10 Cities Where Buses Are Normal and Good, Actually

Most of the bus routes in NYC are literally just the trolley routes established before the 1920s. It's insane that they've never been updated to modern development patterns.

As a native San Franciscan who grew up in the 80s, I always appreciated MUNI's bus system. I took it every day on my way to Junior high and High School. The most underrated thing about the system was that no matter where you were in SF, you were only 1-2 blocks away from catching a MUNI bus. I think budget cuts and consolidation removed a lot of bus lines, making that feat more difficult to reach these days. But MUNI buses are still used by so many different people in the city every day.

As a resident of Mission Viejo, thank you. I've been working with city council to try and expand the bicycle infrastructure. Please message for the Strong Towns style urban planning map I built for the city.

Any city can become a bus city very easily.

i lived in Seattle while their light rail was still under construction, and King County Metro absolutely bus-pilled me. Many other places treat busses as afterthoughts, but king county metro had a great network (incl transit malls downtown) and every time I've been back it's always been further improved with better shelters, departure boards, etc.

I grew up in Hawai'i. I can attest to the bus system being pretty solid. I used it exclusively while I lived in Honolulu and studied at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. I look forward to seeing how the rail develops. It's been in development for a long time and people are already super negative about it's limited scope in Phase 1 - it needs longer hours of operation and better stops/development around those stops.

Muni planner here. San Francisco actually has very little rail service given its built form (I know you're looking at the urbanized area, but the bulk of ridership is in the city). So you end up with buses running every 2-3 minutes and ridership on bus routes higher than most American rail lines (pre-COVID, a couple of corridors were ~50k daily riders). Wilshire in LA has always been a similar situation; of course it's getting a subway extension now.

The fact that buses are stigmatized in America is so odd to me. Buses and bus routes as being inheritors of historical tram lines in my hometown isn't just accepted, it's a fundamental part of our identity

I used to be a "train only" transit nerd. But all that changed when I started attending college in Blacksburg. I used the bus far more often than I did the metro system back home in Washington DC, and it was really convenient, fast, affordable (I mean it's free so), clean, and actually a very pleasant way of getting around. It was what taught me that excellent bus service, even if not as glamorous, is just as, if not more, important than rail service for transportation needs.

I salute your sacrifice, to spend 4 weeks in Hawaii for a good cause, so noble.

Being able to stand in any corner in Chicago and having a bus stop by every 5 mins to take me to my destination or a connecting bus/train in less than 20 mins just changed my entire perspective of bus transit forever

In my eight car free years in the Washington, DC area (DC and Arlington,VA), I made use of both buses and the Metro, getting very often to Tysons Corner for work using the 28A. All this was using paper schedules, a bunch of which I kept in a basked in the kitchen.

As an SF resident, I love the trolley buses. They do well on the massive hills as compared to gas/hybrid options. And SF continues to make improvements, most recently with the wildly successful Van Ness BRT. It is packed literally every time I have ridden it.

Two things, as an ISU (Ames) Alum that city has fantastic busses, they also have the Moonlight Express which is a free bus on late Friday and Saturday nights (til 2:30am) to get people home safe from the bars. It was originally started by the school, but since then it has become co-run by the city and school. In addition, I live in DC, the Metro is great where it runs, but that's not everywhere. The busses cover the gaps that the Metro doesn't hit and get you more precisely where you'd like to go if you're not cool with walking a bit which is often required with the Metro.

VIDEO REQUEST I grew up in North Port, Florida -- a car dependent suburban hell -- and think that the way the city (and county) has been designed was traumatic to me as a young person who had to travel hours by bus to see friends, walk hours in the heat to get places, and overall rely on non-dependable self-involved people to get me from place to place. There were no public squares or ways to meet people in my area. When I was younger I couldn't leave my house on my own at all. It was all terribly isolating. My mom's car would constantly break down and as a poor family we had to keep the cost of gas and maintenance in mind. I even had one friend that was abused by her parents and basic transportation to her school and work was always in jeopardy if she stepped out of line. My childhood and many others have been plagued by issues that wouldn't exist if not for awful urban design. I would love to see some more videos researching the walkability and public transit and its impacts on the mental health of adults and children.

Pittsburgh again! I love living here. Many of the bus routes are literally the same routes the trolleys used to run. I live right on the busway and it's magic. 10 minutes into town on the bus, vs. 25 minutes at least driving, plus you have to find and pay for parking. With 5-10 minute waits for the bus on weekdays it makes absolutely no sense to drive.

Big thing about making buses more popular is keep prices low and the buses clean and routes frequent but more importantly reliable.

List of the top 10 cities: 10. Baltimore 3:13 9. Pittsburgh 3:45 8. Portland 4:10 7. Los Angeles 4:41 6. Las Vegas 5:31 5. Washington DC 6:19 4. Seattle 6:43 3. New York City 9:39 2. SF/Oakland 10:17 1. Honolulu 11:05 Honorable Mentions: Denver 8:07 Boston Philidelphia Chicago Ames, IA Dishonorable Mentions: Mission Viejo, CA

I live around the central Jersey area and I have two offices to pick to work from either in North Jersey or Midtown Manhattan. It’s crazy that it’s way easier to get into the NYC office than the one in my state. Shout out to NJ Transit for awesome bus services 💚

As a heads up, in Pittsburgh, Port Authority of Allegheny County renamed itself to Pittsburgh Regional Transit. There is a pretty big busway and bike lane project starting between downtown and Oakland (the hospital and university neighborhood).