Not Denver. The light rail is awesome, but it serves only downtown to two spurs, one going south and the other southeast, leaving most of the Metro area unserved, and the buses are a joke unless you're near a street that's a straight shot to downtown. (I always got a kick out of people complaining about Metro in Seattle - a system that, as far as I could tell, had bus lines within a half mile of any spot in the city, which almost all ran no less frequently than once a half hour.)

Really, Portland? I love the MAX, but we keep upping fares and cutting bus service.

I don't know if transit access for people with disabilities is part of the ranking system, but New York is among the worst. Very few subway stops are wheelchair accessible, and recent bus cutbacks disportionately affect folks with disabilities. As a wheelchair-user, I find it easier to get around in Mexico City than in New York.

Having only visited DC and NY on that list, im going to say DC is clearly better. Elevated light rail, quick and clean. Just gotta watch out for jerk police who arrest you for having a cup of coffee on the train.

It is not, NOT possible for a city without a subway/metro system to top a city with a metro system in a transit battle.

And airport connecting rail should be big, big points too.

I've used public transportation in eight of those cities (all of the big ones except Boston), and to suggest that any of them come close to NYC is absurd. SF is very decent, Chicago and Portland are good, but. . . please.

US News & World Report still exists? Still making lists? How quaint.

Seattle? Really? There's way too much time between buses on the same route for me to think highly of the public transit, besides how often buses are 5 or 10 or 15 minutes late.

It's even worse when compared to cities around the world.

I agree with #6. Portland's good, but NYC's MTA moves millions of people daily.

Wow, this is absurd. NYC #1, but Boston that low?? 17 to 4 below Portland?! Madness.

There's plenty not to like about NYC public transit, but for just being able to get nearly anywhere you'd need to go, at nearly any time of day, as far as I know it has no real competition in the US. The way I'd phrase the question is whether there's any US city where it's easier to live without a car.

Although @4, it's true, getting on the subway if you're in a wheelchair would have to be a collossal pain in the ass.

Man, if Seattle ranks 11, that doesn't say much for the state of transit in this country. New York is the only city I've been in the US where you can get around easily and reliably by subway, and the only city I'd even consider living in without a car. None of the others on the list even come close. Seattle is only quick & reliable if you live on Capitol Hill, Queen Ann, or U-District, and only during the day. Anywhere outside those zones and it is marginal at best.

Another issue I have with Portland public transportation is the streetcar. It benefits a tiny tiny portion of well to do Portlanders and tourists, and the money we spent on it would have been better spent on keeping more buses on the road.

The whole list is pretty much a joke. They seem to love light rail, even if it only has a minimal number of suburban spokes.

How many of these places could you easily live in, and get to the places you want to go, relying solely on public transportation? Not many. Yet somehow they rank above D.C. and Chicago? Seriously?

SF suffers from horrible intermodal issues. If you're heading out to Berkeley, BART is great; if you're going somewhere specific in most of the city, it's completely useless, and you're stuck with a variety of buses, MUNI, cable cars, trolleys, what have you, which are a pain in the titties to move between. And their buses are insane.

Any of the classic old subway cities is going to suffer from the problem identified by @4. Sure, there's an elevator, but, oh my god it smells so strongly of pee in here...

But new light-rail cities all suffer from the problem identified @1: a couple of lines covering hardly any area. Portland is terrible in this regard, though getting better; but Portland is absolutely a driver's city through and through, with plentiful cheap parking (and the world's slowest drivers).

Seattle is kind of a joke, with the multimodal problem of San Francisco, with the additional problem of some of the modes being completely stupid: the monorail, the SLUT. The bus network does as much as it can given the impossible size and layout of the place, but the LINK doesn't serve 7/8 of the city; it has the drawbacks of BART (stations too far apart) and MAX (not enough lines) with none of the pluses of those systems.

Every city's mass transit restricts your life to just those centers it serves. For that reason, I'm going to say the cities with the highest density of stations: New York and Boston, even though they're not accessible.

Surprisingly, LA's subway system is pretty good, though of course it's nothing compared to the old Red Cars and Yellow Cars that made that city possible in the first place. Their bus network, though, is a horror. San Diego and San Jose should be on that list, too, though their systems are too much like Seattle's to be top-class.

Austin.

LOL.

@13, With a bike you can go practically anywhere in Portland. I was living in SW with my girlfriends family for a good chunk of the past year, and working at the Fuji Film processing plant near Gresham, and I did fine without a car. Of course this is not for everyone, not by any means, but Portland is very livable without a car, for those inclined.

@13, Washington DC's metro is actually quite good as well. You can definitely live there without a car, but the neighborhoods that are transit accessible are generally also very expensive.

My ranking would be
1. NYC
2. Washington D.C.
3. Boston
4. How the hell does that article think that Portland or SLU are transit accessible?!?!?

The safety thing is also bullshit, since public transit is considerably more safe than even walking, much less driving, so making it a valid alternative increases people's safety, even if the system is "relatively" less safe.

@16, I had to be in LA last week and by a miracle I found most everywhere I needed to go happened to be within striking distance of one subway or another, and where it wasn't there was a Zipcar handy nearby. Many, many more pedestrians than I remembered, too. It was fan-fucking-TASTIC.

New York is fine if you're talking about Manhattan. Staten Island or Riverdale, not so much.

As for Seattle, facts are stubborn things. Among its peer cities (which include Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Diego, St. Louis and the Twin Cities):

Seattle provides the most miles of transit service per capita (36.1 compared to an average of 20.7).

Seattle provides the second most passenger trips per capita (62.5 compared to an average of 40.2).

Seattle provides the highest operating funding per capita ($321.58 compared to an average of $168.30).

Seattle provides the highest operating subsidy per capita ($258.25, about twice the average of $129.30, and about 30% more than the second highest).

Seattle provides BY FAR the highest combined capital and operating subsidy per capita ($456.35, far more than twice the average of $203.26 and nearly twice as much as second place Portland).

I have lived in Philly for over 20 years without a car and that included daily travel out into the suburbs for work so I would have to have it on the list.

This list is clearly giving smaller, lamer cities some kind of handicap.

@21 Well I am glad we beat Milwaukee!

None of those metric really go to how effective a system is. I judge a transit system based on many times I either use my car or wish I was using a car. In NY that is hardly ever. Same with Chicago or DC. Much rather be on transit. In Seattle it is all the time. The bus or train is hardly ever even close to driving. So yeah, I'm sure we compare pretty well to Cities with roughly the same population, which is how they seem to define peer, but I don't care about that. I care about getting where I want to go easily and on that we fail.

And yet, 61.5% percent of Portlanders still commute in single occupancy cars.

So, think again what it gets you to spend billions of (our Federal) tax dollars to become the "Number One Transit City".

I guess the magazine must have weighed "Builds Shiny New Conveyances That Make Urban Planners Jizz In Their Pants" very highly among the criteria to make Portland #1 on the list.

I live in Portland and I think shiny new trains are sexy, but come on. Portland's bus system stops running at midnight, and many buses head to the garage at 10 p.m. or even earlier. It's convenient if you want to get downtown during business hours, but if you're trying to get from one neighborhood to another neighborhood in the evening you should expect your trip to involve at least one transfer and take about 4 times as long as it would in a car. The streetcar is cute but IT STOPS AT FOUR-WAY STOP-SIGN INTERSECTIONS like a car and gets stuck in traffic and behind red lights like a car — but unlike a car, it accelerates very slowly and its top speed is about 15 miles an hour. Seriously, you can get where you're going faster on foot. Now they're talking about wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to build a streetcar line out to Lake Oswego, a rich suburb where the only people who would use it would be bored teens who haven't gotten a Lexus for their 16th birthday yet, and the maid. The aerial tram is cool because it looks space-age and floats above the freeway, but it only travels between a hospital and a cluster of failed condominium towers.

@ 25, I know from Seattle friends that the buses and commuter trains are suddenly getting a lot more ridership in the last couple of weeks. Hmmm, wonder why this is.

Clearly the answer to the question "how can we build a viable transit system is "start in 1900".

I lived in Boston for five years without a car. I did discover later how limited a perspective that gives you on a city, but I filled in some of the gaps on a bicycle.

@20, when people in Seattle think of LA they form a mental image of about 1972, when cruising the freeways in your Bonneville or Charger was cheap and groovy. Things have changed quite a bit. I've had people laugh in my face when I tell them LA is a great pedestrian city, but it's true. Better than Seattle, that's for sure, and it's not just me saying it -- the numbers on the sidewalks prove it. I think it's all the street food that's doing it.

@26, Fuck the tram, fuck the streetcar, fuck the plans to give LO a streetcar.

I lived in Portland growing up I can say their transit system isn't great. Not much better than Seattle's. The MAX is OK but its way too basic and doesn't branch out. NYC and Chicago's systems seem so efficient.

and SF - Why the hell does that BART quit running so early?? it would be useful if the damn thing ran later than bar closing time....

@30, I love that a lot of those Purple Line cars were manufactured by the Boeing helicopter group, scrabbling for something to make after the Vietnam war ended.

@24: The point is, that even though we are spending over twice as much as the next city in our peer group (which was ranked number one in this post), Sloggers still bitch and moan.

Glad to see others here mention LA. Their buses are nicer than Seattle's and run every 10-20 minutes instead of every 30 minutes to maybe never. Not to mention the fact that they cover about four times as much geography, and a ride only costs $1.50! I repeat, $1.50!! Compared to driving it's basically free, and a taxi covering these same distances would be like $40 bucks. Not saying that you could live there without a car necessarily, but with a bike, a house or apartment in a convenient neighborhood to work, and some patience, you might be able to do it. I spent a week there in March and covered a fair amount of west LA by bus just fine, no car desired nor required.

@30 I loved the Purple line (got family in Evanston), but I have to say that the El does not really hold up against the MTA. I spent too many Saturday afternoons freezing on the overpass, waiting an hour for three 55s to show up. I have deep affection for that transit system, but it could use some work.

I just came here to say "Fuck you, Mort Zuckerman, and your little 'news' rag, and your anti-healthcare-reform screed. Fuck you right in the tuchus."

That is all.

(Not bitter.)

You guys are so sweet to talk about LA's mass transit like that. Just adorable.

DC's public transportation system is "great," IF you don't have to work late! (which, dammit, you often have to do, right?). OK, it is pretty clean and reliable overall though.

NYC, easily, is number 1.

The point is, they actually have people riding their public transportation. Lots of people. And they don't need to advertise it to get riders either.

It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but they've got massive volume. That's what really counts.

If you live in Santa Monica and want to go to a Dodger game, you ain't taking public transportation (or walking).

I live in Boston, and that the MBTA ranks so well here (and is agreed with in these comments) makes me really sad. I mean, I thought it was terrible, but I just took living without a car for granted.

The US N&WR article listed some metrics for how they rate transit, but it's doubtful that "diverse modes" was the only reason Portland ranked #1. People have reasons to hate transit entirely or support transit despite its flaws. Mass transit is simply a fundamental mode of urban/suburban travel that succeeds or fails depending upon how it is designed.

Portland's Tri-Met isn't fairly comparable to larger metropolitan area systems, but it is one of the best designs with many elements that do apply universally.

Portland is once again awarded #1 status because downtown traffic is amazing well-controlled through a combination of means, starting with Portland's 'idyllic' pedestrian infrastructure and amenities, separate bicycle pathways and orderly on-street routes, the fareless free rail zone, cheap city-owned structured parking, a business-supported transit funding mechanism, and urban planning that enhances storefront small business environment.

Motorists are subconsciously signaled to slow down, enabled to park easily, finish any routine trip walking and hopping on the fareless, convenient light rail trains and streetcars. Suck on that, Seattle, and guess what, Mayor Mcginn is right to oppose the piece of engineered shit bored tunnel lunacy and right about the surface boulevard option.

@33: Total dollars spent does not equate to quality or quantity of service. For example, an awful lot of money was spent on the SLUT, and it has added little value.

@44, Park easily? Ha! Haha!

"How easy is it to get around via public transit?" was obviously not included in their metric of what makes a system "best."

You people are idiots. Portland has plenty of traffic downtown, but its speed is controlled and the percentage of cars moving as opposed to the percentage parked is the reverse of Seattle's and most US cities. In other words, if Seattle has 30% of the cars downtown parked, and 70% tootling around like chickens with their heads cut off, Portland's traffic is 70% parked and 30% moving mostly in and out in a sensible manner. So, suck on that you fucking idiot frat twit hipster losers and jarhead honkies and bimbo talking heads who don't agree with Mayor Mcginn and Councilor O'Brien and those damn urban planners who can actually make a rational argument defending the surface boulevard option instead of blurting nonsense about how you just know it won't work.