The chart above shows the number of annual riders for every mile of track in each state. One million annual riders is the equivalent of 2,740 riders a day. So Ohio has 849 daily riders for every mile of track while New York has 18,986.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the most annual riders per mile of track, New York, and the state with the least (that has a subway system), Ohio, is 6.62 million.
- New York has 22.35 times the annual riders per mile of track that Ohio does.
- Pennsylvania and California have two subway systems, New York has three, all other states have one.
- The median number of annual riders per mile of track in states that have a subway is 1.69 million and the mean 2.22 million.
Caveats
- Data is from 2017.
- Hawaii is currently working on building a subway system for Honolulu which is expected to have 2.12 million annual riders per mile of track.
- All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.
Details
Considering that New York has the most miles of track in the US by a large margin, but still manages to top this list shows how large the chasm is in subway ridership between New York and the other states.
New York has three heavy rail systems all in the city of New York. The New York City Subway has 7.31 million annual riders per mile of track (the highest in the country), the Staten Island Railway has 0.63, and PATH has 6.74. California has BART in San Francisco with 1.19 riders per mile and Metro Rail in Los Angeles with 2.58. Pennsylvania has two systems in Philadelphia. SEPTA has 2.50 riders per mile and the PATCO Speedline has 0.76.
Data
| State | City | Name | Miles of Track | Riders (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | San Francisco | BART | 108.6 | 129.3 |
| California | Los Angeles | Metro Rail | 17.4 | 44.9 |
| Florida | Miami | Metrorail | 24.9 | 19.7 |
| Georgia | Atlanta | MARTA | 47.6 | 67.4 |
| Illinois | Chicago | Chicago L | 102.8 | 230.2 |
| Maryland | Baltimore | Baltimore Metro Subway | 15.5 | 10.8 |
| Massachusetts | Boston | MBTA Subway | 38 | 167.2 |
| New York | New York City | Staten Island Railway | 14 | 8.8 |
| New York | New York City | PATH | 13.8 | 93 |
| New York | New York City | New York City Subway | 236.2 | 1,727.3 |
| Ohio | Cleveland | RTA Rapid Transit: Red Line | 19 | 5.9 |
| Pennsylvania | Philadelphia | PATCO Speedline | 14.2 | 10.8 |
| Pennsylvania | Philadelphia | SEPTA | 36.7 | 91.8 |
| Washington DC | Washington, D.C. | Washington Metro | 117 | 229.6 |
Sources
Wikipedia. 2019. "List of Metro Systems." Accessed February 24, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems.