

Still better than Boston! (Christopher Robbins / Gothamist) -->

This morning the B and Q were messed up, so I had to take three trains to work, two of which turned into other trains while I was on them. It was with some surprise, then, that I saw a new report ranking public transportation in New York the best in the country—though really, that says more about the rest of the nation than the MTA.

The honor was bestowed upon our fair city by Arcadis, an urban-planning company that compiled rankings of sustainable mobility in cities around the world. Though at #23 on the list, New York's transit couldn't hold a candle to, say, Hong Kong, which the study ranked #1, or Paris, London, Tokyo, or even Beijing, whose platforms give me anxiety.

Nevertheless, NYC was deemed the best at transportation in the U.S., outranking Washington, D.C. (#42), Boston (#46), Chicago (#49), and Indianapolis (#88). New York also bested all the rest of the ranked cities in North America, with Montreal next in line at #36.

Transit in and around the New York area has been increasingly challenging of late, with the subway steadily devolving into a track-fire-filled hellscape and LIRR and NJ Transit commuters forced to spend time in Penn Station. Still, as the study points out, New York City has an incredibly popular 24-hour public transit system that transports millions of people every day, often without major incident, to four out of five boroughs, and services Long Island and New Jersey, and has some (if very limited) wheelchair access, so all things considered it still beats less sophisticated systems elsewhere in the country. It's also noteworthy that the study praises the new citywide ferry service that launched this past summer, which still isn't perfect, but is certainly an exciting addition for some.

Still, there's a lot of room for improvement, considering how far down the list we are worldwide. The study notes, correctly, that New York's transit suffers from overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and projects in need of completion, including the major $4 billion LaGuardia Airport overhaul and the ever-underfunded Gateway project that would would fund a proposed Hudson River tunnel for New Jersey Transit and Amtrak trains.

"New York leads North America in the Index. But it is also a city with a lot to lose if its planned major infrastructure projects are postponed," the study says. Like, for instance, me, who will definitely abandon this town the next time the C turns into an A and then an M.