New York has more jobs accessible by public transit than any metro region in the country. That’s partly thanks to its population and density (the area has 479 jobs per square kilometer), but also a highly developed network of trains, subways, buses, and ferries. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
New York has more jobs accessible by public transit than any metro region in the country. That’s partly thanks to its population and density (the area has 479 jobs per square kilometer), but also a highly developed network of trains, subways, buses, and ferries.
San Francisco ranks eleventh in total employment, but second in weighted accessibility. The impact of the BART rail system that connects downtown and Oakland is clear. Thanks to the bus and heavy rail systems, even people living as far south as San Mateo can easily reach tens of thousands of jobs. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
San Francisco ranks eleventh in total employment, but second in weighted accessibility. The impact of the BART rail system that connects downtown and Oakland is clear. Thanks to the bus and heavy rail systems, even people living as far south as San Mateo can easily reach tens of thousands of jobs.
Los Angeles may have a reputation for poor public transit (who knew it even had a subway system?), but its systems adequately reach enough people to put it in third place. The map shows only jobs accessible within 30 minutes, but if you go up to a 40-minute interval, the number of accessible jobs jumps from 40,000 to 112,000. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Los Angeles may have a reputation for poor public transit (who knew it even had a subway system?), but its systems adequately reach enough people to put it in third place. The map shows only jobs accessible within 30 minutes, but if you go up to a 40-minute interval, the number of accessible jobs jumps from 40,000 to 112,000.
Residents of central Washington, D.C. have access to over 1 million jobs via public transit, and thanks to a metro system that goes well beyond the city limits, even residents of outer suburbs have access to lots of jobs. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Residents of central Washington, D.C. have access to over 1 million jobs via public transit, and thanks to a metro system that goes well beyond the city limits, even residents of outer suburbs have access to lots of jobs.
Job accessibility in Chicago closely follows the network of the metro region’s rail system. As the report says, getting people to live and work near public transit is just as important to accessibility as developing transit in the first place. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Job accessibility in Chicago closely follows the network of the metro region’s rail system. As the report says, getting people to live and work near public transit is just as important to accessibility as developing transit in the first place.
Boston ranks third in the country in total employment (3.4 million jobs), but slides to sixth place in the accessibility rankings. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Boston ranks third in the country in total employment (3.4 million jobs), but slides to sixth place in the accessibility rankings.
Coming in at number seven on the list, Philadelphia is well served by its SEPTA public transit system. It’s clear that living nearby one of the rail lines makes a big difference for those in the suburbs. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Coming in at number seven on the list, Philadelphia is well served by its SEPTA public transit system. It’s clear that living nearby one of the rail lines makes a big difference for those in the suburbs.
Seattle’s public transit system makes lots of jobs in the city and surrounding areas accessible, but no dice if you live on one of the islands to the west of the city. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
Seattle’s public transit system makes lots of jobs in the city and surrounding areas accessible, but no dice if you live on one of the islands to the west of the city.
The Denver metro area ranks 20th in the country in number of jobs (1.18 million), but a quickly expanding light rail system, plus good bus service, puts it at ninth in the accessibility ranking.
The Denver metro area ranks 20th in the country in number of jobs (1.18 million), but a quickly expanding light rail system, plus good bus service, puts it at ninth in the accessibility ranking.
San Jose is expected to grow faster than any city in the Bay Area in the coming decades, so it’s good to see it ranked 10th on the U of M report. Its proximity to Silicon Valley puts lots of jobs nearby, and for residents willing to spend an hour traveling, nearly 200,000 jobs are accessible. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
San Jose is expected to grow faster than any city in the Bay Area in the coming decades, so it’s good to see it ranked 10th on the U of M report. Its proximity to Silicon Valley puts lots of jobs nearby, and for residents willing to spend an hour traveling, nearly 200,000 jobs are accessible.
One of the great things about living in New York or San Francisco is that you don’t need to drive to get around. They’re dense cities with good transit systems, so it’s no surprise they take the top two spots in a new ranking of best American cities for commuting without a car. What’s less expected is that third place goes to Los Angeles, a metropolis famed for its traffic-clogged freeways and mocked for its lack of good public transportation.
The rankings are included in a new report from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies, which used a novel approach to score cities based on how many jobs they offer that are accessible by public transit.
The above maps show how many jobs can be reached in half an hour, without using a car.
The report, by Andrew Owens and David Levinson, defines accessibility as “the ease of reaching valued destinations,” in this case jobs. Simply put, it’s an examination of how easy it is for people to get to work.
Each metro region is ranked by how long it takes people to get to work: Jobs that can be reached within 10 minutes are worth more than those accessible with 20 minutes, and so on, up to 60 minutes. Data for job locations is drawn from the Census Bureau, and the time it takes to get there is measured using “detailed pedestrian networks” and full transit schedules for weekdays between 7 and 9 am.
The method accounts for things like how long it takes to walk from a transit stop to a destination and transfer times from one bus or subway line to another. Importantly, it also factors in service frequency and includes the time people spend waiting for a bus or train to arrive.
This approach, Owens and Levinson write, “avoids the assumption that transit service with 30-minute frequency is as valuable as service with 10-minute frequency and that users suffer no inconvenience from adjusting to personal schedules to match transit schedules.”
The authors acknowledge their approach isn’t perfect. Because the report ranks cities based on the numbers of accessible jobs, more populous cities naturally have an advantage. New York has 6,500 jobs within the 10-minute window, more than double the second place city, San Francisco. These are mostly jobs people walk to, since even a very quick transit trip is likely to take more than 10 minutes door to door. New York has far more of these jobs—and racks up points in the ranking system—thanks to its density and huge population, not its transit system.
The authors offer two approaches for improving accessibility. The first is obvious: Offer more and better service that reaches more people. But where jobs and homes are located matters, too. Atlanta has a heavy rail system comparable to those in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, but because its job centers aren’t as concentrated, that service is less useful, and accessibility suffers. Cities can respond with land-use policies and zoning codes that encourage density around existing transit networks. The height limit on buildings in Washington, D.C., for example, triggers sprawl (away from transit). Oregon’s urban growth boundary laws restrict how much land can be developed, which encourages density. If cities follow the latter example, “encouraging both residents and employers to locate in parts of the city already served by transit,” they can improve accessibility and limit the burden each new residents puts on the transit system.
With a map and data set for each metro region, the report reveals a ton about how different approaches to transit actually impact the lives of residents. (Click through the gallery above for the maps and insights from the 10 top ranked areas.) But because this the first time this method has been tried, the authors say, “this report presents only a single snapshot in time.” The idea is to keep doing this going forward, so cities can be ranked not just against one another (which is only kind of helpful), but against themselves in the past and future. Then they can see the effects of different efforts, so they know what’s working.
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