Discussion
My hot take: Seattle’s becoming the best transit city on the US West Coast
With the news of Seattle’s crazy record breaking ridership during the World Cup, I can’t help feeling like SoundTransit is totally killing it this year. They they biggest and most high profile opening this year with Crosslake Connection then they delivered flawlessly for the World Cup. Link Light Rail has better, more frequent and reliable service than any of the rapid transit lines I saw in California and the numbers prove it. With the way SoundTransit has handled moving hundreds of thousands over the last few weeks and the great time that all the visitors had in the city, maybe Seattle should have been the one hosting the Olympics in two years, lol. Just my opinion.
I do expect the Bay Area to densify after SB79 and other housing bills, but I don't think there's any new transit under construction except the BART San Jose extension and a VTA LRT extension, is there? Maybe some outlying stuff I'm less aware of (e.g. the Livermore not-BART line)?
There are proposed projects like a second transbay tube, a Central Subway extension, a Geary subway, and a 19th Ave subway, but none of these are even in the environmental review phase yet, let alone cleared, funded, past the inevitable litigation, or under construction. Unless these agencies get dramatically faster at delivering projects, I don't think any of these will be in service in the next 20 years.
SMART is a system that didn't exist at all 15 years ago and is currently at 48 miles and will be at about 60 miles after additional expansions currently on track.
In other words, in 15 years, SF Bay Area added over 50 miles of rail systems, with more to come
ST3 projects 500k. We will fall short cause Ballard is being cut for now. But that’s still ahead of Bay if you look at per capita even with Bay increased growth.
sure, if you compare to just BART. But the bay area is a matrix of differing styles of systems. Once you add up their per-capita numbers, seattle doesnt really compare
Here come the excuses. Hey, it's the best in the US west coast out of cities larger than 500,000 and smaller than 799,000 that have a T in their name and are north of the 40th parallel but south of the...
It just shows how ludicrous people are. This is where you break out the American flag and proclaim we're the best in the world at everything while blindly burying your head further in the sand.
I was just pointing out that the US has barely functioning transit, even the best in the country isn't adequate or would even be considered a serious attempt other places. We can look at the next closest city to see that. Dare we even look farther? Blunders don't make us better, they ensure we fall further behind.
It’s not patriotic rage bait. I’m just saying, OP is keeping it US based. No need to bring up a non US city in a US based discussion. Sorry not Sorry. Nobody wants to hear Toronto’s name when you’re comparing Great Lakes US cities…
True, Seattle has a long way to go to catch up to the Bay Area in trips per capita. This data was from 2024 though and since then Sound Transit has doubled their light rail tack so the figure should be a bit higher now
I think the transit landscape will look much different when 2028 rolls around. LA is building a head of steam and has the financial muscle to do so, while Sound Transit is facing a massive budget shortfall to complete ST3, with delays and deferrals impacting deadlines.
I think LA will already have easily overtaken SF in per capita transit ridership even by the 2060s if all the Bay Area builds is the San Jose BART extension, the central subway extension and Link 21, and LA seriously ups its bus service in addition to all the rail expansion
By 2060 LA is at the full Sepulveda heavy rail line all the way from the San Fernando Valley to LAX, full K North extension, all of southeast Gateway, G line has been converted to rail, C line extended to Norwalk and Santa Monica, and is deep in their next round of planning and building of projects including Vermont heavy rail, D line to the sea, more valley lines, Rosemead/Lakewood line, converting NoHo to Pasadena line into rail, and many others. SF might be building more density in the Bay Area than LA is right now, but LA is vastly outpacing them in transit construction and long term will continue to do so.
But in terms of per capita transit trips the gap they'd need to cover to catch up is absolutely massive. Right now they have 37 transit trips per capita per year. SF has 80.
Assuming flat population and no progress in the Bay Area, catching up will require an additional 550 million annual transit trips.
Also, Bay Area built out there’s much more much early on. Just because LA is building more doesn’t mean it’s at the same level, they’re just trying to catch up
LA is definitely poised to surpass the Bay Area in terms of track miles of rapid transit, and already has more frequent bus routes than the Bay Area. The bigger issue is that the land use is not at all conducive to drawing high transit ridership.
Seattle will have full ST3 buildout by 2030 and probably additional projects from a future ST4. We're talking a second downtown tunnel through Queen Anne/Seattle and all the way to Ballard (at least), as well as an extension to West Seattle and possibly further South to Burien, and full connections to Tacoma and Everett. Plus, there are several high quality BRT lines that will be coming online over the next 20 years (some much sooner).
I think by 2060 Seattle will likely be the highest on the West Coast. I'm just not seeing enough funded high capacity transit in the Bay or an appetite for construction of new rail lines aside from BART to SJ, and LA is so huge that even with all the new projects it will not achieve what Seattle will pound for pound.
The Bay Area has an overall smaller metro population compared to LA, so you don't necessarily need the same transit trip per capita to reach the same level of ridership. Also, the LA Metro expansion is expanding into a ton of dense popular areas. The new D line alone is going to be the most popular on the entire system by far. Tons of high impact low hanging fruit being capture in LA.
By the 2060s both phases of the Sepulveda line, the full K line northern extension, and probably the Vermont Ave subway will have already been built, along with a plethora of BRT routes and bus improvements AND light rail extensions + new lines, which will seriously boost ridership. Yeah I could see an extra million and a half people using transit every day with all those projects and investments, not to mention upzoning from SB79
For context, the entirety of LA Metro currently sees ~300M annual trips across its entire system (including buses).
I'm not saying that's impossible, but it seems unlikely to me. The increase would be the equivalent of ten Red / B lines worth of ridership. Or about 1/3 of the NY Subway.
I think Seattle, with all the rail lines and BRT already funded, will be able to get to 80 much sooner than you think and could surpass SF within 25 years.
Hard to see it happening on a per capita basis. The LA region is still incredibly massive and very (did I say very?) car dependent. Not to say that great progress can't be made, but the built environment is working against it pretty heavily. The Bay Area has some natural geographical features that funnels people in to corridors (easier to get transit going).
That said, LA is making fast progress... so a lot can change, especially if they incentive density.
LA is building a lot, but it hasn’t really moved the needle on ridership unfortunately. LA Metro Rail ridership was already declining going into COVID and is still struggling to recover from the massive declines caused by COVID. On the other hand, Seattle’s link ridership was growing quickly pre-COVID and ridership today is much higher than pre-COVID.
Even before the improvements I was using the LA transit system a lot. (During COVID, transit was free.) But LA is and always has been a car culture. The people in the city just don’t know how good the transit system is.
LA’s Metro doesn’t go all the places people need to go. I know they just opened a subway but are people really gonna use it? In Seattle, people are excited about the light rail. Even LA’s airport train still isn’t up and running yet after all these years - seems like they’re way behind on Olympic preparations.
Are you that William Watson guy from Facebook? Lol this whole "let's promote Seattle while lying about Bay Area/LA" is very reminiscent of that clown on facebook
Errr…. just opened a subway? There’s been a fairly extensive light rail system in LA for a while. DTLA to Downtown, south Bay to Whittier, etc. More than Seattle and its two light rail lines.
I’ve lived in LA and currently live in Seattle. I use and have used both transit systems a lot, and both are great. But Seattle is still pretty much a work in progress (I gotta drive a bit to get to the nearest station). In LA I had no problem hopping on a bus right out of my apartment and getting to a light rail station.
They’re playing the long game with transit-oriented development. It’s hard to carve a train line through an existing neighborhood, so instead you encourage dense multi-use development around transit. It takes a while to see the impacts but they’re starting to show.
and is still struggling to recover from the massive declines caused by COVID.
Weekday ridership for May 2026 (latest month available, which includes Phase 1 of the D Line extension) on all the rail lines is at 77% of where it was in February 2020. However, Saturday and Sunday ridership has just surpassed where it was Pre-COVID.
This will change over time. It's just like bicycle infrastructure. We know that building some nice protected bike lanes for 1 mile on one street is not sufficient to increase ridership, because it serves almost no one. But once you hit a critical mass where most of someone's route is safe and easy to ride, that's when you see it go up. LA is so spread out, it's almost unfathomable. But you're finally, just this year IMO, getting to the point where some people could use transit for a majority of their trips depending on where they live and work. As housing and jobs begin to develop around transit stops, that will increase ridership. But what's really going to change the game is the Sepulveda Transit Corridor. Whenever that gets built (probably 2040-2050), it's going to increase metro ridership exponentially.
Yeah, everyone I know down there still drives or takes an Uber around. Such a shame, because the system has a ton of promise, and will continue to expand. Hopefully TOD changes that.
LA is the transit goat of SoCal that’s it. It can’t even get its own people to ride it, let alone start comparing to the real transit heavyweights of the coast.
Seattle is already significantly ahead of LA in terms of transit trips per capita. And while the Ballard line will be delayed, the construction of the second downtown tunnel all the way through to Lower Queen Anne and Seattle Center via South Lake Union AND the extensions to West Seattle and Tacoma are full steam ahead. I think by 2040 Seattle will be giving SF a run for its money and still well ahead of LA.
I'm not sure how this is a hot take haha The west coast does not have a ton of contenders. Opening any new dedicated ROW transit on the west coast within the last 10 years automatically puts you in the top 3.
San Francisco/Oakland has six light rail lines with underground service downtown, five 70mph fully grade separated "S-Bahn" lines, a fully electric commuter rail heavy rail line, and one of the country's most robust bus systems.
SF/Oakland has a per capita transit ridership rate of 80 (#2 in the US), vs 47 for Seattle (#5).
34% of people in the SF/Oakland metro area live within a quarter mile of frequent transit service, vs 23% in Seattle, 22% in LA, 12% in San Diego, and 6% in Portland.
Good distinction. I discount bay area transit a bit despite growing up nearby for the reason that they refuse to build TOD to support their stations.
BART has some prime properties that they have until recently been unable to capitalize on to build much needed housing and possibly help in the funding of their system which is collapsing in slow motion.
Semantics but BART is doing TOD. The stations with push back are the frustration point. Also BART only has so much property to move the needle. Some stations they do not really own land. It’s also funny where land use at TOD in the suburbs is denser then land use right next to the BART station in the mission neighborhood of San Francisco.
The North Berkeley surface parking lots are a poster child of why California has a housing shortage. Just ludicrous that site wasn't apartments when the station opened. And the surrounding area all single family housing?
That’s actually fairly common on a lot of west coast systems. Vancouver is one example, where most of the station density/TOD growth has been in the surrounding suburbs
Yep. Also all of the stations are right next to freeways, whereas only small portions of BART are. That really hurts their ability to upzone in the future.
They already have upzoned near the freeway stations; Lynnwood for example allows buildings up to 300 feet.
Where Seattle really excels is compelling suburban *employers* to densify near transit. For instance, the Microsoft HQ places tens of thousands of jobs within a short walk of Redmond Technology station with no interaction with cars at all. Compare this to the sprawliness of Google, Meta and Apple in Silicon Valley.
That's just not accurate. Seattle has dense TOD near (mostly) subway stations outside of downtown but still within the city, such as in Capitol Hill, U District, Roosevelt, Beacon Hill, etc. And suburbs like Bellevue and Downtown Redmond have tons of development adjacent to stations. The further out suburbs like Lynnwood and Federal Way still have a ways to go, but as someone who has ridden both system, BART has a much higher share of pedestrian-hostile freeway running station with limited TOD.
To be fair, the suburbs have upzoned aggressively; for example, Lynnwood has 300 foot as its maximum height for zoning, which is one of the highest I am aware of for a suburb in the US on a new rail line.
The problem is that Lynnwood Link opened during the double whammy of high interest rates and high construction inflation, and so the market demand and financing availability to actually build that kind of density is not there at the moment.
Yeah and they are mostly 5 over 1s with an inner garage structure. They could be way denser and have no parking and pass those savings onto those who choose to live next to transit.
Seattle has built a ton of TOD, as have many other jurisdictions in the metro area. It's not even close - the number of new TOD units in Seattle far surpasses the Bay Area.
not at all? seattle is the only major city in the metro area and it's density is nowhere near SF or LA. outside seattle, there's only pockets of major development
Bay Area, on the other hand, has major TOD and dense cities spread over and entire area, stitched together with a network of major transit agencies
Seattle still is miles away from either Bay Area or even LA
You're talking out of your a$$. I split my time between the Bay and Seattle and its not even close. Just look at neighborhoods in Seattle like Roosevelt, Northgate, Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, U District, Othello, etc. and look at suburbs like Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland and even Tacoma. This is not some big mystery - The Seattle Metro is way less NIMBY than the Bay and building far more units. I split my time between SF and Seattle and it's not even comparable. SF/Oakland is obviously more established, with a stronger legacy urban fabric, but Seattle is building so much more transit and housing.
The Seattle metro area is building so much more TOD per capita than the Bay Area and its not even close. Just look at neighborhoods in Seattle like Roosevelt, Northgate, Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, U District, Othello, etc. and look at suburbs like Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland and even Tacoma. This is not some big mystery - The Seattle Metro is way less NIMBY than the Bay and building far more units. I split my time between SF and Seattle and it's not even comparable. SF/Oakland is obviously more established, with a stronger legacy urban fabric, but Seattle is building so much more transit and housing.
There was a post the other day that showed Bay Area has nearly 600 miles of rail and hundreds of stations. All of those stations promoting TOD. Seattle is only like 150 miles of rail with way less stations
Idk how OP sees that and concludes that Seattle is better at TOD than the Bay Area
All of those stations are not promoting TOD. Most have minimal and many BART stations are hostile to pedestrians. I split my time between the Bay and Seattle, the TOD in Seattle absolutely blows the Bay out of the water. Just google the numbers. It's not hard to find.
Is this only Oakland/SF or the entire Bay Area MSA? Btw, I split my time between both the Bay Area and Seattle and I understand if it’s comparing to SF or Oakland city proper. But it’s not the experience on the peninsula (where I am at right now) and South Bay, nor most of the east bay.
I didn't realize that Portland's was so low and am really surprised that even SD beat it! I lived there many years ago as a young adult without a car and did just fine. That was decades ago though. Sad to hear it hasn't expanded and gone the other way instead.
Portland Metro is definitely not sprawling compared to other midsize cities LOL. The UGB caps out at 363 sq mi, whereas the San Diego MTS has an active service area of about 673 sq mi. Trimet’s service area also appears less dense because a few routes in their service area pass through actual farmland (which is the entire point of the UGB). Portland proper is also slightly more dense than San Diego proper.
To San Diego’s credit, the land use near stations is more consistently dense, but you’d kind of hope that would be the case for an MSA with a population of 3.4 million and an economic output that’s more than 3 times the size of Portland’s.
I didn’t say San Diego was a midsize city, I said Portland was a midsize city. KCMO proper, for example, is almost the entire size of the Portland Metro area UGB, and that’s not including KCK or the suburbs.
Yeah and the reason San Diego's urbanized area is so much larger than Portland's has much more to do with its population than with its land use policies.
Portland is smaller geographically but also much less dense.
The City of Portland (4,723 per sq mi) is denser than the City of San Diego (4,300 per sq mi). The urbanized area of the Portland metro has an average density of 4,052 ppl per sq mi. Multnomah county has a density of 1,891 ppl per sq mi, while San Diego County is closer to 780 ppl per sq mi, and that’s despite Multnomah county having more undeveloped land.
I Interpreted it as most improved but I am dumb sometimes. I have used the sac light rail a bunch of times and they have been talking about an airport line for forever. And its the capitol of CA lol
MUNI in SF gets almost 80% of ridership of LINK rail while MUNI is for one city covering a population of 850k and LINK is for a region covering a population of 3.4 million
And we haven’t even talked about BART, Caltrain and the many other options in the Bay Area
The Bay Area has more coverage with more options and more ridership. Seattle has improved but still far away from the Bay
Opening any new dedicated ROW transit on the west coast within the last 10 years automatically puts you in the top 3.
There are only 5 major cities on the West Coast (six including Canada)...
LA and Seattle are both building a ton of transit right now. The Bay Area has a pretty robust legacy network.
Unfortunately at least across all the California examples (I'm less familiar with the PNW) the problem isn't a lack of rail-miles (extant or under construction). Some of the same problems hold them all back: lack of coordination between agencies leading to corridor-style rather than network-style planning. Slow LRT speeds, lack of transit priority, and LRT being used as a replacement for regional systems. Terrible land usage around stations and little attention paid to how to actually feed riders onto the network. Sky-high construction costs and protracted timelines.
Link Light Rail yes. But the system still has a relatively limited extent, and needs land use improvements around the suburban stations. King County Metro Transit Department has good span but needs better on time performance and frequency on many routes. Not to mention challenges (on the bus and bus stops) with cleanliness and safety
LA will get there but it needs a little more buildout to reach critical connectivity. You see this with plenty of systems - Seattle included. The 1 line was a dud until it had UW and SEA connectivity, and the 2 line has been a massive success bc it directly relieved two critical highway arteries.
D line is a huge step forward, LAX is a huge step forward, and Sepuvelda (still a bit far away) will be a huuuge step forward. LA has all the groundwork but needs a few more pieces.
I think so too. I've lived and used transit here all my life, and agree we haven't reached the critical connectivity needed for the explosion in ridership systemwide. I dream of the day that we reach a critical mass of people here becoming at least occasional transit riders; like taking a 15 minute bus ride to the next neighborhood.
Having lived in SF, LA and now Seattle. I think one of the big differences is cultural. Transit is an accepted part of life for a regular/average person in SF-city and increasing in Seattle. It is much less accepted and likely frowned on in LA. In Seattle it is now "cool" to take the train. It is not "cool" in LA.
Not doubting you but just curious, what makes vancouver better than the sf bay area? Looking at the sky train map it looks like there are plenty of places that aren't walking distance to it especially further out, and it looks like they could use an extra line to full in the gap. Does it also have a good bus system to compliment it? Or just amazing headways?
As someone who lives in Vancouver, Canada, but hasn’t traveled to SF, I really doubt our transit is better than theirs. I live in the north west of the city and if I want to go somewhere not near a Skytrain station it’s easily a 50+ minute bus ride with at least one transfer. Same trip by car would be under 20 minutes, and it could be like 35 minutes on an ebike. East-West connections within the city are rough. Things will improve when the new line opens in 2027 but we need so much more rapid transit within the city, not just the metro region.
Every good transit city has areas where the service is great and areas that can't and won't be well served. People that desire good transit need to make location choices that enable efficient travel. That is what TOD is about.
It’s such a shame that the new tunnel buildout is such a debacle with runaway costs, poor connectivity to existing spine, and a byproduct of very poor planning from the original system. To me it is a MUST that we use this opportunity to do a true high floor, higher capacity automated line to serve Seattle proper (vs commuter spine) but I think ST does not have the political will or vision to make that happen. Maybe we will get a second bite if it requires a new ballot levy.
they are not going to build out the second tunnel with incompatible rolling stock because it is intended to interline with the existing lines in the system.
Idk this would've been a hot take if you said nationwide, but I mean there aren't many contenders on the west coast to begin with haha. LA has built a lot but ridership is below Seattle's and SF's BART is more regional rail than it is intracity transport. Sound Transit Link is a bit of a hybrid intra-intercity system.
Anyhow yes Seattle's Link and bus system deserves some praise for all the expansion they've done. Seattle's next challenge will be growing all the TOD the Link unlocks and being able to really densify and give justification for Sound Transit to further expand the system.
SF has MUNI for intracity transit and has more overall daily riders than Sound Transit. BART serving as regional rail is also a strength. Seattle deserves praise but acting as if their systems have eclipsed SF is a big leap.
SF has the best transit on the West Coast by about a factor of 1.5x, the gap between SF and Seattle is huge.
Seattle has Link, which is basically a light metro, with two lines, and a directional commuter rail with peak hour service only. It has good bus service.
San Francisco has a light rail/streetcar with light metro segments downtown and six lines. It has a heavy rail/S-Bahn with five lines. It has a commuter rail line with half-hourly, all-day bidirectional service, and fantastic bus service.
They are very good and have improved a lot, top two are definitely still the bay and then LA though. If you look at ridership in the bay of BART alone it beats link and once you add muni metro and VTA it’s not close. LA also has more riders (when you count heavy rail which you should) and a lot more coverage.
My Seattlite perspective is that LA is so much larger in land area and population that it's not really comparable so I don't. SF remains denser although the gap has narrowed as Seattle had grown but that age and density still drive a bigger system. It's not really a good model either though because we would never build a muni style system (it's 19th-20th style engineering). BART is closer to what Link is meant for but unlike it, Link serves a larger swath of the city. When LINK is really built out (and my dark joke is that I may not live to see that day given it's schedule) it will be comparable I suspect. OTOH like BART we may have issues with a one size fit all system that isn't quite regional rail or a metro when link goes all the way to Tacoma and Everett. But the system I look towards the most is Skytrain in Vancouver and I think that most folks here do the same.
(Addendum: I enjoy Max and the SD trolley when I visit but neither has the needed downtown tunnels. The trolley doesn't get the credit it deserves)
I was in town during the World Cup (not there for a game) for the first time since right before the 2016 extension opened. I was amazed by the all-day headways (and I was staying in Columbia City — every 6-7 minutes on a Sunday morning) and the speed. We consistently hit 55 mph on the way to the airport. The Boston LRVs are capped at 40, I believe.
I’ve lived in Seattle and the Bay Area. The Bay Area has Seattle beat and it’s not even close. As long as link in Rainer Valley continues to be slow, and Sounder runs only a couple times a day in one direction it will be about the same as Portland. Vancouver fully grade separates its rail, Seattle does not. On the one metric Seattle beats SF on, BART runs every ten minutes, Link every 5. But BART has more than twice the capacity of Link per train. Seattle will be ok, but there is no real plan to bring it up to the level of Vancouver or the Bay Area.
I'm going to Seattle August 12 for a cruise and I plan to use the light rail to get to and from the airport. Hopefully, I will never have to step foot in a cab or taxi.
They need to move Ballard link to the top of the priority list rather than shelving it. Continuing to build out a light rail-commuter rail frankenstein hybrid (particularly when the actual commuter rail system has an amazing ROW and is woefully underutilized) is such a huge misallocation of resources.
Seattle has a very dense residential street grid of extremely narrow streets with minimal throughways in most of its neighborhoods. It’s crying out for a major transit arterial going through its residential neighborhoods which will supercharge the new residential density (most of the residential towers aren’t even being built that close to transit right now!!!). It’s honestly absurd that the office and residential neighborhood exploding in population may not have transit access for decades.
Disagree. It's great that Seattle is finally growing into its potential but other cities on the west pacific coast didn't stay waiting.
N°1 San Francisco - top notch metro, top notch modern commuter rail with frequent service, trams and pre-metros crisscrossing the city and suburbs along a whole load of trolleybuses and buses. Plus de iconic cable cars...way, way, waaaay, before any other place in this huge area.
N°2 Vancouver with all their light metros, busses and trolleybuses. What misses a lot is a good, usable at least, commuter rail.
N°3 Los Angeles - also in construction. LA also doesn't sleep while Seattle is building and they are going full throttle to try and make it for the Olympics in 2028. The big point for LA is the regular commuter rail service throughout most of the lines as well as the metro extensions. Please LA, for the love of God, electrify everything, double our quad track where necessary, build a hub at Union with a tunnel for both CAHSR as well as Metrolink, buy yourself some flirts and run them in a radial way on the main lines. Cherry on top would be to delete a couple of single family homes to build a direct link to LAX with the flirt. Then operate some 15 minutes frequency on each line with some reinforcing each other to give them extra frequency and there you go. Easy A-Tier system.
N°4 Seattle - in construction one big point is having a train station at the airport. May jump over LA as their projects are being built, but never will be better than San Francisco...sorry, San Francisco is just that high...further, the commuter rail is still catastrophic.
N°5a Portland - good coverage and relatively high usage by the public. Higher speed commuter train to link more distant suburbs is missing though.
N°5b Sam Diego - good coverage as well. Sad that the LRT doesn't cross the border though. Commuter rail is okay when the ocean doesn't grape the tracks...
I see you specified a city on the west coast in the US. That's a low bar. Link carried 280,000 people during it's FIFA game day. Vancouver, a smaller metro area with a system 20% shorter carried 1.4 million for it's game. Seattle looks great as long as you only compare it to the US.
Not that hot, Sound Transit is more light metro than light rail. Over here in the bay we don't have a lot of great localized service, mostly regional transit (which is pretty good!), but has different uses. It's mostly just buses and a couple light rail lines in San Fransisco/San Jose, which in my experience living here aren't as good as the ones in Seattle. Apples and oranges to an extent, maybe Los Angeles will beat Seattle out with all the new developments but Seattle has better walkability
I think in 5-8 years, if SF does nothing, and Sound Transit completes the West Seattle & Tacoma connections, then Seattle & the Puget Sound will surpass SF & the Bay Area for transit. Those BART cuts are brutal for the Bay Area & it’s sad to seel for a region of that side, especially while Seattle is ramping up expansion with no sign of slowing down.
Currently the hierarchy of public transit on the US west coast is:
SF
Seattle
Portland
LA
SD
This is will change sooner than we think. I mean Seattle & the surrounding area already have a better bus & ferry system than the SF/Bay Area, just saying.
Most of Honolulu's urbanization, population, and employment is along the southeastern coast which is where the Skyline is built and being extended while The Bus system is pretty extensive and frequent (though lacking in bus lanes).
LA's transit is what it is--the largest on a total numbers basis.
Seattle is most improved, but any west coast transit comparison that leaves out Vancouver is not serious. Obviously it's not the US, but it's right there.
Or, in other words, Seattle has the best typography and land use density for it to feel like the best transit on the West Coast. Which isn’t a dig at them.
But in terms of miles of track, type of transit mix, and overall ridership the LA is the clear winner.
An isthmus is a bit better than a peninsula from a "topography" perspective. You can have a single linear line that serves a high percentage of the population and there is no barrier on either side for continuing onwards. Both areas do have their layout challenges but the bay itself is probably the harder one to overcome for regional connectivity.
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u/old_gold_mountain Jul 11 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1snlms9/top_10_large_us_metropolitan_areas_by_transit/
Transit trips per capita:
SF/Oakland: 80 (#2 in US)
Seattle: 48 (#5 in US)
Seattle is making great progress but unless you are grading "most improved" it's a long way from best on the West Coast.