Transparency: Cuts to Public Transit

I think that graphic is a lot more form than function.  Width as a indicator?  That’s a little rough…I’m sad to see my home city (Atlanta) on that list.  As a conservative, it’s especially horrific watches our state’s Republicans taking what should be a common sense vote and turning it into a political football.  And now we all suffer.  Hooray politics!

What about Pittsburgh? Last I checked I thought they had close to 250k daily ridership. After moving from Pgh a few years ago, I am curious about the recent trends in public transportation there.

Fantastic/depressing graphic. Transportation for America is working to bring transit back – help them! http://t4america.org/platform

and I am pretty sure that Boston MA has a total ridership that averages about one million a day. How could you leave a top 5 transportation city out?

That graphic doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense: if you have a table with exact ridership numbers, why would you need to indicate the ridership again in the illustration? Instead one should show how far reaching the job losses/service cuts/fare hikes are.

The width should say something about the degree of job losses, service cuts and fare hikes instead of reflecting ridership. Fun graphic — though based on how I’ve seen people try to read transit maps, I wonder how many people could figure out what it means.

I’m calling BS…  Where’s Boston in this list?  I’m sure they have a bigger ridership than Atlanta and Baltimore…

Although it’s not clear – I believe that they’re only showing cities that are looking to increase fare, reduce service or cut jobs. So that’s where Boston and others are, I believe.So yes, it does a good job of stylizing a bad transit system map and makes it worse! But it’s pretty!

As mentioned before, Boston is lacking from this list. A top five transit system which is facing potential job losses, drastic service cuts and raises in fares should surely have been included.

So what if “transit is cut”?Farebox revenues rarely cover even 1/4th of the total cost.I use transit and don’t have a car.  But I think it is foolish to expect unlimited public funding.  In my town, I watch 60′ busses run empty for miles at a time on 5-10 minute headway.We have coaches that politicians don’t ride, but tell us are faster and better, when in fact, the opposite is true.Lets take a step back and fix all of the issues of quality of government and the attitude of those who deliver service, before we ask the public to pay anything more.

Has the MBTA in Boston even decided what the cuts will be yet? The other day there was an article saying “ok, these are the cuts”, and then some transportation person said “Nooo no no ignore that, we don’t know what the cuts will be yet”.

Looks great, but I have no idea what I’m looking at. Is Chicago hiking fares the furthest? Is portland cutting back their service most? And how does that relate to their current service? Do the routes mean anything? I’m glad it triggers me to look, but I could use some help reading this. The legend, on the other hand, seems to add little I couldn’t already read.

This is quite a puzzling info-graphic to decipher. As mentioned by other contributors, a number of questions arise when you look at the chart. 

Where’s Boston? I’m sure Boston makes the list of most ridership, no?

I realize that these things can’t be 100% inclusive and all. I guess the picky side of thinks it strange that Boston, with about 1.37 million daily ridership, would be left off…let alone others. A footnote of some sort I think would’ve gone along way. Also, I concur with the points on form over function and accuracy or intent of different elements of the graphic (i.e. line thickness and relation to?).Then again, the point is clear. Just as good things have begun to line-up for transit, the economy is making a mess locally/regionally. Though it could be worse. Cincinnati is still debating whether to even have a streetcar. This is after they long ago built miles of tunnels they never used. I feel bad for the urban transit enthusiast there…Then again, they are having the debate at least. Though there’s some pretty zanny local opposition groups, and a seemingly deranged ballot initiative, all the major players seem to be carrying a different tune than previously. So maybe there’ll be a silver lining; even for Cincinnati (let alone other places).