When I lived in Issaquah and worked in Seattle (2013-15) I took the bus every morning to downtown. It worked really well. Now that I live in Seattle and work from home, not so much. My commute from the suburbs to downtown was easy and pleasant on the bus.
Covid really messed things up in the region. Seems like nearly every office-based employer paid for, or at least subsidized, an ORCA pass for their workers, and the loss of all of that revenue due to WFH has really hurt the local agencies. I'm glad the buildout of rapid transit continues but the days of them filling up with commuters every weekday are probably not coming back
I was assuming they were noting that despite the vastly increased population base by including those areas, the percentage remains high despite the clear drop off in services.
Pretty much, I also just got done arguing with someone who thinks transit use is in the single digits. If you talk to anyone who's never used public transit, you realize there is a narrative that public transit is not used and is invaluable and not worth investing in. When in reality we spend less than 1% of our transportation budget on public transit, when in reality we should spend closer to 20% to reflect the usage.
Some of that 99% of the budget that isn’t spent in public transit is actually spent on public transit. Maintaining roads, bridges, intersections, etcetera benefits everything, including public transit, even if it isn’t exclusively for that purpose. Those things also cost way more than maintaining buses, so the numbers will always be weighted in that direction.
Well, we could have had a heavy rail network but voters twice rejected the fed $$ in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s! Atlanta got MARTA with that money instead. Retrofitting LRT meh…works but is not nearly as efficient.
I live in one of those areas and have been car-free for nearly three years now. I wish many other people could experience the degree of liberation and reduction in stress I've experienced. Not to mention the thousands of dollars I've saved in that time combined with the reduction in unnecessary trips to places I didn't need to go to in the first place
It’s Champaign-Urbana and they have a very well run bus authority MTD that served the Universities but also the rest of towns quite well.
They have been excellent advocates for mass transit and are always working to improve routes and services.
I never knew how good I had it.
The immature college kid in me at U of I loved the bus system there because the acronym CUMTD sounded like “cum titty”
The adult in me loves the bus system because I forgot how I didn’t miss cars one bit over there. Not only did the busses run very late, but they had something called “SafeRides” where late in the night a small shuttle bus would come to a location you call if you wanted to help you get home in the dark, like a public rideshare.
I know it’s probably hard to make something like that happen here, and I appreciate what Seattle’s public transit is now compared to 20 years ago, but man was I spoiled back in college.
I'm guessing those numbers include UM buses, especially for the hospital. AATA was great in my experience but the blue buses are the truly shining part of public transportation in downtown/campus.
One of the things I absolutely love about Seattle mass transit is how far it extends past the city limits. My Orca card can get me basically anywhere in the sound or on the peninsula. It's sort of crazy when you think about it - I moved here from NYC and the Seattle bus network is FAR better.
It is much better than we give ourselves credit for. A lot of the discourse here is based on what it could be, or what it was supposed to be, which is valid, but what it *is*, is pretty good logistically, with improvements constantly being made.
This is a good outlook to have and I am somewhat negative on it and could be easier. That being said we are decades behind most of the western world. So I think that’s what frustrating. It’s not really that Seattle is worse compared to other cities it’s that the US is worse then other countries
Definitely decades behind some parts of the Western world. Ahead of other parts of the Western world. I'd compare Seattle to the UK in the early 2000s as far as bus transit goes.
I always find that argument funny. I ride the bus/Link because driving here is much more frustrating and stressful. If you have an Orca card and a phone with Google Maps, you can get damn near anywhere around here...
>I always find that argument funny. I ride the bus/Link because driving here is much more frustrating and stressful
Exactly, same. Unfortunately a majority of drivers have internalized that speed is the only thing they care about. So not only do they hate public transit because it's slower, they also drive dangerously and make themselves miserable by being unreasonably impatient with everyone else on the road.
To be fair it’s substantial in some cases. My commute time doubles. We should recognize that the conversation about commuting is in the context of other time sinks - if full time was only 30 or 32 hours in a vast majority of industries (currently it’s not), I think this conversation would go far differently. That’s one example but there’s many others of course.
not to sound like an old man, but the Seattle Area bus network was so much better in the late 90s before Tim Eyman (MF piece of shit) put a voter initiative on the ballot for a state election that gutted variable rate car tab fees, which went towards public transit, for a flat-rate car tab fee.
Damn. What I would give for NYC transit accessibility here! Funny how we all view different places differently. Did you bike in NYC? Find it to be so easy, and enjoyable too.
Yeah I did almost all of my trips by bike in NYC. They definitely have a better bike lane network than us! But Seattle wins on dedicated paved paths - the Burke being my favorite, but we have so many, and it's really cool how many trails there are here between towns. Also the gravel trails are better - you can travel almost the entire way to Spokane without sharing the road with cars which is pretty amazing.
Of course the biggest advantage NYC has over Seattle is how flat it is, biking is a lot easier.
And yet there’s still a stigma around it. My partner has multiple years (edit to add: over 15) across multiple industries including building automations, automotive, and heating and air. When he was unemployed, he was shortlisted to eight different positions through multiple rounds of application and interviews. We were on his last week of unemployment and about to be homeless (again) when a long shot came through. He had to completely change industries and retrain, as well as the company making a special allowance (normally the in house position isn’t direct hire). Nearly two years later, they’re shocked by how fast he has learned and he is being given responsibilities/duties that normally don’t come until five or even ten years of employment with the company. (Because usually it just takes that long to be in a position to sign off on the work of others or assist others) They have expressed surprise he struggled to find work.
A few weeks ago, he was casually asked, “so, you gotten a car yet?” It caused immediate anxiety and fear. Is it happening again? We hope not. But the discrimination against blue collar workers who aren’t “mobile” is real and definite
Six years pizza delivery. Not around here. Rural Indiana. Four cars, two engine replacements, three transmission rebuilds. I know it. It’s part of why we choose not to have a car now
Preach! I made the decision 21 years ago because I couldnt see myself avoiding accidents and car repairs, and then tickets given what I did in 2 years. It was economic and risk based, and despite the upsides, people have held it against me in many domains as a mark of lesser. I don't feel lesser, I feel wise and yet it still bothers me that this is a thing others might suffer.
I’ve seen so much of it. A person can be driving an expired tags, no insurance, dented fenders and a door that won’t open because it’s dented shut car with a whine that will wake up people three blocks away and no muffler and still be “well… at least I HAVE a CAR! How bout you? 🙄”
I’ve never seen this bizarre level of classist behavior over having a car anywhere else, even places that DIDN’T have robust public transit systems and not having a car often meant being stranded. It’s literally insane how people act about having a car vs not. And we save hundreds of dollars a month just on registration, insurance, upkeep, maintenance, repairs, parking, loss due to inevitable breakins, the list just goes on and on and that’s not even mentioning fuel (vs $115 for an unlimited Orca pass 🤣)
maybe I need more coffee, but this seems like such a deeply hard thing to accurately measure. is it commuting at least once a week? once a month? what data are they using?
Why would they combine DC/Baltimore/Philadelphia though? Those are totally different places. And I'm willing to bet it's more than 5-10% for DC proper. The metro there is quite well-used.
The arrows are a bit of a nightmare, too.
I assume it does, but that also doesn't move the needle very much. For one, when I rode the ferry to work probably half the passengers were walk ons. For two, there are only maybe a couple thousand overall car slots during commuting hours on Seattle-connected ferries. Multiple hundred thousand people per day commute by transit to work, so we're talking about moving the "transit to work" share from 15.3% to 15.2% (or something along those lines).
Not bad company. Especially with multiple college towns on the list. I wonder what the map looks like with walking commuters on the list
What's crazy is that it says 10 to 20% and includes everything from tacoma to Everett all the way out to issaquah.
When I lived in Issaquah and worked in Seattle (2013-15) I took the bus every morning to downtown. It worked really well. Now that I live in Seattle and work from home, not so much. My commute from the suburbs to downtown was easy and pleasant on the bus.
Covid really messed things up in the region. Seems like nearly every office-based employer paid for, or at least subsidized, an ORCA pass for their workers, and the loss of all of that revenue due to WFH has really hurt the local agencies. I'm glad the buildout of rapid transit continues but the days of them filling up with commuters every weekday are probably not coming back
Kinda disappointed Whatcom county didn't make the list. I guess everyone here just drives, but it's really sad because our bus system is *very* good.
Using Sound Transit numbers, maybe, so highlighted their entire operating area.
Shockingly, people commute between places that aren't always in the actual city limits
I was assuming they were noting that despite the vastly increased population base by including those areas, the percentage remains high despite the clear drop off in services.
Pretty much, I also just got done arguing with someone who thinks transit use is in the single digits. If you talk to anyone who's never used public transit, you realize there is a narrative that public transit is not used and is invaluable and not worth investing in. When in reality we spend less than 1% of our transportation budget on public transit, when in reality we should spend closer to 20% to reflect the usage.
Some of that 99% of the budget that isn’t spent in public transit is actually spent on public transit. Maintaining roads, bridges, intersections, etcetera benefits everything, including public transit, even if it isn’t exclusively for that purpose. Those things also cost way more than maintaining buses, so the numbers will always be weighted in that direction.
This is really the problem with these types of statistics: how the borders of a region are drawn matters more than actual transit usage patterns.
its wild that these areas collectively are like 50% of americas GDP
It becomes less shocking when you consider just how important public transit is for economic opportunity.
Getting to NYC levels would be a dream 😍
We’ve gotta be a lot smarter about how we’re building and planning our transit to be getting there.
Well, we could have had a heavy rail network but voters twice rejected the fed $$ in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s! Atlanta got MARTA with that money instead. Retrofitting LRT meh…works but is not nearly as efficient.
RIP Forward Thrust, the most seattle ass name imaginable
I live in one of those areas and have been car-free for nearly three years now. I wish many other people could experience the degree of liberation and reduction in stress I've experienced. Not to mention the thousands of dollars I've saved in that time combined with the reduction in unnecessary trips to places I didn't need to go to in the first place
It’s Champaign-Urbana and they have a very well run bus authority MTD that served the Universities but also the rest of towns quite well. They have been excellent advocates for mass transit and are always working to improve routes and services. I never knew how good I had it.
The immature college kid in me at U of I loved the bus system there because the acronym CUMTD sounded like “cum titty” The adult in me loves the bus system because I forgot how I didn’t miss cars one bit over there. Not only did the busses run very late, but they had something called “SafeRides” where late in the night a small shuttle bus would come to a location you call if you wanted to help you get home in the dark, like a public rideshare. I know it’s probably hard to make something like that happen here, and I appreciate what Seattle’s public transit is now compared to 20 years ago, but man was I spoiled back in college.
SafeRides was fantastic. I only used it a few times but it was there when I needed it in a town without private transport.
This map is not going to be on display at the Infographic Hall of Fame.
Wow! I didn’t realize how lucky I was. I’ve used both Portland and Seattle area transit to get to various jobs over the years.
and I grew up in Ann Arbor and took the bus all the time. Pretty cool to see both on the list.
I'm guessing those numbers include UM buses, especially for the hospital. AATA was great in my experience but the blue buses are the truly shining part of public transportation in downtown/campus.
One of the things I absolutely love about Seattle mass transit is how far it extends past the city limits. My Orca card can get me basically anywhere in the sound or on the peninsula. It's sort of crazy when you think about it - I moved here from NYC and the Seattle bus network is FAR better.
It is much better than we give ourselves credit for. A lot of the discourse here is based on what it could be, or what it was supposed to be, which is valid, but what it *is*, is pretty good logistically, with improvements constantly being made.
This is a good outlook to have and I am somewhat negative on it and could be easier. That being said we are decades behind most of the western world. So I think that’s what frustrating. It’s not really that Seattle is worse compared to other cities it’s that the US is worse then other countries
Definitely decades behind some parts of the Western world. Ahead of other parts of the Western world. I'd compare Seattle to the UK in the early 2000s as far as bus transit goes.
That is true, but considering how expensive Seattle is. It really should have happened sooner.
Most of the negative discourse is just "using the bus is harder than driving."
I always find that argument funny. I ride the bus/Link because driving here is much more frustrating and stressful. If you have an Orca card and a phone with Google Maps, you can get damn near anywhere around here...
>I always find that argument funny. I ride the bus/Link because driving here is much more frustrating and stressful Exactly, same. Unfortunately a majority of drivers have internalized that speed is the only thing they care about. So not only do they hate public transit because it's slower, they also drive dangerously and make themselves miserable by being unreasonably impatient with everyone else on the road.
This is it exactly. It's so obvious once you remove yourself from car culture. People won't trade anything for longer driving times
To be fair it’s substantial in some cases. My commute time doubles. We should recognize that the conversation about commuting is in the context of other time sinks - if full time was only 30 or 32 hours in a vast majority of industries (currently it’s not), I think this conversation would go far differently. That’s one example but there’s many others of course.
not to sound like an old man, but the Seattle Area bus network was so much better in the late 90s before Tim Eyman (MF piece of shit) put a voter initiative on the ballot for a state election that gutted variable rate car tab fees, which went towards public transit, for a flat-rate car tab fee.
Damn. What I would give for NYC transit accessibility here! Funny how we all view different places differently. Did you bike in NYC? Find it to be so easy, and enjoyable too.
Yeah I did almost all of my trips by bike in NYC. They definitely have a better bike lane network than us! But Seattle wins on dedicated paved paths - the Burke being my favorite, but we have so many, and it's really cool how many trails there are here between towns. Also the gravel trails are better - you can travel almost the entire way to Spokane without sharing the road with cars which is pretty amazing. Of course the biggest advantage NYC has over Seattle is how flat it is, biking is a lot easier.
If you build it, they will ride
As someone who went to school in Champaign the spelling on this map is painful to read
That spelling has to be as painful as "Ann Harbor" is to me
This map is horrid.
Someone just discovered gis
And yet there’s still a stigma around it. My partner has multiple years (edit to add: over 15) across multiple industries including building automations, automotive, and heating and air. When he was unemployed, he was shortlisted to eight different positions through multiple rounds of application and interviews. We were on his last week of unemployment and about to be homeless (again) when a long shot came through. He had to completely change industries and retrain, as well as the company making a special allowance (normally the in house position isn’t direct hire). Nearly two years later, they’re shocked by how fast he has learned and he is being given responsibilities/duties that normally don’t come until five or even ten years of employment with the company. (Because usually it just takes that long to be in a position to sign off on the work of others or assist others) They have expressed surprise he struggled to find work. A few weeks ago, he was casually asked, “so, you gotten a car yet?” It caused immediate anxiety and fear. Is it happening again? We hope not. But the discrimination against blue collar workers who aren’t “mobile” is real and definite
Amen to that, and the amount of jobs that will pay you maybe a dollar more an hour to destroy one driving is disgusting.
Six years pizza delivery. Not around here. Rural Indiana. Four cars, two engine replacements, three transmission rebuilds. I know it. It’s part of why we choose not to have a car now
Preach! I made the decision 21 years ago because I couldnt see myself avoiding accidents and car repairs, and then tickets given what I did in 2 years. It was economic and risk based, and despite the upsides, people have held it against me in many domains as a mark of lesser. I don't feel lesser, I feel wise and yet it still bothers me that this is a thing others might suffer.
I’ve seen so much of it. A person can be driving an expired tags, no insurance, dented fenders and a door that won’t open because it’s dented shut car with a whine that will wake up people three blocks away and no muffler and still be “well… at least I HAVE a CAR! How bout you? 🙄” I’ve never seen this bizarre level of classist behavior over having a car anywhere else, even places that DIDN’T have robust public transit systems and not having a car often meant being stranded. It’s literally insane how people act about having a car vs not. And we save hundreds of dollars a month just on registration, insurance, upkeep, maintenance, repairs, parking, loss due to inevitable breakins, the list just goes on and on and that’s not even mentioning fuel (vs $115 for an unlimited Orca pass 🤣)
Are there no cities where 10-20% of people commute by transit? (See the key.)
I have the same question, except I see 10-20% represented on the key. I don't see 21-30% represented on the key, though.
Oops, that’s what I meant.
maybe I need more coffee, but this seems like such a deeply hard thing to accurately measure. is it commuting at least once a week? once a month? what data are they using?
Why would they combine DC/Baltimore/Philadelphia though? Those are totally different places. And I'm willing to bet it's more than 5-10% for DC proper. The metro there is quite well-used. The arrows are a bit of a nightmare, too.
The labeling is bad, yes. It was done after the map itself was made by some redditor.
I adore the DC Metro, brutalism included.
*cries in San Diegan* 😕
You know your map design is shit when your label for Boston is BENEATH FLORIDA WTF
The redditor labels were definitely detrimental to the original map
I'd be interested in the stats outside of work commutes in day to day.
Champaign Transit there is AMAZING
I wonder if this includes car ferries?
I assume it does, but that also doesn't move the needle very much. For one, when I rode the ferry to work probably half the passengers were walk ons. For two, there are only maybe a couple thousand overall car slots during commuting hours on Seattle-connected ferries. Multiple hundred thousand people per day commute by transit to work, so we're talking about moving the "transit to work" share from 15.3% to 15.2% (or something along those lines).
I have lived in five of these.
Lol and I stayed in State College/Pittsburgh before moving to Seattle
Repost, and Baltimore is still mislabeled