Strengthening Transit Through Community PartnershipsEveryone, it seems, is dumping on Regional Transit. Trains and stations are dirty, even unsafe. Buses and trains don’t run late enough, and their schedules don’t link up. Fares are too high and are going up again.
Safe to say, RT has more than its share of problems with service and finances.
But in a new detailed study, public transit in Sacramento comes out looking not so terrible.
Sacramento’s overall score – which looks at access to jobs, frequency of service and connectivity – ranks No. 27 out of 68 California cities with a population of more than 100,000, ahead of San Diego and San Jose.
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco – with BART, Muni and a compact grid tailor-made for transit – is at the top. Several other Bay Area and Southern California cities also score well, while some inland cities, where transit service can be scarce, do not.
Put together by the Center for Neighborhood Technology and TransitCenter, the project launched this week is the most extensive collection of data yet on 805 transit systems across America. It measures public transit by access to employment and workers, access to customers and transportation costs, impact on public health and whether it boosts opportunity, as well as quality, including frequency of service and connections to key locations.