From sokol at jhu.edu Tue Sep 21 13:47:35 1999
The East Coast has a relatively well developed public
transit system, by the US standards, that is. Things can
get much worse when you go inland and West.
Actually, the West Coast of the US is getting better. There seems to be a genuine interest in getting cheap rail systems up on existing rights of way; projects are popping up all over. The most successful so far I think is the San Diegan route (Santa Barbara to San Diego via LA) that's supplemented by Metrolink service. Sacramento -> San Jose is an active rail corridor, as is San Francisco -> San Jose. The Cascade route (Olympia -> Vancouver, BC via Seattle) is also heating up. The San Francisco Bay Area was dealt a big blow when they took tracks off the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, but the biggest difference between here and say NY (where I lived for five years) is that in NY everything is within a small area -- it's not that the transit is necessarily better, it's just that it can be more effective due to what it has to do. For instance, the PATH train doesn't do much or go many places, but almost everyone who gets on it is going to within a few blocks of the WTC. Does that make it effective, or does that make it a slam-dunk?
/jordan