A Study Named This Vibrant US City The Best For Public Transportation In The Country

Good public transportation is a social equalizer and a time management game changer. Whether you're deciding on a new city to live in or simply want to avoid car rental hassles on your next vacation, good public transportation options are a crucial consideration for anyone getting around a big city. A 2023 study conducted by independent moving site Hire A Helper based on Federal Transit Administration and U.S. Census Bureau data ranked the Washington, D.C., metro area as having the best public transportation in the country.

While New York City has by far the largest public transportation network in the U.S. (and a whopping 46% of annual rides in the country are taken by people riding the New York MTA, per the Federal Transit Administration), it scored only third when data points were composited for the study. Comparing multiple factors, the study ranked the top 15 cities in the U.S. for public transit, with Denver and Los Angeles placing near the bottom. Of the top five cities for public transportation, San Francisco was the only one not on the East Coast. Below, we'll tell you more about the top city, as well as the study's methodology.

With one of the newest public transit systems in the country, it's no surprise that Washington, D.C.'s system calls to mind Europe's best subway system while working to avoid some of the pitfalls faced by older transit systems in the United States. For example, some sources suggest that less than 30% of New York's subways are fully accessible for citizens with disabilities, putting them out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). While D.C.'s rail system had its beginnings two decades before the ADA, almost 94% of stations are compliant with the law, and a shared-ride paratransit bus service, MetroAccess, is available to those who still can't use rail services.

The average one-way commute time figures heavily into the study's scores, too. Washington, D.C., ranks among the worst cities in the country for traffic congestion, with commuters spending more than 100 hours per year in traffic, according to a 2019 INRIX report. Both Washington, D.C.'s concentration of government and bureaucratic jobs at the urban core and the housing and infrastructure issues that plague the city lead to commuters coming from a huge variety of distant suburbs. These factors mean that riding the metro can improve commute times in a drastic way, edging the city further up the score card.

While we'd like to have a metro system like the one in the European country where public transportation is free, it's an unfortunate reality that funding public transportation is arguably part of what's reflected back to us in this data. For instance, in the study, mechanical failures per mile of track and safety incidents figured into the findings. These infrastructure problems may be attributed to a lack of local and federal funding dedicated to the metro, which varies widely in high-density cities across the U.S.

The Hire A Helper study also focused heavily on commuter data from the U.S. Census Bureau, such as average commute times, the share of workers who commute using public transportation, the range in times that people leave for work, population density, and the share of households with a vehicle. Meanwhile, Walk Score released a list in 2021 of the most walkable and transit-friendly cities based on how car-independent daily errands can be and how useful nearby routes are to a resident of any neighborhood. On both of these metrics, the top-scoring transit cities, according to Walk Score, were New York, San Francisco, and Boston, with Washington, D.C., coming in only at No. 5. Consider it a reminder that even the best U.S. public transport systems have room for improvement.