

Report ranks U.S. metros based on how many jobs residents can access by transit - fizl
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/10/the-car-less-commute-ranking-to-end-all-car-less-commute-rankings/381220/

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bronbron
Having 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.

~~~
techsupporter
> and King County Metro is just a shit show in general.

Ah, yes, I was wondering if I was going to read this here. In the same
sentence that you give BART a pass for stopping at midnight and not going
"everywhere," Metro gets written off completely. Even thought it has a 5am to
1am span of service, 14 night owl routes, daily express service from as far
out as North (freakin') Bend, and is the most-used mode of transportation to
jobs in Seattle, it's a "shit show."

~~~
jpatokal
Sorry, any public transport system that relies on buses as the backbone will
be a "shit show". Buses are uncomfortable, slow, unreliable, get stuck in
traffic, etc etc. "Bus rapid transit", dedicated lanes and so on ease the pain
a bit, but at the end of day, they just can't compete with any service that
has _fully_ dedicated right of way.

~~~
techsupporter
Unless you've dug a subway, how do you get people to the rail lines? Park and
rides? All that does is encourage suburban sprawl to drive to a rail station.

There's no reason for buses to be uncomfortable and unreliable beyond popular
perception. I've ridden trains in Dallas that have worse onboard conditions
than bus routes in Seattle.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Seattle buses are immensely more comfortable than the subway we have in
Beijing (but then dammit, I just take a taxi).

~~~
jpatokal
But can you imagine what it would be like if Beijing had only buses instead of
subways?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes. There are still many places the subway doesn't go. The buses are also
crowded, and sometimes you have to wait in line for a couple of hours even to
get on (especially to/from the suburbs). Of course, you might have to wait for
30 minutes to get on the subway during rush hour (e.g. finding enough space to
fit in to an open car).

My only point here is that everything is quite relative (i.e. first world vs.
third world problems).

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yonran
The methodology is described here:
[http://www.cts.umn.edu/Publications/ResearchReports/reportde...](http://www.cts.umn.edu/Publications/ResearchReports/reportdetail.html?id=2382).
They calculated the number of jobs that a random worker (assuming everyone
lives in the centroid of the Census block he resides in) can get to by transit
at every 10 minute threshold, multiplied by an exponential penalty with time
constant 12.5 minutes. The metropolitan areas are ranked by this score. This
basically says how many jobs that you can catch the bus to, given that you
reside somewhere in the metro area.

This analysis is more sophisticated than WalkScore’s Transit Score; this
analysis uses OpenTripPlanner to simulate trips rather than just counting the
number of bus lines near a given location.

There are many related questions that are not directly answered by this
report, but I think on the top of everyone’s mind is: How many apartments can
you afford in commute distance from a random job? I’m guessing San Francisco
would no longer rank near the top anymore. To determine whether the transit
system is good enough for car-free living, one would also want a score that
takes into account trips to other destinations such as bars and grocery
stores.

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drewda
It'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.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Agreed. I think the analysis here plays a little fast and loose with the
conclusions it draws from the data.

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_linden_
Keep in mind that in many places, and in particular in the Bay Area, the
entire notion of trying to create short commutes from work to home as an ideal
is one that lots of cities still haven't wrapped their head around.

I live in Palo Alto and I've heard people tell the City Council that no one
wants to take public transportation and therefore we don't need it. I've also
heard people scoff at the idea that jobs and housing should be built next to
each other to avoid long commutes, emissions, lost time, sprawl, etc. Anyone
here who says we need more housing next to all our huge office parks gets
called "entitled."

We're facing a paradigm shift wherein younger generations want to be able to
have the option of taking public transportation. They want to live in lively
neighborhoods where friends and spaces for hanging out are close at hand- a
trip to the local coffee shop doesn't involve getting in your car and driving
to a strip mall. But, people who grew up in the 50s, 60s, and 70s grew up with
the notion of the car as freedom and a house in suburbia as the definition of
success. To them, quality of life is all about how fast they can drive
somewhere and how easily they can park there. When they think "urban" they
think "ghetto."

These attitudes contribute to the NIMBYism all over the Bay Area and they're
the reason why outside of SF, it's extremely hard to get around without a car.
It's the reason why despite being the center of innovation on the planet,
Silicon Valley still looks like a Leave It To Beaver throwback.

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bane
I was surprised D.C. ranks so low [1]

I've been to most of the big cities in the U.S. and despite having some
problems the D.C. (the city proper) system is easily the 2nd best public
transport. It's no NYC, but it's not bad. By wider extension, the links into
the Maryland and Virginia systems are also pretty good. Looking at the map
it's not even clear to me why it's ranked below LA or SF. It provides lots of
coverage and covers a _vast_ area.

Then I realized they were measuring _time_ as part of their ranking and yeah,
I guess I can see that. The D.C. metro area is larger than all of L.A. county
and it can take _forever_ to get around it.

1 - BTW, the map for D.C. is here
[https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/ctswebrequest.jlb2j0ip/page.ht...](https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/ctswebrequest.jlb2j0ip/page.html?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiY3Rzd2VicmVxdWVzdCIsImEiOiJTb19VUHM0In0.muGg6tMDG4NOGrV4qQQ8yw#10/38.7835/-77.7434)

~~~
rayiner
It's not NYC, and it's not Chicago or Philly either. DC suffers for making the
Metro do double duty as a subway and commuter rail. Plus, many of the suburban
stops have awful walk ability (silver line)

~~~
bane
Yeah, you're right, outside of the city proper (and the _very_ nearby
surrounding areas like Arlington and Silver Spring) the walkability is
terrible. We'll see if it improves, the model of "stick a station out in the
suburbs and build huge parking garages" is not one that I like. Ideally the
areas right around the stations should be high density, very walkable, mixed
residential-shopping-office.

Using the subway system as a commuter rail line means that it can take
something like an hour or more to make it from an endpoint station to the
city.

Plus D.C. has two actual commuter rail systems (VRE for Virginia and MARC for
Maryland) plus Amtrak.

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grandalf
The fantastic transit in NYC, along with a very large population, makes for
significantly increased labor market liquidity.

As in any market, increased liquidity translates to reduced risk. For this
reason I think that within 5-10 years NYC will overtake SF / Bay Area as the
optimal startup economy/environment in the US.

~~~
w1ntermute
[http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/are-we-done-yet-with-new-
york-...](http://fortune.com/2014/10/02/are-we-done-yet-with-new-york-tech-
hype/)

~~~
grandalf
NYC isn't there yet, but there are so many intrinsic advantages it's just a
matter of time. The biggest impediment is cultural. Most of the tech talent is
very cautious and by the book. However this is changing. NYC Papers We Love is
a great example of what the future holds... As is clojure.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
NYC will get there when they move the city to the west coast. There is
something different about the west: wide open spaces, mountains, good weather,
that you can't really replicate in the east.

~~~
Bahamut
The New York night life cannot be beaten in the US for many reasons.

The sheer volume of people also means that people have a good chance of having
good ties to NYC even when never having lived there. Love the weather out here
in the Bay Area, but there is a part of me that will always miss NYC and the
whole tri-state area (well, minus Long Island anyhow ;) ) - hell, the whole
east coast in general.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Many are either east coast persons or west coast persons. I know many
easterners who hate living on the west coast, and vice versa. The question
should really be: are many techies living on the west coast willing to become
east coasters? I know many aren't native west coasters, but I still think a
lot of them just like living on the west coast.

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biesnecker
It 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.

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2xlbuds
One 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.

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rbobby
I 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 ;)

~~~
callahad
If you can find equivalent Canadian data sources for the US Census-based ones
listed in
[http://www.cts.umn.edu/Publications/ResearchReports/reportde...](http://www.cts.umn.edu/Publications/ResearchReports/reportdetail.html?id=2382),
I'd be happy to ask Andrew about computing up a map of Toronto.

Looks like he'd primarily need replacements for U.S. Census TIGER 2010
datasets: blocks, core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) and the U.S. Census
Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) 2011 Origin-Destination
Employment Statistics (LODES)

~~~
rbobby
Here's what may be the transit schedule data: [http://www.gtfs-data-
exchange.com/agency/ttc/](http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/ttc/)

For the specific Census data... all I can do is point to
[http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-
eng.html](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html), the top level of
Stats Canada. I tried to find similar datasets but wasn't even close to
successful. CANSIM seems to be the bit where you can download the "raw"
data... but finding the right CANSIM table(s) appears to be more difficult
than I expected.

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turar
All maps in the actual report:
[http://www.access.umn.edu/research/america/transit2014/maps/...](http://www.access.umn.edu/research/america/transit2014/maps/index.html)

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byoung2
It'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.

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pchristensen
Additional excellent analysis by transit planner Jarrett Walker:
[http://www.humantransit.org/2014/10/access-across-
america.ht...](http://www.humantransit.org/2014/10/access-across-america.html)

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rch
They should adjust for the ratio of housing costs to the income earned from
those jobs.

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anigbrowl
It would be fun to see this XORed with real estate/rental heat maps.

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vasilipupkin
Surprised that LA is ahead of Chicago

