I used the red line all the time when I lived in LA. It was crazy to me that so few people who lived there even knew it existed.
At the time, the other two lines were, if I remember correctly, the blue and green lines. Those were much more working class commute type lines that didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, but the red line ran from downtown out through Hollywood, and then on to universal where I could enjoy some of the bars at City Walk without worrying about driving or parking.
Now I live maybe less than five miles from downtown Dallas and I never go there because there’s no train and the driving/parking situation is a nightmare.
Clarification: There are trains that go to downtown Dallas. Just not from my neighborhood.
I (US citizen living in Japan for most of a decade) took my wife (only in the US once as an elementary school student and only Honolulu) to DC for the first time a couple of months ago. I was pleasantly surprised. I had ridden DC’s subways once or twice on trips there. We were table to do everything we wanted on foot, by bus, and by train. Getting on the train from Dulles, though, we had some only-partly-clothed woman passed out with what I can only assume was a trail of partly-dried piss on the floor by her. Police took her off when we got into the city at some point, but it was a less-than-stellar start. That said, I’ve seen people puke and piss on trains in Tokyo as well.
SF is easily as well-served by public transit as Chicago. It’s the 2nd densest city in the US, behind NYC. Between Muni, the streetcars and busses and BART, there’s always an easy way to get anywhere in The City. You can even jump on a cable car if that’s your thing.
I think Chicago is the only other US city that comes close, their transit is fantastic!
And they’ve got Christkindlmarket.
DC’s light rail is pretty nice too. LA’s could be nice if there were more frequent trains, but that probably has more to do with how sprawled LA is.
I used the red line all the time when I lived in LA. It was crazy to me that so few people who lived there even knew it existed.
At the time, the other two lines were, if I remember correctly, the blue and green lines. Those were much more working class commute type lines that didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, but the red line ran from downtown out through Hollywood, and then on to universal where I could enjoy some of the bars at City Walk without worrying about driving or parking.
Now I live maybe less than five miles from downtown Dallas and I never go there because there’s no train and the driving/parking situation is a nightmare.
Clarification: There are trains that go to downtown Dallas. Just not from my neighborhood.
I (US citizen living in Japan for most of a decade) took my wife (only in the US once as an elementary school student and only Honolulu) to DC for the first time a couple of months ago. I was pleasantly surprised. I had ridden DC’s subways once or twice on trips there. We were table to do everything we wanted on foot, by bus, and by train. Getting on the train from Dulles, though, we had some only-partly-clothed woman passed out with what I can only assume was a trail of partly-dried piss on the floor by her. Police took her off when we got into the city at some point, but it was a less-than-stellar start. That said, I’ve seen people puke and piss on trains in Tokyo as well.
San Francisco always gets left out of these as well, but transit there rocks
Portland is pretty decent too. Not as good as SF, but you can reasonably get around the entire area on public transportation.
SF is easily as well-served by public transit as Chicago. It’s the 2nd densest city in the US, behind NYC. Between Muni, the streetcars and busses and BART, there’s always an easy way to get anywhere in The City. You can even jump on a cable car if that’s your thing.