10 Cities Where Buses Are Normal and Good, Actually

Busses are so underrated. I wish they were esteemed more than they are.

One thing on DC:

The bus terminals at Union station are horribly marked (the bus stops in Union station are numbered, yet the actual routes are named something like GT-US) and the waiting areas are in the middle of a parking deck.

However, the cost to ride is $2 and the bus ride is not bad otherwise.

The bus kindve just stops at an unmarked location and doesn’t always announce the next stop.

I'm surprised Philadelphia is so low!

The reason that Honolulu has high bus ridership is because there are parts of the city that are quite dense, it’s a very expensive city that is quite dangerous to drive because the road infrastructure is very bad, and because it has an aging Asian population that has a preference for transit. However, the bus networks in Honolulu are not good. The frequency is decent but it takes absolutely forever to go anywhere by bus and it’s simply because there is zero BRT or any priority given to buses. I’d say Oahu has one of the worst designs for public transportation of any area. The buses are extremely slow with no priority over cars which means they sit in traffic or at red lights most the time and their new light rail is not accessible by anyone. It doesn’t even reach the city and won’t be expanded into the city. And most of the stations are completely surrounded by either parking lots or farmland.

When I lived in Oakland I was surprised at how extensive AC Transit was. If you poke around on their map you'll see they go all the way from the South Bay to just about Pinole. And there were actual bus schedules that the drivers kept to; that could be great if you knew what time your bus should come, but if it was raining and you were at a bus stop with no shelter and it was a minute or two before your bus was supposed to arrive...and you could see it a few blocks away, idling because it won't show up early, only on time, so the driver waited to get to your stop...well, seething was an appropriate word to use for how you'd feel. SF MUNI ("mew-nee," not "moon-ee") was fine enough, although I rode the rails more than caught the bus, which was maybe a C+ at best because of super delays, or trains seemingly disappearing from the "Next" board altogether, and one time a train showed up with plumes of smoke pouring out the top; I just left the station and took a cab instead. But I always loved the F line of historic cars, even if they weren't always as fast or nimble as buses. They're just fun. But if I'm honest, Chicago has them both beat for me, even with occasional "ghost" buses. I think I've been on one train in the last year and a half that had technical issues that forced all passengers to disembark early. And while ghost buses are annoying they're usually one or two that you can avoid if you know it could be an issue, or at least I might be that fortunate. Now I just want there to be a new rail line to connect the outer "spokes" of the various L lines because not everything has to pass through the Loop, but that's probably going to be more expensive and take longer than a fleet of express buses or BRT, but with Fulton Market becoming the hottest spot in years and years I hope they do something or else it'll become knotted up with ride share cars very quickly...actually, it probably already is.

OCTA specifically designs their bus routes so that people DO NOT use them, to keep the property values up.

If you wanna see saw tooth bus bays at transit centres come to Edmonton, we have 26 transit centres and most have those bays.

Can you please do one on Toronto Canada and the GTA??

Where is Denver and Colorado?

Northgate Link mainly re-organized ST Routes from Everett to terminate at Northgate Station. A few Metro routes were affected, but not by a whole lot. One thing that really improves the transit in Seattle is the focus on making sure there's a LOT of buses that either terminate at OR serve light rail stations. ST being the operating agency for Link will certainly mean less ST Express buses along the Link route, with more routes serving to push people onto Link.

I love CTA! Seattle was pretty terrible

I have actually been to Washington DC and used buses there. There are two main types of buses in the city. There’s the metro bus, which is more useful for locals, has more routes, and stops more places. There’s also the circulator bus, which is primarily for tourists, although locals can, and do use it. It costs only one dollar per ride, has like three or four routes and goes to all the tourist hotspot neighborhoods. It’s smooth it’s comfortable and it is efficient.

i LOVE taking king county metro. it is like oddly comfy and comforting to me to take the bus. much less anxiety inducing than cars, and far less situational than link light rail.

Busses

This can make it easy for any city to get good transit. Come on cities get it together. Buses are very affordable and put it into place!

Are you going to follow the Trackless trams currently being considered for many cities in the world. The first Trackless tram arrived in Perth this month for trials. Seven plus routes are planned and will be in dedicated lanes.

In Australia, Canberra, Perth and Brisbane have excellent Bus systems. We live in Perth WA which also has an excellent train system, but the bus system here works best for us. High frequency (every 4 minutes peak and every 10 minutes off peak) and low fares mean a lot.

Would have been interesting to see where Toronto lies

As a New Yorker, there's more to why our bus ridership is so high than just New Jersey commuters. There are neighborhoods and entire boroughs that the subway doesn't reach (South & East Queens, Staten Island) or the LIRR is too far to reach by walking, so those people have to use busses to get to the nearest subway line (or use busses as their entire commute).

ALWAYS stay for the cat.

Would be great to know if you’re ever here in Honolulu!

The MUNI system as a whole was so refreshing for me after years of only being able to get around by car, even though I was only in San Francisco for a couple days. I hadn’t ridden a bus since I was in greater Tokyo back in 2019.

I live 12 miles north of downtown Seattle and commute to work which is in downtown. While the bus and light rail systems are effective means of transportation. Security has become a huge issue, especially in the downtown corridor. Bus stops anywhere along 3rd and 4th Ave are just not safe anymore. I'm a first responder and our firefighter/EMTs respond to hundreds of EMS calls treating patients for reported assaults along those avenues every year. It's gotten so bad that KC metro often closes bus stops along that corridor if one of their drivers or passengers were recently assaulted.

It’s not surprising that there’s high bus ridership in American cities with a lot of transit rail. In almost all cases, the rail lines radiate out from downtown. That’s fine if you want to go downtown, but not if you want to make a “crosstown” trip that doesn’t involve downtown you’re on the bus. Crosstown trips require buses, even in most of New York City (like Select Bus Service). You’re not going to have a full transit network without buses.

As a Baltimorian who takes the bus on my daily commute and for getting around in general, they're sardine cans during rush hours and sometimes randomly throughout the day. If the MTA gave us more busses we'd probably still fill them out.

I was hoping Honolulu would be on this list but I was not expecting it to be #1. and to be honest I'm upset I didn't because I love TheBus and I choose to ride it every day even though I can use a car.

I'm curious what you will say if you will visit cities in Poland like Zielona Góra, Lublin, Tychy, Gdynia and Gdańsk. Those cities usually rank high in many rankings in terms of how well public transport works and as well as how 'happy' the people who live there are.

"bus" 😅😂🤣 and the pan was DOA

I’m waiting for the tubes from futurama lol.

SF at #2? You are looking strictly at quantities of riders per capita. But in terms of quality? No. Muni busses are notoriously late, and the drivers will "gang" groups of 2-3 busses together, so that the first bus takes riders, while the 2nd and 3rd never open their doors. So, instead of a 10-minute wait "on paper" between busses, it is more like 30 minutes, or a 20 minute wait turns into an hour. This is especially the case on holidays, late nights and in the outer neighborhoods of the city. Everyone knows it, but no one is willing to take on the union. Another increasing problem is people simply refusing to pay, when they ride. (So, how do you count ridership with this happening more and more?) This can't be good for the department's or the City's budget. But, again, everyone knows it, but no one is willing to follow or enforce it.

I’ve noticed you never really mention Detroit in your videos. I used to live there and they actually had a fairly extensive bus system. You could go just about anywhere in the metro area with the buses

I’m the guy wondering if places in general could start making regular local buses nicer.

Instead of those bingo hall shaped seats and cloth seats, how about a narrower version of whatever Amtrak’s business class setup looks like (two larger seats on one side and one equally large seat on the other side), among other things. Oh, and shoot for 2-3 buses per hour on the lesser routes instead of hourly. Perhaps short buses if ridership isn’t strong but something’s better than nothing. And wouldn’t it require less credentials to operate a short bus as opposed to a regular ~40 footer bus? Options to consider…

I trust plentiful people have a car and prefer it but eventually have to take said car TO/FROM THE MECHANIC for various reasons (from routine maintenance to sudden repairs much less potential breakdowns). And I trust plentiful people would appreciate a designated driver that’s FAR more cost effective than Uber/Lyft and far less annoying than a relative or what few friends being readily available for said ride…

None of this is looking at delay's and canceled service.

Great stuff

Especially, normalized buses with bike racks.

The worst thing about the bus where I live is how expensive it is. It costs more to ride the bus than to buy gas, so it only become cheaper than driving if you can full on not have a car and avoid paying for plates too. But since there's too many times and places you can't catch a bus you still need to drive sometimes so youre just wasting money if you take the bus.

I can personally second nos. 7 and 5. LA's Route 70 runs on 12 minute headway, is well utilized, and has a major transit anchor hub on each end. DC's WMATA goes everywhere and is used by many people with other options. Surprised my St.Louis didn't make the survey - as the worst! The Illinois side of the metro area probably saved it.

Chicago of course

Light raíl is great for efficient medium distance connections between centers of high activity (airport-downtown, or nearby urban centers), but buses can’t be beat for getting people more directly to their destination reliably. Trams are the absolute worst. They block traffic more than buses (because less maneuverable and harder to deal with breakdowns) and they are stuck on the track so can’t adjust routes or detour if needed. Buses are flexible. For the amount of money that gets thrown at light rail and tram projects, which only serve a few stops, a city can implement a fairly extensive bus network serving a much broader area. I’d argue that except for extremely dense cities with very high rider volume a subsurface bus tunnel through downtown beats a subway, since those buses can resurface and branch off anywhere using regular streets once outside congested areas. Cheaper to implement, easier to scale, more flexible service.

Too many American cities have their buses stop nearly every block and have you pay on board. Not only is the bus slowing down to stop again already, but now you've got more people fiddling for change and getting stuck at a red light again because the bus stopped too long. No one can get anywhere fast on that and many opt out. Or there are twenty different versions of the same route that go to totally different places. Buses are too flexible: it turns out we'd be better off pretending that they were streetcars stuck on a straight track. It's like our transit agencies were infiltrated by Big Auto spies and sabotaged from the inside.

I used to live in Baltimore and it's bus service is so bad that it's totally unreliable. I would not even bother trying to use Baltimore bus system unless it's during the day and you're in Mt. Vernon.

10 cities in US

Should have added Canada into the mix here, I'm sure Toronto especially would be up there on the list, they are pretty much a textbook example of how to do buses right.

Myoonie, not Moonie

King county metro recently made it free for all children 18 and under ride free. A lot of the Seattle schools have multiple bus routes nearby.

Or we can normalize letting people get around how ever they want instead of demanding everyone be packed together like sardines

Too hot, cold, or rainy to stand out there, inconsistent run times, late busses, weirdos on the bus, takes too long to get where you’re going, etc etc etc

As a swiss, I can assure you, it's never "Bus vs Train" but "Bus AND Train vs cars".

The better the transit, the better the ridership for ALL forms of transit. A car in an urban area is just a stupid hassle. If there is good alternatives, people will switch.

And since trains and buses to not really compete for the same grid-density equilibrium, they are perfectly complementary.

Hi CityNerd! Great video! I was wondering if you could give your insight on microtransit like Via and vans.