Washington, D.C.’s Metro system was just ranked the top transit system in the country, even though it’s had its fair share of problems over the years, including a death in 2015 and routine delays that have thousands of commuters grumbling each week.
The financial analytics firm SmartAsset crunched U.S. Census Bureau Data with five metrics and discovered that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has the best transit system in the United States.
Following D.C. is San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and New York City. Seattle, Jersey City, N.J., Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Oakland, Calif., follow in spots five through 10.
SmartAsset ranked transportation systems by compiling Census Bureau data on the use of public transportation in every U.S. city with a population of more than 175,000 people (136 total) plus the following five metrics:
- The average commute time for transit users
- Percentage difference between average commute times of car commuters and transit users
- Percentage of commuters who use public transit
- Total number of commuters who use public transit
- The difference between the citywide median income and the median income of transit users
WMATA manages both buses and below-ground subways. The subway system (Metro) handles over 200 million trips per year, making it the second largest system by ridership in the U.S. This, according to SmartAsset, is in addition to a bus system that handles another 130 million trips every year.
“The typical transit commuter in D.C. spends 36 minutes traveling to work each day. That is 10 minutes below the average for the 136 cities in SmartAsset’s study. It is also just 8.6 minutes slower than the typical commute time for a driver in the District, the smallest difference among cities in which a significant percentage of the population relies on transit,” SmartAsset found.
The one knock on public transportation in D.C. is that the District has some of highest fares for transit of any U.S. city, and a monthly pass costs more than $230.
See how the rest of the cities do in full here.
