Urban Mass Transit: Travel with 4 USD in 10 Cities

10 Cities Travel with 4 USD

I’ve been “famous” for being a big fan of the TransLink System in Vancouver and how much I liked to travel 2-3 hours on public transportation with the college student U-Pass (yes, Vancouver BC, not Vancouver WA). Therefore, when I moved to Southern California, learning how to adapt myself to LA Metro’s riding environment was a significant class (I was living near Wilshire/Western on Purple/D Line, but to be fair I enjoyed my ride on Expo Line a lot), as well as not forgetting to reload my Tap card.

However, is TransLink one of the most accessible public transit systems in the world if judging by the mileage a passenger travels with a fixed cap of fare? Compared with other cities famous for good public transportation, does LA Metro perform not that well? The result from a mock travel with 4 US Dollars in 10 different cities in North America, Asia, and Europe showed a different picture.

Well, New York MTA was leading this race in a weird way. MTA’s website says the longest trip is from 241st Street in the Bronx to Far Rockaway, which travels 38 miles. However, the WNYC data team used a computer model to text 200 billion possibilities and found that Nearly 155 miles and 54 transfers from Wakefield in the Bronx to Far Rockaway, Queens, could be the longest ride on the New York subway without riding the same segment of the route more than once. What could be more interesting? Jody Avirgan, the host of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight podcast examined this route using nearly 14 hours in 2015, with 2.9 dollars.

Beijing and Shanghai took the second and third place. (To clarify, I don’t like Beijing Subway’s circumferential lines because of its wired naming system. A quote from a Mandarin talk show explained: “There is an end to the universe, but there is no end to Beijing Subway’s circles.”) Nice, direct connections among many lines around the center city without requiring travel to downtown of circumferential design make sure fewer transfers between suburb and suburb. Meanwhile, the destinations in the downtown area are well connected by those circulating lines. Among the top destinations on the list, London and Berlin also shared a similar pattern with Beijing and Shanghai.

So, what happened to TransLink and Metro Vancouver? TransLink relies more on bus systems (and ferry!, aka SeaBus) than trains (SkyTrains). Therefore, in a given free-transfer time period (usually 90 minutes), the mileage that a passenger can travel with a one-way ticket is lower on buses when sharing the right-of-way with other traffic.