AaverageJoe, flickr
A little while back, we took a look at commuting in Seattle vs. Portland—and found, perhaps unexpectedly, that Seattle had a heck of a lot more transit commuting than Portland.
But that comparison only looked at work trips, and only trips within the city limits of Portland and Seattle. So what about the metro areas as a whole—and transit for all trips, not just trips to work?? The National Transit Database offers some clues…and as it turns out, for total transit ridership the Portland metro area may edge out greater Seattle.
But neither Portland nor Seattle can hold a candle to greater Vancouver, BC.
The simplest comparison among the three cities looks at the average number of bus and rail transit boardings per person, per year, in the entire metro area. And on that measure, Vancouver vastly outstrips its two southern neighbors.
Unfortunately, the story is somewhat more complicated than this chart suggests. Vancouver’s transit system encourages transfers—and since there’s a single, unified transit agency for metro Vancouver, there’s good data on how many riders actually transfer in the course of a single trip. Seattle, in contrast, has so many overlapping transit systems that it’s very difficult to assess how many transfers there really are.
Still, even if you assume that each transit boarding in Portland and Seattle represents a single trip, but use Vancouver’s data on “trips” rather than “vehicle boardings,” Metro Vancouver still beats the two US cities handily:
Using the same “trip” definitions in the chart above, a mode-by-mode breakdown shows that Portland has far more rail riders than Seattle, while greater Seattle edges out greater Portland in bus ridership. But Vancouver still comes out on top in both categories.
| Trips per capita, 2010* | |||
| Vancouver | Portland | Seattle | |
| Bus | 56 | 32 | 43 |
| Light Rail | 33 | 21 | 3 |
| Commuter Rail | 1 | 0 | 1 |
*Note: Vancouver data represent transit “trips”, while data for both Portland and Seattle represent transit “boardings.”
Of course, there’s still more to the story. These charts exclude a number of transit modes, including dial-a-ride transit (which is typically door-to-door service offered to those who are physically unable to use standard transit service), as well as vanpools and ferries. I’ve decided to keep those out of the analysis for now, but I’ll note that after including ferry trips in the total trip count, Seattle’s per capita transit ridership ties Portland’s; and when you add in vanpools as well as ferries, Seattle narrowly edges Portland.
So perhaps Portland and Seattle are about tied…but tied in a race to see who comes in a distant second to Vancouver.
Notes and Caveats:
For this analysis, we considered all of the transit agencies in the greater Portland and Seattle metropolitan areas, as listed in the National Transit Database. For Seattle, those agencies included King County Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit (in Snohomish County), Everett Transit, Pierce Transit, the City of Seattle, and a handful of ferry providers—but not Kitsap Transit. For Portland, it included Trimet, C-Tran in Clark County, the South Metro Area Regional Transit agency in Wilsonville, and the Metro vanpool program. All data for Metro Vancouver comes from Translink. In Seattle, light rail includes the monorail and South Lake Union Trolley, as well as Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail. Population for the Seattle metro area includes the full population of King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Greater Portland’s population includes Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties in Oregon plus Clark County, Washington. Population for greater Vancouver includes all of Metro Vancouver. Note that Seattle and Portland population totals, as described above, may differ from the populations of the service areas as defined in the National Transit Database.
Michael, Portland Afoot
What I want to know is whether / how much this will change with the end of free transit in both downtown cores. We won’t have a full year of NTD numbers on that until what, mid-2014?
Alex Broner
My guess is that the impact of the end of free transit downtown in both cities will not be so dramatic as to outweigh other determinants such as service levels and employment. This is not to say it won’t have an impact but rather it will be hard to tell how big an impact due to other things changing at the same time.
Anthony J Hartnell
Yeah sure, but Vancouver is in Canada so, it doesn’t count?
Matt the Engineer
Vancouver’s metro area is 1,111 sq. miles in area, whereas Seattle’s is 8,186 sq. miles (both according to Wikipedia). Is that a valid comparison? Wouldn’t Seattle’s metro area be capturing a lot more rural and suburban land where car travel is more prevalent?
I’d love to see a more area-neutral comparison, though I know how tough it would be to get data from, say, a 30-mile circle rather than following political boundaries.
Aranhil
But ignoring the differences in area has its advantages. Transit ridership in an area is inherently associated with the form of urban planning of that area. So in a way, it is an indicator of suburban (transit-unfriendly) development. The comparison reveals that Seattle’s metro residents are more suburban in nature. If metro area sizes are normalized, this difference might be harder to see.
Matt the Engineer
If you drew your line around a city itself, it would seem much stronger in terms of transit ridership. The more suburbs you include, the less you’ll have transit ridership. So drawing your boundary very large for one city and very small for the other has a clear disadvantage for the one whose boundary is large.
If there was a consistant definition of “metro” area, I’d buy your argument. Say, if you drew your circle around the first 3 million residents (assuming similar population sizes for the metro areas as a whole), then you might get at which group of 3 million were worse at using transit (and probably less densely distributed).
was carless
Matt, both Portland and Vancouver have metro areas of around 2.25 million. So the first 3 million would include most of the state of Oregon and province of BC (lots of rural land and far-flung towns).
Andrew
Census-defined metro areas are based on county boundaries, so the Seattle MSA goes all the way to the edge of King County at Snoqualmie Pass. Metro Vancouver does include the unincorporated Electoral District A, but that doesn’t include nearly as much wilderness as unincorporated King County.
was carless
Portland includes Vancouver, WA, which has barely any transit, and its population of 400,000 really skews the numbers, I’m sure.
Although I’m not really surprised that there is a large difference in transit ridership when you have one city with NO US interstate freeways running right through the core downtown.
Marklundie
Even then, under your scenario you would notice that while Seattle has a cluster of very tall downtown buildings, there are fewer of them that in Vancouver. This is because many of Vancouver’s towers are residential towers.
Also, under the Vancouver Liveable region plan, it was decided to densify the city through the creation of high-density Town Centres, connected by grade separated rail (not LRT) The results are beginning to show up with Vancouver being denser, and able to attract nearly 400,000 riders per day.
MB
Matt, Metro Vancouver’s ~2,800 km2 area is mostly mountainous protected watersheds, agricultural land and parks. The Urban Containment Boundary is only ~850 km2 (~500 mile2). Seattle may pose a similar ratio, but it is overall less dense even in the single family detached house suburbs than Vancouver.
Perhaps that explains Vancouver’s transit success … but keep in mind that pales again in comparison to NYC and Chicago.
Anthony J Hartnell
Seattle’s Metro area is a joke, basically all of Western Washington. Greater Vancouver is a Regional district in Canada and, if you included the neighbouring districts in the Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island, Vancouver is just as big or bigger than Seattle…. The transit system in Vancouver is world class, Seattle….. not so much… look at the ridership stats!
Bruce Nourish
Obviously, I’m a big fan of data-driven analysis of bus networks, and I like the intention of this post, but comparisons such as this are meaningless as a measure of network quality unless they compare either cost per boarding, or riders per platform hour. This analysis doesn’t tell us whether Vancouver is just spending way more money on bus service, or whether their bus service is run better than ours, or (more likely) some combination of the two.
I also think framing this as a comparison between “Seattle” and “Portland” and then including Community Transit is somewhat inapt. CT covers an enormous exurban/rural hinterland without any significant urban core. They provide lots of one-seat rides into downtown Seattle and the U-District, some of them from incredibly far-flung places at vast expense; a lifeline bus service in the suburban areas of the county; and a single quasi-BRT service (SWIFT) on the single corridor that has a decent level of demand.
CT’s service environment is thus totally different, with totally different goals and challenges, to King County Metro’s within the densely-urbanized parts of Seattle, which is in turn different to most of the Eastside or South King; and totally different again to the near-bankrupt Pierce Transit, which is just trying to provide lifeline service to a struggling city with lots of transit-dependent riders. I question what could be gleaned any analysis which lumps together such disparate service areas.
What was the rationale for including entire county populations rather than the “population served” in the NTD? Those NTD numbers exist for a reason; e.g., great swathes of King and Pierce counties have no fixed-route service.
What was the rationale for comparing Translink trips versus boardings? These would appear to be clearly different things.
The reason it is not possible to compare trips vs boardings in the Seattle area has little to do with there being multiple agencies, it is that Translink issues mag-swipe transfer tickets, and Metro issues tissue-paper tickets that you wave at the bus driver. The latter are almost impossible to account for accurately.
Again, I like the effort here, but I think more care is needed in defining what you are trying to measure, and the objects you are measuring.
Clark Williams-Derry
I think those are good points, Bruce! I don’t have time right now for a full discussion right now…I’ll try to address various points in turn, later.
But as for service-area vs. metro-area popuation: one of my goals was to compare Metro Vancouver with greater Portland and Seattle — and I didn’t see comparable service-area population data for Metro Vancouver. Using the service-area figures for Seattle and Portland didn’t actually change those two cities’ relative performance much, since they both have comparable rural populations not well-covered by transit.
My assumption is actually that Metro Vancouver’s real advantage isn’t in the details of its transit service per se, but in a much, much more compact urban form. A far greater share of Metro Vancouver residents live in compact neighborhoods — places where transit is a viable option — than in greater Seattle or greater Portland. That makes bus service more cost effective, boosts ridership, etc.
Clark Williams-Derry
For trips vs. boardings — I felt as if comparing Vancouver boardings with Seattle and Portland boardings might put Vancouver at an unfair advantage, particularly if Vancouver’s transit system happens to be designed to encourage transfers. I recall seeing trip vs. boarding data for Trimet in Portland a number of years back, and noting that Vancouver had a higher number of boardings per trip — suggesting that transit service there is designed around transfers.
But I didn’t have good trip data for Portland and Seattle. So one way to interpret that second chart is that it’s accurate for Vancouver, but extremely generous for Seattle and Portland — and Vancouver still has more trips per capita.
As I say above, using service area population rather than total population may disadvantage metro Vancouver, since there are places in metro Vancouver that are fairly rural and poorly served by transit. Still, when I use the most generous assumptions for Portland and Vancouver — that each boarding is equivalent to a Vancouver “trip” and all of metro Vancouver’s residents are in Translink’s “service area” — Vancouver ridership still tops Portland and Seattle. I didn’t show those numbers, but I could. The gap between Portland and Vancouver is narrower than in the second chart, but it’s still more than 20 rides per capita.
I think that the most important point that emerges from this is the importance of land use in affecting transportation outcomes. It’s not an indictment of transit planning in any particular city — but it does suggest that transit attracts lots of riders in places with compact land use.
Bruce Nourish
What you’re saying makes sense, and I should have included other factors besides bus network quality in my response. To be clear, from my anecdotal experience and other knowledge about Translink, versus the soup of agencies which serve Puget Sound, I could believe all of the following statements are true:
* That a given person in Metro Vancouver is much more likely to use a bus more frequently compared to Seattle or Portland.
* That Vancouver’s high-density, compact neighborhoods drive transit use.
* That Vancouver’s bus network is, overall, better designed, to maximize rides per platform hour.
* That Translink’s contracted service delivery model provides more bus platform hours per $.
* That Vancouver’s transit backbone, Skytrain, is of sufficient quality (i.e. speed, reliability, access to downtown) as to drive ridership on local-service bus routes above and beyond that which can be obtained by transfers to other local-service routes, or the slower light-rail lines we have in Seattle or Portland.
I guess what I’m getting at is that your post only provides us enough information to argue for or against the first point. The other points are much more interesting and (perhaps) actionable from a public policy standpoint, and more data might allow us to debate and judge their validity.
Clark Williams-Derry
I agree! This is mostly a think-piece, designed to stimulate thinking, discussion, and topics for further research.
It’s clear, based on these figures, that Vancouver has a transit advantage. And your hypotheses — and more! — should all be considered as candidate explanations. That’s work for, maybe, a master’s thesis…I only *wish* I could do that much research for each blog post!
Andrew Martens
Regarding your comment: “it is that Translink issues mag-swipe transfer tickets, and Metro issues tissue-paper tickets that you wave at the bus driver. The latter are almost impossible to account for accurately.”
While Translink does issue mag-swipe transfer tickets, a significant portion of Translink riders have monthly passes. At the moment, those do not have magnetic stripes and are waved or flashed at the driver when boarding. While Translink would be able to determine how many were sold at points-of-sale, the drivers would still have to count how many people boarded their vehicles.
Similarly, considering that right now there are no fare gates or turnstiles at Skytrain (Translink’s “LRT” style transit), I suspect that Translink’s numbers there are estimates, rather than hard figures.
Bryn Hughes
Many vehicles in Translink’s fleet have automatic passenger counters above the doors. While they can’t tell you where someone came from or where they are going to, they do at least give some reasonably accurate statistics as to how many folks enter or leave a given bus at any particular stop, and how many people are on the bus.
Translink rotates the APC-equipped buses throughout the service area, ensuring they have data for as many different routes as possible. They’ve been doing APC data collection for about a decade now.
Johnny
Indeed, Seattle is far behind all of them, just now starting to get light rail. Portland has had light rail for awhile. Vancouver has had it for years now. They do seem to have planned the area much better. I live in Washington in the South Sound on the Eastside and have only the Sounder rail, which only runs a few times a day on weekdays. Other than that I have to take a bus that screws around going in what seems like circles through Auburn and Kent, or drive into Tacoma and take an express bus to King Street Station. Even the Express Bus meanders through Busway avenue for miles taking forever. Washington must have some of the most inept transit officials anywhere!!
Alex Broner
I’m sorry that your transit options are so limited. Part of the reason that is so is because of landuse decisions. Decisions to restrict the number of people who can live near near frequent transit service limit the number of people who can ride transit which in turn prevents increased frequency of service, more express service, etc.
Mike M
Umm, unlike Seattle and Portland, Vancouver doesn’t have light rail. It has a real high speed grade separated subway system since 1985. It moves faster than highway traffic and has low operating costs. Even when the transit workers went on strike there about 12 years ago, the system still was in service because it is operated by a computer. When there is something so fast and so reliable, of course more people are going to use it. Compare that to Seattle, where a light rail gets stuck in tunnels behind buses, gets into accidents on MLK and has platforms in the middle of the road making people wait for like 5 minutes to cross traffic… It was designed to fail. Unlike Vancouver, Portland and Seattle also have slower streets, where emphasis is more on recreational biking rather than bus speed and reliability. Most bus lines in Seattle have bicycle lanes! What is that all about?! It makes both modes undesiarable.
Alex Broner
Vancouver is working on expanding their bike lane network right now, it will be interesting to see how they improve the relationship between transit and bicycles as more people take advantage of their network improvements.
In Europe the trend is for major avenues to have separate facilities for bikes, transit, and automobiles.
Brian
Its worth pointing out that dedicated bus lanes in Vancouver (which are mostly downtown) allow cyclists. While it does feel silly playing tag with a frequently stopping bus, the effect on either mode’s comfort and reliability are small. Additionally, most major streets, at least in Vancouver proper, have both bus service and some form of cycle provision.
The difference may be that Vancouver also has quite a few bike routes on quiet residential streets (often near and parallel to a busy street) and seperated bike lanes downtown, which carry a large amount of bike traffic.
pmjw
Mike, you’ve hit one of the nails right on the head–rail system capacity. All cities have the choice between high-capacity transit systems with high upfront costs and much lower operating costs, or lower capacity systems with the reverse (and also with grade crossings, shared use tunnels etc). Most cities seem to go cheap in capital costs, then wonder why their networks don’t win favour with commuters. Vancouver went the expensive route long ago, and coupled to Skytrain was the city planning focusing high density development along the lines. Lots of people + a convenient, efficient system = success.
Not Fan
Portland’s rail network is a gigantic waste of money. Even within the city itself, the percentage of people who get to work via transit has not changed since 1997. Not that this will cause any of you to rethink a single thing, because in the end you do no more thinking than Sarah Palin. Your views are every last bit as “faith based,” i.e., irrational, as hers.
Mark
Why do you assume that we share your views on politicians? Best to leave the snark to Politico.
John Niles
Nice piece to stimulate thinking.
Random observations learned on visits to BC and from reading:
A giant marketing campaign in Vancouver, BC for the February 2010 Olympics more or less convinced everybody who lives up there that Vancouver downtown would be impossible for cars during the games, and transit more or less mandatory. Not really true, but the campaign drove up daily transit ridership to levels only exceeded in North America by NYC, Toronto, and Mexico City. The effort introduced a normally non-transit-riding part of the population to transit and provided a permanent one-shot lift to daily transit ridership that continues to present day.
In addition, if you went to an Olympic event at the Whistler ski area, you had to ride a bus from Vancouver, so some residents learned about transit for the first time that way.
I presume the Translink passenger counts include the 17,000 riders per day on the SeaBus passenger ferry across Burrard Inlet between downtown Vancouver, BC and the main bus transit center in the North Vancouver suburb up against the mountains. It’s an amazing, high volume marine operation — something like six boarding ramps — giving 15 minute rides as an alternative to buses and cars on two highway bridges that tend to be congested in peak.
The proportion of the downtown of Vancouver, BC that is high rise residential units is very high. Photo at http://www.sfu.ca/cupc2007/img/Vancouver_ib.jpg illustrates. The automated, high frequency subway lines under downtown (not “light rail”) provide rides to numerous shopping and employment districts.
Another source of high transit ridership is English language students visiting from overseas who live in private homes near transit lines (called “homestay”) and travel daily to one of the more than 100 language schools in downtown. I’m told English language schools are one of downtown Vancouver’s biggest industries.
I did notice on a recent trip that the main expressway between Vancouver and the eastern suburbs (Langley, et al) is being widened with HOV lanes extended and a new BRT bus line to be deployed if the money can be found (Translink frequently pleads that it’s broke; that’s like USA transit!).
Also, shoulder running bus lanes have just been implemented on the crowded route 99 freeway that runs from Blaine to the southern boundary of the City of Vancouver.
It’s well worth visiting Vancouver once in a while to experience these transit facilities. Bolt Bus for a buck!
John Newcomb
Thank you for article, Clark/Sightline.
Interesting to also compare some consumer item price differences between Seattle and Vancouver and Portland and Vancouver and speculate on how some of these price differences might reflect different transportation regimes or other structural differences?
I guess being further north, Vancouver might have slightly colder winters than Portland for sure and Seattle maybe, but could the “walkability” factor of Vancouver’s denser area have some role in complementing transit use, versus autos? Could it be that major parts of Seattle and Portland are more walkable than parts of Vancouver, but how would one analyse average area walkability and its impact on transit?
Cost of living, Seattle versus Vancouver:
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Vancouver&country2=United+States&city2=Seattle%2C+WA
Cost of living, Portland versus Vancouver:
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Vancouver&country2=United+States&city2=Portland%2C+OR
Jerry Jaz
Thank you for the article. I appreciate it as much as the great conversation that it inspired. The article and subsequent conversation has opened my eyes to more issues and different ways of viewing the transit issue. This is a perfect example of what a good discussion looks like. Thanks everyone who furthered and expanded the dialog.
Sohale
Hi, I’m from Surrey- Vancouver Suburb, set to overtake Vancouver in population within 20 years. Great article & insightful comments! As many of you know, Vancouver has built itself via Skytrain and the amazing future-forward thinking leaders of yesterday. We are very much transit heavy and I think it helps that all major projects to day have been funded under a model of 1/3 federal, 1/3 provincial, & 1/3 local, mainly for sky train expansion. However, many of you don’t know and don’t realize that the metro region has been at somewhat of a gridlock, relative to decades past, thanks in no part to our NDP government of the 90’s that delayed all major infrastructure projects. That being said, the areas where 70% of all future growth is set to take place: Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge, has very poor transit connections. The new Surrey mayor have vowed to extend light rail or LRT from the 4 sky train stations this city is connected to in the north within 3 years. It may be interesting to see how the metro regions first LRT interacts with sky train and how it benefits ridership and changes the landscape of Surrey, a heavily car-reliant community home to 1/5 metro residents, +500,000 people.
For those of you in the dark, Vancouver has become a largely international city, a gateway to Asia, and as a result real estate prices have gone through the roof and squeezed out many businesses that find locating in the downtown area uncompetitive.
Surrey is creating a new downtown, with all the major real estate developers of the region like Bose, which have projects in Seattle, Calgary, & San Diego, helping to develop this up & coming area which will soon be home to metro’s “2nd Downtown”. The area has great infrastructure, 2 bridges, 3 sky train stations, connections to highways, and soon the centre point of LRT. The area boasts the presence of 3 major universities, a mall, award winning city hall building, a new futuristic library, soon art gallery, Canada’s 2nd largest hospital, 50 story luxury tower anchored by the Mariott Hotel, a dedicated Clean Tech Cluster, and the metro’s headquarters for the RCMP (police).
Just thought you guys would be interested to know. Cheers!
nathan buerr
thank you sightline for articles on types of vancouver bc seattle building developments (condos vs apt’s)and comparison of pnw transit systems .as a seattle metropolitan resident since 1980 and sea metro rider since 1982 i compare seattle metro to world cities transit its too SLOW.since 1982 except for 4 years ive ridden bus .im a very exprienced bus rider& link.ive become very ANTI-BUS //the bremerton naval barracks are a real apartment building .these 10 FL wooden buildings with concrete bottoms built in lynnwood park&ride and tukwila link stations are built cheaply and will collapsed inward in big earthquake.you get what you pay for.a idiot decided the seats in link light rail are clad in fabric thats INCOMPETENCE.tacoma bldg density along pacfic ave is very poor and has very slow buses.much of puget sound housing is suburban and depends on curvy roads established by native americans and farmers bus service is slow or national average 90mins one way peak hour.sound transit board are wussies ON FARE COLLECTION NO CONSEQUENCES!!be a female and ride seattle metropolitan area buses see if you feel safe.if you dont use security to kick off junkie users using back of bus rt#E & #A why should i feel the bus is SAFE?im prepared to violently strike out at noisy trash using transit service as a HOUSING.the female members of sound transit board should try communting for a year on link and local buses not just S.T express buses.theres no data for paper transfers on seattle bus metro system.as long as there no consequences for fare evasion 5 times im no longer paying fare 60% of the time.many of the new wooden bldgs aren’t good enough for the big earthquake.i liked the transit in new york city and new jersey.but they cant bear that much taxiation here in edges of seattle.link light rail is frequently (stoped)broken down due to maintinance issues & crime and traffic accidents.thank you sightline for two articles on bldg development and PNW transit usage