I attribute the high ridership levels to better land use around light rail stations. Not nearly as many massive parking lots as the DART light rail system is plagued with.
It’s important to note that Houston’s rail network, albeit still small, was a result of voter referendum that also financed the 400 plus miles of bike lanes and bike ways the city has now. Houston gets so much heat for adding lanes to highways that needed it but these aspects get overlooked
@@milkytapwater1686 induced demand is the usual talking point. It wasn’t a waste of money, the metro area has gained 3.5 million since I-10’s old configuration of 3 lanes each way when traffic was worse. Alan fisher does a great video debunking that parroted point.
@CajunGators I just watched the video! he makes great points clarifying the definition of induced demand and why building extra highway capacity is a waste of money, but for different reasons than most urbanists think. thanks for the reccomendation, great watch.
@@milkytapwater1686I would also argue that Houstons highways aren't as bad as most people think. Texas does its highways a bit differently than most other states, so the Katy at its widest point is 16 lanes of grade separated freeway, similar to the widest highways in LA. 10 lanes(5 each side) are access road, almost like a super boulevard whose median is the actual highway. These hold local traffic, have sidewalks (in theory at least) and give access to local streets and roads at stop lighted intersections. Those lanes get attributed to the highway even though they serve as an in between for the highway and the local road network.
I mean the orange line in Irvin is a pretty poor performer and some of the lines extend further than they need to but I don't really agree with this narrative.
For New Yorkers such as myself that don’t drive that DART light rail system came in handy for me when I visited Dallas a couple years ago. That orange line hauled ass from DFW to downtown Dallas near my hotel. Here in nyc we have no 1 seat direct rail service from any of our airports to manhattan where our central business districts are. We have the largest subway system in the country but at least you guys have the largest light rail system in the country rail mileage wise.
As a Dallas resident, the biggest problem with DART is the terrible land use. It is basically a huge network of park-n-ride lots with no destinations in walking distance of the stations outside of downtown. DART has already has a very nice system in place - if they were able to make more of the stations real destinations it would help the system a lot.
@panzer_TZ luckily, they've become aware of that and are working on implementing TOD around several stations, including having it from the get go on the silver line. I believe they've also approved and encouraged zoning changes and reduced parking requirements around several stations, with more work on the way
I think the data is skewed by the boundaries of city limits. Houston’s inner loop is like 10x larger than all of Galveston. All those Inner Loop neighborhoods rank very highly on walk & bike scores, but with much more transit than Galveston. If you were to compare the urban cores (the most important part of the city) then this list might look a bit different
Houston METRO is the best. They are currently working on implementing its METRONext plan. More BRT, more light rail, new and improved transit and park-and-ride centers, Boost corridors and awesome looking new bus shelters and so much more.
Fort Worth definitely doesn’t deserve F-tier by Texas standards. Whack Need a Tulsa ranking too. (>1M in the metro.) Probably D on this list, but the relative lack of traffic and much smaller total expanse of sprawl is nice
I lived in Houston for several years and it's better than you would expect from an urbanist perspective, considering Texas' general reputation. That reputation, however, is well-deserved. Consequently, the biggest problem with Houston isn't actually anything to do with Houston itself, but rather the state it's in. The city itself has a lot going for it and is generally forward-looking. The same cannot be said of the state as a whole, unfortunately.
As a native Houstonian, I’m proud that our relatively new rail network was the result of voter referendum, twice. As well as our 400 miles of bike lanes and paths.
But that gets back to the problem with most Texas cities- even if there are a few nice semi-walkable urban-ish neighborhoods, the metro areas are so massive and spread out, that friends/family are going to inevitably move out to the sprawl-burbs, and then you find yourself driving 40 minutes each way to spend time together.
A cool fact about El Paso is that it historically had a unified streetcar network with Ciudad Juárez! Yup, at one point in time, you could've taken a streetcar across the border. In the 1920s, there were 52 miles (83 km) of trolley system, though much of it was abandoned in the 1940s except the international line across which kept going until 1973. The reason Buc-ee's got that name and has a beaver as their mascot is because its founder, Arch Aplin, opted to combine his childhood nickname Beaver with his Labrador Retriever Buck. Aplin was born in Southeast Texas, with his father and grandparents from Harrisonburg, Louisiana. He founded Buc-ee's in 1982 in Clute, but opened its first travel center in Luling, Texas, in 2003. What's wild is that 7-Eleven was founded in Texas! Founded in Dallas 1927 as an icehouse. The company's first outlets were called "Tote'm Stores" between 1928 and 1946 because customers "toted" away their purchases. The name was changed to 7-Eleven in 1946 to reflect their new operating hours of 7 am to 11 pm, seven days a week. Wanna know the why the n in their logo is lowercased? It's because the first wife of John P. Thompson Sr., the company's president during the 1960s, thought the all-capitals version seemed a little aggressive and wanted it to be more graceful
Technically, Arlington does have Via, which is a privatised jitney service. P.S.: I live in Richardson and I can't wait for the Silver regional rail line!
Houston will likely never be anything but a car focused city for the next half century, but that doesn't mean that it's a lost cause, as there's so boundless potential for improvement, with lots of easy, low-hanging fruit. Firstly, Houston should opt to work with freight companies to build a regional rail system off of improved existing highway and freight ROW's connecting the city with areas as far out as Galveston, Rosenburg, Hempstead, Magnolia, Conroe, Cleveland, Dayton, and Sealy, as these are the absurd distances that people seem to be commuting into the city from. Make sure the most popular lines of the system shoot for a frequency of every 10-15 minutes peak, and 20-30 minutes off-peak, with the rest of the system trying to shoot for 20-30 minutes peak frequency and 30-60 minutes off-peak frequency. Next, have at least four local bus lines with at least a 20 minute frequency connect to every rail station, with maybe even some BRT or LRT lines connecting more urban stations. Finally, institute a decent land use policy for an approximate radius of half a mile around every station, ensuring the development of dense, mixed use communities with great walking and cycling, as well as local business space, out in the suburbs - you can even throw in a multilevel parkade or two, because this is Houston. This kind of development, along with a proper densification of the downtown area, would compliment the Texas Triangle Highspeed Rail, and really make the region shine on a whole.
Houston has a limiting factor: summer. After experiencing summer 2023 and knowing it's only going to get worse, many people here *are second guessing their Houston residency. And, of course, the lack of freedom.
Exactly. Inner loop Houston has changed dramatically. Im from here and now have the green line close by. We won’t be a New York ever but if you live inside 610, it’s a different world
Fort Worth does not deserve an F rating. It’s significantly better than Dallas or Houston. You’ve left out key things like violence rates, homelessness, traffic issues, etc…
Galveston was named after 18th-century Spanish military and political leader Bernardo de Gálvez, 1st Count of Gálvez. Galveston's first European settlements were built around 1816 by French pirate Louis-Michel Aury to help Mexico fight for independence. The Port of Galveston was established in 1825 by the Congress of Mexico, and during the Texas Revolution, it was temporarily the capital of the Republic of Texas in 1836. It incorporated in 1839. During the 19th century, it was the busiest port on the Gulf Coast, becoming became an important commercial center with warehouses stuffed with imported wholesale goods supplying stores throughout Texas and the entire Southwest. Galveston's grid dates back to 1836 when Canadian Michel B. Menard secured title for the eastern part of Galveston Island in 1836 and organized the Galveston City Company along with several associates. By the end of 1836, about 60 families and over 100 buildings populated the new town. Galveston has half streets as part of its grid, and basically, there was outlots (four city blocks in area) set aside for farming, but as it expanded southward, the outlots were subdivided, with east-west streets becoming half streets. Galveston was the first in the state to have telegraphs, telephones, electric-powered houses, streetlights and trolleys! They first had a mule-hauled system in 1868, but trolleys were introduced in 1891 and remained in service until 1938. The current heritage system opened in 1988, closed in 2008 after Hurricane Ike, but reopened in 2021.
I used to work in downtown Dallas, and now I walk to work in downtown Fort Worth. Walking anywhere in downtown Dallas is a coin flip whether 12 vehicles run the red or a lifted F350 jumps the curb you're standing on while Bryan the suburban accountant flips you the bird. Downtown Fort Worth is smaller, and sidewalks are wider. While DFW drivers on average treat every road like a 90mph freeway, I certainly enjoy the walks more and feel much safer here in Fort Worth.
What's funny is when you got to Fort Worth I immediately said "F" because im from here so i was just being funny then when you actually got to the tier list and put us as F i yelled "My city ain't no F" 😂🖕🏾, Fort Worth need to step it up though, most people don't even know that Fort Worth is a major city & is the 12th most populated city in America yet it doesn't look like it
Houston deserves way more credit than what it’s giving. The P&R system, best in the country and a majority of those local lines has a frequency under 10 minutes. That’s really good. However, that Post Oak BRT line, yeesh. Reminds me of Dallas’ new street car line, just a city novelty. Maybe it’ll do better once the other BRT lines open up.
I’ve never visited any of these places, but I’m going to disagree with you entirely on your list, just to drive engagement! Argh! 😠 You’re so wrong on this one, Ethan!
No idea how Ft Worth got an F. At all...also if this is a Texas City tier list, why is Oklahoma City included? If you felt like including OKC, for some reason, why not then include Tulsa? Just so odd
i wonder if he'll add the more niche smaller cities too like Providence, Springfield MA, Worcester, Manchester, etc... It would be cool but I would understand why he wouldn't include them
I feel those cities should be excluded from that list. We already know where each city would place. I'd like him to include lesser known cities amongst the walkability community, like Buffalo.
Transit in austin is not fleshed out enough and the homeless population regularly causes problems with the public transport. I would like to use it but I'd need to walk 20 minutes to take a bus that'll take 40 minutes and then walk another 20 minutes to get to my destination whereas I could drive for 25 minutes and be there already. That and I don't feel safe stepping over used needles and next to occupied tents right next to the bus stops or stations.
Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston really need to make major improvements as they going to be 2026 World Cup host cities, especially Dallas is likely going to host the Final! Speaking of the 2026 World Cup, could you do a video on the transit options for the 16 World Cup host cities? 🇨🇦 Canada Toronto Vancouver 🇲🇽 Mexico Guadalajara Mexico City Monterrey 🇺🇸 USA Atlanta Boston Dallas/Ft. Worth Houston Los Angeles Kansas City Miami New York City Philadelphia San Francisco Seattle
Arlington has nearly 400,000 people. My fiance lives in a small town of about 25,000 a little outside of the DFW Metroplex, and even his town has a couple of bus lines. What's Arlington's excuse?
I think they are one of those cities that think they are too good for fixed route buses. So instead they blow tax money on "innovative solutions" congered up by tech bro companies, like "microntransit" or fancy looking dial-a-rides.
@@GirtonOramsay Except, that doesn't work, since the Cowboys' and the Rangers' stadiums are in that city and microtransit won't be much good on game day.
@@jamiecinder9412 oh yeah, I saw it firsthand with a micro transit shuttle on my college campus. They got pretty bad with timing once they got the slightest rush
Namely the fact that Jerry Jones doesn't want it, and before that it was GM which has a massive assembly plant there. If arlington pisses them off then it's by by entertainment district and by by arlingtons economy. Plus voters rejected it back in the early 2000s when arlington was a decent bit smaller and more sprawled compared to its population size. At least they're focusing on turning the downtown into a pedestrian friendly area? Also side note there is "technically" a bus system with fixed routes, but it's only for UTA (a college adjacent to downtown) students and not funded by the city whatsoever, but it does provide a bus route dedicated to a Walmart after 5pm for students living on campus which is kinda neat. The really good thing though is that arlington is working on the most important part of a transit system: walkable neighborhoods. Development of extremely walkable neighborhoods like Viridian, as well as redevelopment of infrastructure in downtown and the entertainment district to be more walkable means that when arlington does take another look at public transit (which almost certainly would pass) it'll actually have areas that are suited for it and will be able to generate high ridership. Plus, then they'll be able to get rid of VIA as a taxi service, which honestly even if they get rid of it with no replacement that's a win in my book
@@GirtonOramsay Arlington's richer neighborhoods are in the far north and south while the more average is around the stadiums and center and they probably dont want to pay for their benefit when they all have cars
come back to Oklahoma City in 2 years and I'm positive we will have gone up a tier or even two. There are SOOOOO many Urban projects going on in OKC that you would never expect from a midwest city. Planners here are really fighting for an urban feel.
It was kinda funny seeing my hometown in the F tier. Having visited Galveston, sure there's the annoying roads for geezers like me who had to take a drive, but walking across the city in general was my favorite part of visiting. Houston, I never cared for them. But seeing them on this list, it's almost something to be proud of for this state. Also get fucked Arlington lmao That being said, I'll probably end up dropping Texas for Tulsa as soon as i can do so. Neat upload!
How do you even create giant metro areas with millions of population without a single sufficient public transportation? What’s even sadder is that toll roads are necessary in some areas. Lack of vision in this state besides creating cheap housing and jobs.
Most of these metros developed with the streetcar, but when those got ripped out in the 40s nothing replaced them, right when these cities had their massive population booms. Everyone thought it would end eventually, but now that it's clear the growth isn't stopping all the cities are slowly realizing they've got a lot of catching up to do. Plus, they've made a lot of progress. Fort Worth is starting to build rail and has a decent ish bus system, Dallas went from no rail to the largest light rail network in the country in the span of 40 years, Houston is finally building rail with a focus on ridership, and revamped its bus and bike networks which dallas is now trying to emulate, Austin is... trying, El paso didn't really boom, and San antonio built a pretty good bus network. Even arlington is finally waking up and is investing in making a walkable downtown, essentially becoming a super-sized college town.
Houston here...as much as people want to promote public rapid transit, it can' t be done as this transit is primarily for people who cannot afford a car and\ or the homeless who board any train , at any time , without ever a ticket. Since the majority of people can afford or are willing to pay for this car, and not be hassled by losing enormous amounts of time on a bus, waiting for a bus or train and...having to put up with a train or bus that smells like a kennel or worse...and having to be harassed or worse waiting for said train or bus on the street by the homeless or just wandering street people.
My reply was not sarcastic nor catty but yours was. My reply was honest as I have taken public transit many, many times ...in New York City, Atlanta and now in Houston and can honestly say that transit belongs and is controlled primarily for low income peoples, homeless and liberal type people who don't care if our society denigrates into an out of control , thug and homeless mentally sick oriented world. We have no disagreement... you can take public transit and I won't .....any more...after being harassed and having gone thru several public verbal exchanges, just by sitting in a public transportation stop or being inside a train ....having to put up with urine or fecal smell, having to be mentally assaulted by obscene conversation and crude behavior ....and just for being white.
i definitely would have flipped austin and houston. between the ozone pollution from all the cars combined with the oppressive heat, and the fact that you're like less than 20mi from the biggest grouping of oil refineries in the nation, cancer rates are just much higher than they should be.
Which helps explain why houston has the biggest medical center in the world lol. However dallas' medical center has a light rail station so I guess it's even
Dallas is honestly better as far as urbanism than Houston due to the zoning laws and more walkable neighborhoods per capita..Dart rail is making a comeback from COVID and is actively implementing TOD in multiple locations. It reaches to many suburbs and walkable downtowns as well such as Plano, Garland, Rowlett, Richardson, Irving. And also has direct rail access to the airport and American Airlines Center.
I went to Dallas with my dad in 2022, and while he did his work stuff I went out to explore. Just with light/hybrid rail alone, I went to Dallas/surrounding neighborhoods, Grapevine, Garland, Plano, Carrolton, and Denton. Any metro area where a minor with no license and very little money can easily and safely get to 5+ cities via transit is a well designed city to me
@@avibarr2751 absolutely! It’s not perfect, but by far the best in Texas especially as far as mobility without a car. Metro isn’t bad but it’s not on Dart and surrounding transit agencies’ level yet
Why is this the top comment. Every content creator has to make money and a vast majority of content on this platform is sponsored. Not very invasive and his content is great and nuanced.
@@nathanielthrush5581 I agree he has good content. This is why I subscribed. However, it takes time to build a channel. Saying things like ‘if you become a patreon you will get your name in the credits or I will read your name at the end of the video’ is desperate. He only has under 6k subscribers. Build the channel first. Or just slip it in here or there. Constantly begging for subscribers actually puts down the rest of us regular subscribers who maybe can’t afford to give everyone money. Look at how City Nerd did it and his channel is a success. I’m not a youtuber but I’ve started businesses before and the same principles apply. And it doesn’t help that he plagiarized City Nerd with his sunbelt tier list.
Dallas and Ft Worth get much colder winters than the other cities in this list, and that should’ve factored into the grading. They experience hard freezes in the teens at least once or twice every year, and it snows most winters.
On the other side of this, DFW is much less humid in the summers. I think if you ask most Texans where they'd rather live weather wise, DFW is pretty close to ideal. One week of temperature in the teens isn't as bad as 3 months of burning humidity. But everyone has their own weather preference.
I haven’t been in either in a hot minute but Austin and San Antonio should be above Houston bc Houston’s downtown vibes… feel corporate (like especially)
Lived in houston nearly all my life and galveston is a joke. Also how are you going to say you are adding Oklahoma "cities" but only do okc? What about tulsa? Qlso how did laredo and galveston even make it to this list? We dont even consider those actual cities in texas.
It's not really a "real" transit line, they just repurposed an abandoned rail line that was used for freight I guess at some point in the past. Barely anybody uses it because it takes a really awkward path and doesn't really go through any of the main neighborhoods outside of its downtown stop.
Austin had an opportunity to get a light rail built back when it had half the population it has now. The half in half vote in 2000 on LRT was a setback.
@@shivtim really? RM transit is a whiner who acts like he knows better than actual professionals who have to make difficult decisions. And he’s annoying to the core. He doesn’t have an interesting take on anything. This person is loads better.
Great video! I think my only thing I noticed was Tulsa is a metro area that’s close to 1 million at this point and probably deserved a spot on the list (thought it’s also a very anti-urbanist city). Excited for more tier lists to come!
When I went to Houston, I found that although the light rail system was fast, clean, and modern and I did use it a lot, it didn’t really get me anywhere that far outside downtown and a lot of the other walkable neighborhoods are very far apart from each other, meaning I had to uber pretty much everywhere. When I was in Dallas I found that there were quite a few trendy neighborhoods close to each other that I could easily get to via light rail, and even a lot of the other cities in the metro area that were 10+ miles from Downtown Dallas were easily accessible with light rail too, plus the myriad other forms of rail transit like the TRE, TEXrail, and the A-Train Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED Houston and long to go back, and as a city I like it just as much as Dallas, but in terms of what this video considered, they are not at all level
Not surprised about OKC's low transit score as the bus system doesn't even service the Airport 🤯. Even Las Vegas has some transit connections to the airport
Very true as OKC vibes are similar to TX but you have to look into our urban planning and MAPS 4 projects multiple BRT routes coming in, small street car system downtown that hopefully gets expanded sometime, building tons of sidewalks through the city, adding tons of new bike lanes downtown and along trails. Plus a developer out of California is proposing Americas tallest building in our heartland that would propel our urbanism even more so please be on the look out and do not count us out!
I live in Houston. Decent city. Much better than Dallas. Plus galveston is a little over an hour away. But how you gonna have OKC but leave out other cities like Amarillo, Waco, Brownsville, Corpus christi, and Lubbock?
I would say this is a pretty reasonable ranking, but having spent time in both Dallas and El Paso, I think they should've been swapped. I think Dallas is fine, but it doesn't have that grid-like border town urbanism and vibes that El Paso has. Dallas also has INSANE sprawl and bad transit ridership per mile. Additionally, Houston, for an insanely sprawly and car dependent American city, has a transit system that really pushes above its weight. There is frequent light rail, tons of buses that go everywhere, many of them pretty frequent, and the city is improving the network quickly. Houston itself really doesn't deserve all the hate it gets, just the planners who destroyed the city for cars in the mid and late 1900s. Houston is improving!
The stats for Dallas are kinda misleading due to its scale and the fact that a 2nd major city is in the metro area statistics, so for everything after this just mentally discount Fort Worth cuz none of this applies to it or it's section of the suburbs. The suburban parts of the light rail network are low ridership, but the sections in and around downtown are actually pretty high ridership. Moreover, Dallas is currently reworking and upgrading the bus network to create pseudo BRT, upgrading the infrastructure on the light rail to increase capacity, frequency, and accessibility, and is actively implementing infil TOD around many current LRT Park and ride stations. Oh, and the council (to my knowledge) is working on a complete restructure and massive expansion of the bike lane network on a similar scale to houston. All of this with a city proper population of almost half that of Houston. Honestly it's commendable just how high Dallas is punching considering it's a much smaller city than most people think it is.
Thankfully San Antonio is investing more in its downtown to make it a place that native San Antonions will actually want to live in. A lot of dense/mixed used buildings under construction, as well as a rapid transit line from downtown the airport starting construction early next year.
Great list! Would love to have seen Plano with urban developments like city line and legacy west where walking is generally super high, but the larger cities were definitely covered well
Ok now that's genuinely impressive. A population of 392,000 and yet still no public transit at all. Not even suburban buses. My mind is blown at how a city with that population could not have any public transit at all. Everything is bigger in Texas except for public transit networks that's for sure!
Dude, I'd've put galveston in F tier for how paved over that entire island is. there's no semblance of native habit discernible from that aerial photography. the plight of capitalism is real. good vid!
I think its important to note that Austin only has one freeway running through the city proper while Dallas and Houston have many, even though I-35 is quite wide.
Brownsville and Mcallen wouldve been very nice additions, especially considering the latter having over one million in its metro area population. great vid!
