Seattle public transit sixth in nation in new ranking
Jun 1, 2019, 8:09 AM
A ranking from Fabric Life Insurance has Seattle ranked sixth in the United States for its public transit system.
Seattle’s transportation system garners praise, but does it deserve it?
Seattle was touted by Fabric for the variety of its transit options, among light rail, buses, streetcars, and ferries. It also pointed out approval numbers among residents sit at a healthy 64.5 percent.
Ranked ahead of Seattle were New York/New Jersey, San Francisco/Oakland, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Boston respectively. The Emerald City managed to beat out its neighbors down south as well, with Portland coming in at ninth.
According to Fabric’s data, 10 percent of Seattle’s workers commute via public transit, a number that far outpaces cities like Denver (4.4 percent), San Jose (4.7 percent), and Los Angeles (4.8 percent).
This isn’t the first time Puget Sound’s public transit has garnered praise, either.
Sound Transit Board approves $2.9 billion 2019 budget
“Seattle is doing a really good job of both expanding its rail system and improving its bus system at the same time, and actually linking the two systems together to make a much more useful system overall,” wrote Vox, in a December article talking about the best and worst cities in the country for public transportation.
Back in January, Seattle also received praise from The New York Times.
“Seattle has won accolades for its transit system, where 93 percent of riders report being happy with service — a feat that seems unimaginable in New York, where subway riders regularly simmer with rage on stalled trains,” the Times wrote.
Meanwhile, ridership on King County Metro continues to increase, including a 7.1 percent bump in Link light rail riders. King County Metro was even named the best transit system in the country by the American Public Transportation Association.
The region’s transit system has also faced its fair share of criticism, though.
Light rail projects have gone millions of dollars over budget, ST3’s passage saw rates for car tabs triple for drivers, new bike lanes in Seattle have taken away parking and traffic lanes while the number of cyclists decrease, and Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff ran into trouble in 2017 after reports of verbal aggression, profanity, and sexism, among other allegations.
