NYC. I'm surprised London isn't listed. Probably close to the top regardless.

[czsz]

I wonder where San Francisco would be if the city's (or entire Bay Area's) non-BART systems were included.

[ablarc]

New York is #4 worldwide. Paris' network, dense and compact, is a paradigm of how a network should look in order to serve and hold together a real city. Moscow's is second best in this regard, and New York's is a distant third. In one way or another, the others are products and agents of sprawl; they function at their ends as suburban railroads (Washington, BART). Not as bad as highways, of course...

[statler]

Is New York #4 or #3? Did you mean to include London on your list?

[commuter guy]

I wonder where San Francisco would be if the city's (or entire Bay Area's) non-BART systems were included.

Overall, Bart carries 80% of the passenger traffic of the MBTA Red, Orange and Blue lines. Muni carries about 70% of the passenger traffic as the green line alone. S.F commuter rail carries about a 30% of the passenger traffic as MBTA commuter rail.

Overall, the T's rail based mass transit has greater ridership.

[ablarc]

Is New York #4 or #3?
Chart says: Tokyo 2.97b, Moscow 2.5b, Seoul 2.1b, New York 1.5b.

Did you mean to include London on your list?
London's ridership is not quite enough to be on this chart.

[statler]

^^Really? Wow. I would have thought it would be higher than Paris. So much still left to learn. :/

[Ron Newman]

London's ridership is less than Boston? That doesn't sound possible or likely.

[statler]

^^The chart seems to be split up as US / World. London is probably bigger than Boston but not big enough for the World section?

[castevens]

Yes, the chart is split up into two sections:

--Top 5 in the US

--Top 5 in the World (not including US, or else NYC would have pushed Paris off the list)

London, i believe, has an annual ridership of 1.2 billion. That would make it behind Paris' 1.4 billion

[ablarc]

^^Really? Wow. I would have thought it would be higher than Paris. So much still left to learn. :/
Paris' Metro blankets the city; it goes everywhere within the dense, compact city limits, so pretty much everyone uses it every day.

London's Underground leaves inner-city city residential areas like Fulham and even Chelsea to buses, while it wanders off into sparser, sprawling suburbs --just like Boston's subway.

Boston's South End is poorly served, along with Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, and much of Somerville.

[ablarc]

I would have thought it would be higher than Paris.
http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=1906

[kennedy]

Paris' Metro blankets the city; it goes everywhere within the dense, compact city limits, so pretty much everyone uses it every day.

London's Underground leaves inner-city city residential areas like Fulham and even Chelsea to buses, while it wanders off into sparser, sprawling suburbs --just like Boston's subway.

Boston's South End is poorly served, along with Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, and much of Somerville.

Can the T be fixed in this regard? Is it even possible at this point?

[czsz]

No.

First, Boston does not have as large an area as densely built as Paris.

Second, Paris' metro was built before there was widespread use of the car in Europe (arguably there still isn't, at least to the extent there is here).

Third, Paris is a huge anomaly among subway systems. The overwhelming majority do a far better job at shuttling commuters than serving as intracity connections. There must be some reason for this - maybe it is not budgetarily effective for any rapid transit system to be a mostly intracity system.

[ablarc]

New York subway in Manhattan: fairly decent coverage with some gaps.

[KentXie]

I was wondering, if the MBTA was able to incorporate a parallel track to all its heavy rail, will the ridership increase significantly?

[vanshnookenraggen]

I doubt it. Boston's system is over built as it is (if you can believe it!) compared to similarly sized cities. There really isn't much in the way of expansion that will lead to a dramatic increase in ridership other than the Green Line to Medford. Apart from that the best the T can do is to have cleaner trains and more of them and build more parking out in the suburbs.

[Charlie_mta]

The Boston transit system may be overbuilt in terms of of rapid transit line miles, but there are some obvious LRV surface lines that should be added to access underserved areas. These would be relatively cheap compared to elevated or tunneled rail lines.

LRV surface lines should be built along South Washington Street from Boylston Station to Dudley Square, and also along the RKG connecting North Station and South Station, and possibly on into Charlestown. In addition, there are several wide boulevards in and around Boston that would lend themselves to LRV lines on reservations, and also several abandoned railroad right-of-ways that, if converted to LRV lines, would serve populated areas.

[kennedy]

To anyone fairly familiar with the MBTA and LRT (probably Charlie or Van):

Will it ever be a likely possibility to have an urban ring? Would the construction/engineering costs just be too great for the MBTA to ever even consider? Or maybe built in many phases over a long period of time, ending up far over-budget but well worth it *cough*?

[vanshnookenraggen]

Will it ever be a likely possibility to have an urban ring? Would the construction/engineering costs just be too great for the MBTA to ever even consider? Or maybe built in many phases over a long period of time, ending up far over-budget but well worth it *cough*?

It's totally possible and buildable, except not as the T would design it. They are so scared of having to take care of infrastructure that they go out of there way to design a system that uses roads, which are taken care of by local and state authorities. The problem is this is COMPLETELY backwards when it comes to the idea of rapid transit. The idea is to take vehicles and people OFF roads, not put more on. Their half-assed attempt would end up costing billions to make the roads WORSE.

An "urban ring" of transit (both bus and rail), properly planned, would be a fantastic thing for the entire metro region. The MBTA, however, cannot properly plan and build it. They have nothing except a horrendous track record.

It isn't entirely their fault ("they" representing a public authority). The problem is for too long the MBTA has been a place to stick political supporters in easy 9-5, punch in-punch out jobs. The MBTA needs a total cleaning out of all this dead flesh. Only then will we be able to have a transit system that can effectively serve the Boston area.

[/rant]

So to answer your question, I really doubt it. The people who hold the purse strings aren't stupid. They know the T can't pull this off (this is the same reason the Feds downgraded the Silver Line Phase III a few years back).