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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Transit Tour - Miami
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Miami’s transit network can feel like a highlight reel one minute and a facepalm the next. We start downtown at Government Center, hop the MetroMover, and then ride Metrorail south on the Green Line, where the elevated guideway, solid headways, and impressively clean cars immediately raise the bar. From there we test a local favorite, the Coral Gables Trolley, a free, frequent route that looks like a throwback but functions like serious everyday transit, with real riders and easy transfers.
The big swing is the new dedicated bus rapid transit corridor: train-like stations, crossing arms, clear signage, and air conditioning, all wrapped around a busway that should be one of the best BRT systems in the United States. Then the reality hits and the whole promise of “rapid” starts to feel like a marketing ploy. We break down how we believe service could be improved and how close this line is to being genuinely world-class.
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Downtown Start On MetroMover
SPEAKER_01We are in downtown Miami, Government Center Station. We started our day by hopping on the Metro Mover, which is Miami's amazing little people mover system. Very fun. And we are now at the Government Center Station, getting ready to head south down the green line.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the Metro Mover is really cool. It's kind of like what you would see at an airport. It's an automated one or two car uh system. I don't know. It feels kind of amusement parky to me, but in like the best way.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and tons of people were riding it this morning. We also got a chance to ride it yesterday. There are kind of three lines on it that all operate around this one little loop. So I'm sure we'll talk more about it later. But for now, we're gonna head south and go check out a little trolley system before doing a whole bunch of other things around Miami. We're gonna check out what is potentially like one of the best BRT systems in the United States. Maybe. Maybe we'll see. We'll find out. It looks very compelling. Uh we'll ride a bunch of trains, which is gonna be a big change from Orlando where we rode a lot of buses. If you want to see the business, another bus, and another bus. Lots of buses. But uh let's jump right in though. Uh we're gonna catch our train here, and it looks like about two minutes, which is very impressive because we just watched one pull away about two or three minutes ago. So the frequencies are looking pretty good.
SPEAKER_02Headway was about four minutes on this train.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but uh, it looks like it might go down a little bit just looking at the sign. There's a train in two minutes and then another in ten, but still eight minutes is pretty solid, no complaints there. We just made it to Douglas Road Station. Curious, your your first impressions so far.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so far this has been great. The train was nice, pretty clean. Honestly, the cleanest train we've been on on the show, probably.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Not a lot there.
SPEAKER_02Um, also, it was elevated the entire way from downtown. In fact, this green line is elevated through its entirety, which it's just mind-blowing to me. It actually, the whole time I was on the train, I was looking up uh a cost comparison between ag grade versus elevated.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I mean it's impressive. They have the whole system being elevated, makes such a huge difference in terms of just like not needing to deal with the grade crossings and whatnot, is like how the metro system actually should be. Unfortunately, so many are not, but we'll ride the Miami Metro several times today, but in total it is just over 24 miles long, featuring 23 stations. It primarily runs along one long line with a short spur to Miami International Airport. Anyway, from here, we're gonna go down and catch the Coral Gables Trolley. Uh,
Coral Gables Trolley Done Right
SPEAKER_01we wanted to catch this because I had a uh phone call ahead of this with Kathy from the Miami Transit Alliance, who kind of explained how the whole metro area here is divided up. And for transportation, there are something like 30 different members that have a say in how the transportation dollars get spent. Different regions within this group use their dollars in different ways, and she had pointed out that this was a good use case of the dollars to have this fairly frequent trolley line, which is really a bus that is dressed up to look like a trolley running kind of through their downtown core area. So we'll go down and check it out uh and see how it is.
SPEAKER_02So we got off the green line and very easily made a transfer onto the Coral Gables Trolley. The trolleys here are really cool, they sort of call back to the historic trolley era in the 1920s and 30s where there were actual electric trolleys connecting the suburb.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and uh I was saying to Chris while we were on the bus trolley that I didn't know that any of those were ever actually used for real transit. I always thought they were novelty things. So uh it was actually a good use case though. There were quite a few people on it. It is free, it was very cute. Yeah, um, the seemingly the frequencies are better than every 10 minutes. It was some maybe like seven or eight, just like looking at the the schedules um just on on uh Google Maps, but definitely a real form of transit that folks were were using, and we'll be able to hop back on it pretty easily here in a second.
SPEAKER_02Also, it's really cool that they offered this as a free service because what we're seeing in a lot of these suburbs, especially some affluent suburbs of larger cities, is that they're moving away from this free transit mode and they're doing things like on-demand ride shares essentially, micro transit.
SPEAKER_01Yep, and uh and even just away from fixed route service, not even necessarily free, but just like fixed route service is disappearing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it's nice to see that they're still supporting this line, which started in 2003 and still seems to be operating really well.
SPEAKER_01So now we're gonna hop back on the line and ride the rest of the way down the green line to go check out the pretty new BRT system here. This cheesecake factory is right on the Coral Gables trolley. Just for future reference in case City Nerd comes here. Alright, so we are back at the station again, about to head southbound, all the way to the BRT. Uh, I did want to take a look at some of the other frequency of other buses here. The trolley we just rode was by far the most frequent. Again, it was better than every 10-minute frequencies in either direction. Looking at Google Maps and the Transit app in terms of trying to figure out frequencies of buses leaving from the station, it was every half an hour or worse in some cases. There were a few 45-minute ones. Looking at a couple of the other stations that we went by that seemingly had a lot of bus connections, it improves a little bit. There were a handful of 20-minute routes, but the frequencies definitely leave some to be desired, but we'll ride some more buses later to go see for ourselves. If you haven't liked this video yet or left a comment, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit.
SPEAKER_02So we
Seamless Transfer To The Busway
SPEAKER_02took the green line all the way down to the end of the line and got off the station and made a really awesome transfer. The buses that lead into the VRT pull in directly under the train.
SPEAKER_01Yes, uh very good signage to get over here. It looks like they're doing work to the station to make it even easier, it seems like. Uh, and we have two buses sitting here waiting for us. One of them is about to pull out, another one's leaving in like five minutes, so frequencies are good as well. We have two buses waiting for us. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So very excited to check these out. We have talked about this BRT line on the show in the past, but for those of you unfamiliar, this is a new 20-mile dedicated BRT route with frequencies ranging from every seven and a half to 15 minutes. I still see there is some unique infrastructure, including crossing arms like you would see with the train, as well as air-conditioned stations along the route. We boarded the bus heading south and we're on our way with high expectations, but then we started to run into a few issues.
BRT Without Signal Priority
SPEAKER_01So uh I was I was having really positive vibes about Miami. We are in this beautiful station for a BRT, but a pardon my French here, I'm gonna bleep this, but what the actual fuck are you doing when you spend all this time and resources to have this dedicated space, put freaking crossing arms and like it's a railroad, and then essentially do whatever the opposite of signal prioritization is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So what happened is getting out of the station, everything actually seemed like it was going really well. There's a dedicated busway that got us out of the station and into the into uh the regular you know BRT bus lane, everything looked like it was going well, and then we got our to our first stoplight. And at our first stoplight, uh we probably waited for three or four or five minutes, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Um, we literally watched all the other traffic move on. We continued, got stuck at the next light for another few minutes, and then another light, and I mean it was at least four stoplights, and none of them were short.
SPEAKER_01Right. The last one we were just at, there was a green red uh right turn arrow still on when we went across. So I'm not sure if he just like looked and saw there was no one coming, but clearly it's it is confusing.
SPEAKER_02This is probably the best example of BRT infrastructure that we have seen in the United States. I mean, there are literal, hold on, yeah, there are many intersections that have crossing arms, this fully dedicated lanes, they're very nice stations. It does feel like more of a train network than a bus. But why would you go through the effort of spending all this time and money developing the system and then still not having the signal priority?
SPEAKER_01And like not using it all either. Like, so the the crossing arms weren't being used at every one of them. They felt redundant and unnecessary when they were used. We were at a stoplight, sitting there waiting, still waiting. The arm comes down. Once the arm comes down, then we go. It just like makes the whole thing take more time. Now, to give them a little bit of fairness here, uh, in talking with Kathy from the Miami Transit Alliance, they do run signal priority sometimes, but it is only in one direction uh during morning rush hour. So headed in in the morning, they do the signal priority, which also to me just feels insane because that is rush hour for people driving in their cars too. So if you're able to have the sacrifice for the car traffic when it's at its peak, why wouldn't you also do it when it's not at peak? Well, like it'd be easy to have signal priority right now. The hard time to do it is during that peak traffic rush. So it's this is incredibly frustrating because it's clear that there was a lot of thought and effort put into like the experience of getting on and off of this. But the like the important stuff, which is can it get you from point A to point B faster than on that road right there? I think based on what we just did, it would have been faster for us to be just with mixed traffic because clearly the cars were were going past us. There was a moment where we were passing cars going faster than them, but we sat at lights and I was just watching and I recorded the whole thing. So during this, I'll have been showing you how we were just sitting there while all the car traffic was going by. This is it's ridiculous. It is I was not expecting to be upset about this. This is like the most infuriating thing that's happened on the show for me, I think.
SPEAKER_02Oh come on.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm being dead serious. Why the why the hell would you do this if you're not gonna actually use it?
SPEAKER_02I agree, I I agree. It it seems like there are some final decisions that were you know poor execution, and it just seems like a very easy fix to make this really a world-class type of busway.
SPEAKER_01And that is the that's the good news, is like it is there, but uh I I'm very interested to talk to Kathy. There we go, let's talk about the positive. I'm very interested to talk to Kathy about like who is making it run bad on purpose. Like they're again, they're doing all of the stuff that makes this like comfortable, but they're forgetting that like the most important thing, like people aren't coming on it just just for the comfort levels. Like, that's great to have it be nice and like treat people well and that they you know they deserve respect to who are riding the system, but also respect them by like getting them to their destination on time. Like just I'll stop now. I'm sorry. Plus one, they do have air conditioning in here.
SPEAKER_02We're talking about the positives, it's fixable. There is a C.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh the station's very nice and clean on this particular bus route or in an area of town that looks pretty nice. There's a lifetime fitness and some nice brands just in this area. So uh really happy at least that there is an option here.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and there's definitely a lot of potential to build up housing here. Like this is while it is nice, there's it's also very like car dominated for sure. 100%. Um, all of these places have a lot of parking lots and whatnot, but it it does seem like it would still be pretty accessible to get places uh obviously using this BRT. I do know that there is some additional transit-oriented developing development uh happening further down the line as well. So it is good to see those things. Again, it will all be so much better if you actually like do the thing that you're supposed to do with this BRT. So we'll see.
SPEAKER_02The station does also have really nice arrival boards that tell you all of the upcoming buses to ride that information. And there is a security guard at the station, and that's something that we've noticed in Miami that every single transit stop has had some type of security at that stop. And they also have been very helpful if you need directions or you know, whatever questions you may have about the metro. Uh, we've witnessed them multiple times helping passengers.
SPEAKER_01And we have also received help.
SPEAKER_02And we also received some help.
SPEAKER_01One other kind of interesting thing, so they have local buses and express buses utilizing this. And normally when you see a place due, an express bus, and a local bus system, the local bus stops also at the express stops, and then the express only stops at the express stops. But at least at this station, a couple local buses have gone by and not stopped here, just kind of an interesting uh system for it. Like, yeah, I feel like that kind of unnecessarily skips some spots.
SPEAKER_02So we finished our uh BRT experience and we were able to transfer it back onto the green line and came all the way up to Viskaya station.
The Underline And Bike Share Fail
SPEAKER_01Yes, and from here we're gonna check out something pretty unique to Miami. Uh, they have a bike trail underneath the metro line here that they call the underline. So we're hopefully gonna get some bikes and take a ride heading back into downtown Miami on the underline. So uh first we're gonna grab some lunch, but then we're gonna go hop on those bikes. All right. We wrapped up some lunch, and as promised, we're now about to check out the bike share here. The map doesn't look like there's a ton of bikes uh down the line. We'll see if there are more because we did not see this station initially either when we're looking for it.
SPEAKER_02There seems to be like there's two different providers for rental bikes. You have the City Bike Miami, and then you have uh Interbike. Interbike seems to be tied to one of the local banks, maybe. But Interbike does seem like it has limited stations but follows along the underline.
SPEAKER_01Right. So uh excited to check out the underline here. We just downloaded the app. Uh it was about nine bucks for a uh one-hour ride. There was also an option for like a couple dollars more for a two-hour ride, so uh we'll see how it goes. Unfortunately, there was an issue at this bike station. Despite both of us having no trouble paying for the bikes in the app, every bike at the station refused to unlock. Later in the trip, we did get a chance to walk along the underline closer to Brickle Station. Overall, the underline is a 10-mile linear park that runs underneath the metro line from the Miami River in Brickle to the southern end of the line at Daydeland South. The first phase of this project opened in 2021. Additional sections have opened since then, and the project is scheduled to be fully complete by the end of 2026.
Bus To Design District Traffic
SPEAKER_01Alright, we are headed out of downtown Miami again. We're gonna catch the number nine bus and see how it is making it up north to the design district. Uh from there we've got a couple more things planned, but we should have a bus coming in just a few minutes. Minuche, few minutes. Uh, this looks like it's running at every 10-minute frequencies, at least for this time of day, and it is a very, very long route.
SPEAKER_02It's incredibly long. The number of buses you would have to have on this route to actually be at a 10-minute frequency is insane.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. So we'll see if it shows up on time. So we just made it to the design district. Definitely getting a little toasty outside now, but uh we took the number nine bus from downtown all the way up here. Uh, that bus, like I said, down there is pretty frequent, and it seemed like that was actually the case. We saw quite a few going by us on the ride up here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, also, again, good ridership. That's something that we've continued to see throughout the time in Miami. The one thing that has stood out is that there aren't a lot of dedicated bus lanes. In fact, we haven't really seen many at all outside of the BRT. Yeah. A couple here and there that are short. Um, but that is definitely a detriment to the system if it's being if it's getting stuck in traffic. Miami, also, for this more central part, the roads aren't necessarily the largest that you would see, like typical North American strodes.
SPEAKER_01We're not in Salt Lake City. Yeah, yeah. Uh, we sat in a ton of traffic on the way here. Uh, the bus was stopped for more time than it was moving, probably. And at a few instances, uh, we came up to like one of the very famous like terrible intersections with the bright line tracks as well as the commuter rail, where it's like a five-way intersection with the train tracks running right through it. And we sat at the light for at least three cycles of that light just because we were backed up so much. A couple tri-rail trains came by, so definitely a little bit frustrating. And we'll be interesting to see how that evolves in time as like you end up with more bright line trains and more tri rail trains and potential other extensions to the network. So it'll be interesting to see.
SPEAKER_02But something else that we noticed too when we were sitting on the bus is that when it is pulling off to a stop, it does typically exit traffic to pull into a side sort of shoulder lane to allow people to get on, which can be helpful if you're trying to allow more vehicle traffic to get around the bus. But then what we have seen is that it's then difficult for the bus to get back into traffic.
SPEAKER_01And that's that's something that uh I didn't even really think about before, but I want to give a shout out to uh City Planner Place on YouTube. If you're a real nerd, you know. Uh, but yeah, it's it's definitely something that slows down buses when you're just trying to get back out into traffic each.
SPEAKER_02So I put these on to like a real nerd. I feel like I look like the uh the emoji uh with the glasses.
SPEAKER_01You just need a little piece of tape.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01From here though, we're gonna hop on another bus and we are going to head west over to connect back to the rail line, and we're gonna try to get to the tri-rail transfer station, which we will explain the significance of when we make it over there. So wish us luck because it is like rush hour traffic right now, so this might be a very slow bus again, but we'll see. Wow. That's amazing. Uh, one other notable thing about the design district here, as well as that number nine bus we were riding, if we stayed on that number nine bus running even further north, we would have ended up in Little Haiti. We would have gone past several other locations that are also on a similar alignment as the Northeast Corridor that they're proposing here in Miami. This would be another commuter rail service that going from downtown running all the way up to the Aventura Bright Line Station. Uh, so this area could see more rail service in the future, uh, maybe taking some pressure off that number nine bus that we rode. So could be a major change for how folks commute to and from the design district, Little Haiti, and beyond.
SPEAKER_02Something else that Miami offers is a free trolley service for several neighborhoods around the city, neighborhoods like Brickle, Downtown, Miami Beach, uh, Winwood, and a couple of others. And this is an entirely free service that you can also track via the Miami Trolley Tracker just to see where it is in your neighborhood. Right now they have frequencies of about every 15 to 20 minutes. So, another just really cool way to utilize transit and get around Miami.
SPEAKER_01Our bus arrived five minutes or so behind scheduled, and it was packed. We just barely fit inside and rode 10 minutes or so to Alapata Station.
SPEAKER_02We got
Wrong Turn To The Airport
SPEAKER_02on the green line here at Alapata, and we thought we were gonna go here to the tri-rail transfer. However, we made a mistake, and now we are here at Miami International Airport.
SPEAKER_01And it wouldn't be an episode of doing City in a Day using only public transit without some sort of mistake. So here it is. Uh we have never made a mistake ever. I think that we have never not made at least one. But uh yeah, I mean, uh, we're gonna see if we can go see a trirail train. We did want to show the trirail transfer station. Trirail is a massive commuter rail line that stretches 72 miles from Miami Airport in the south to West Palm Beach in the north. To get to downtown, you would need to transfer at the Tri-Rail Transfer Station onto the Green Line to get all the way to downtown. In 2024, Tri-Rail began operating a connection to downtown Miami utilizing a small new section of track connecting to eight miles of track used by Bright Line running into the downtown station from the TriRail transfer station. Unfortunately, this last connection acts like more of a shuttle. You need to get off and switch trains to make the final connection into downtown Miami with rare exceptions. In the future, that could change. Now, we talked about why that is on our previous episode here. Um, the the short version is capacity constraints. Tri-rail didn't go to downtown Miami until Bray Line officially made it there. Bray Line did some work on getting that downtown station to happen. And then once they were in there, Tri-Rail was also able to make the connection, which is great. But the vision has not been fully realized yet. So, thus the transfer station. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So let's go see what kind of trains we can see for tri rail and figure it out from there. Yes. So we had
Tri-Rail Tickets And Transfers
SPEAKER_02a little bit of an adventure. We uh made it to the airport, which was a mistake. We went down to check out the tri rail, discovered, oh, let's just take this, that we could take this to the transfer station. Which we did. Which we did. But but there was a hiccup. When we tried to purchase tickets, the credit card machine just was not working. You had issues with the app.
SPEAKER_01I had well I tried to do the credit card first, didn't work for me a couple times, downloaded the app. The app wasn't accepting either of my credit cards. Chris got his credit card to work on the machine. One time. One time.
SPEAKER_02Then the same credit card would not work until I tried it like almost half a dozen other times. Yeah. Um, we ended up having to buy tickets for some travelers who had just uh from Australia or from Australia who had just made it to the US and didn't know how to use the system, and you know, in their credit, it was not working well.
SPEAKER_01We we but I mean if we're having a hard time figuring out how to buy a ticket for a train or a bus, you probably should be rethinking how your ticketing system is.
SPEAKER_02But but all in all, the tri rail was nice. Um it was pretty packed from people leaving the airport, um, heading up to all these other destinations the tri rail goes to. If you remember from our episode that we did on Miami before the tri-rail goes all the way up to West Palm Beach, so very long distance.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and we're right now at the transfer station, which is where uh the downtown route for tri-rail comes and connects for the longer trains that do go all the way up to West Palm Beach, uh, as well as where it meets with the trains from the airport, as well as with the metro rail, uh, which is basically right above us here. Yes. And is how we're gonna make our final uh transit of the day back to uh downtown Miami. We haven't talked too much about the Metro Mover so far, so here's some additional information. In total, it is a 4.4 mile automated people mover featuring 21 stations. Frequencies range from every 90 seconds or so at peak in the main loop stations, or to every six or seven minutes on the outer parts of the network. In recent years it has been having some maintenance issues, and the system is currently being worked on. There have also been some proposals to expand this network out. Further towards Miami Beach. To me, it is a super fun way to navigate around the city. The stations are pretty close together, but can definitely be helpful in navigating around the downtown area. A lot of the stations are kind of attached to buildings. You have to walk through a building to get into them. And it just makes for an interesting thing to look at as you're walking around. It feels very like I went crazy in my City Skylines game walking around, seeing all of the Metro movers navigating around the city.
Ranking Miami And Closing Thoughts
SPEAKER_02Well we had a very adventurous day today in Miami.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we I mean I honestly I was really impressed. We had all sorts of different modes of transit. We had the Metro, we had the Metro Mover, we had oh, the one thing I forgot, I almost I was saying I was really impressed. We had the BRT, which man, so much potential there. So much potential for the BRT. I don't seem to harp on this again, but it's just like that would be such a major benefit to all the folks who live south of the metro line there. The infrastructure is all there, but just freaking use it. Yeah, I can't believe the money that they probably spent to just like not benefit from the things they spent the money on.
SPEAKER_02Yep. We also hit uh local buses, we hit the tri-rail, um the trolley. A lot of time hit at the trolley. Um, we spent a lot of time today on the green line. Um, but all in all, it was a really good experience. I think the one thing that we didn't hit today was like a ferry service.
SPEAKER_01Yes, which and Amtrak. Those are like the two other connections.
SPEAKER_02There is a ferry, yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, gotcha. Um, yeah. I mean, overall though, I mean definitely a lot of people using the transit everywhere we were. Uh, it felt like it was pretty well integrated into the city. Also, very cool seeing stuff like behind us here. I mean, you've got the metro mover bridge. Further in the distance, you've got the uh regular metro line coming through. So um it definitely exceeded my expectations. It doesn't feel like a Florida transit city. It's not to knock Orlando, but like it felt way more of a real system here.
SPEAKER_02I think we had the best experience going from Tampa to Orlando to Miami because it just kept getting better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02As we went, which when you say when I say just keep getting better too, the the difference between Miami and the other two cities is just completely night and day. There's a lot of things that work here that feel like they are uh more like a northeastern city in the way that the transit is built out.
SPEAKER_01So and the the city is also, I mean, it's like a much bigger city, it's more dense, like you don't have enormous right-of-ways like you do in Orlando, like the roads and the buildings, it feels like things are at scale. Now, like in some cases, it does feel like the roads and everything in even in the downtown area are super car focused still. You do see some bike lanes here and there, but like walking around doesn't feel like the most comfortable everywhere necessarily, but um, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I was really surprised. I didn't know what to expect with Miami coming down here, but yeah, I'm pretty blown away by the options and the reliability that we saw today.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I mean, like uh outside of some of the core bus routes and whatnot, I do know that frequencies are an issue. Uh, that's something we'll definitely talk with Kathy from the Miami Transit Alliance about more tomorrow. It's hard for us to necessarily like gauge that in a one-day, two-day trip here. So uh that's definitely something. If you're from Miami, let us know if you have issues with reliability in terms of the frequencies of the buses and whatnot. The couple that we did ride, though, I mean, they were every 10 minutes or so during rush hour, and the first was actually basically right on time despite being in a crazy amount of traffic. Yes. The second, we caught it in good time, but it was actually like 20 minutes behind where we're supposed to be, so there was a big gap, and it showed when we got on the bus, and it was just shoulder to shoulder standing inside of it. So uh, you know.
SPEAKER_02So what we always do, or what we're trying to do now after we finish a US city is make sure that we added to our ranking of the US cities that we've that we visited. So far, we have visited 12 after finishing Orlando, 12 US cities.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and those are all in a playlist on YouTube if you want to go watch them. There's a couple European cities in there as well, but we figured ranking those would be a little unfair, so they're not in the rankings.
SPEAKER_02So I think we talked about this before we got to this point of the day, and I think we kind of agree on where Miami falls. So as a reminder, our top two cities, which are I say tied, Lewis disagrees with me, is uh Boston and DC. Sorry, DC and then Boston. Boston and then DC. Boston and then DC. Yes. Uh, followed by Philadelphia and then I believe Baltimore. Baltimore. Yep. And so we are placing Orlando, sorry, we are so we are placing Miami above Baltimore.
SPEAKER_01So it is moving into the number four spot. Baltimore is dropping down to number five on the list. And to me, I mean, while both of these play, I mean, Baltimore technically only has one metro line. Here technically has two, but really it's one with like a tiny spur off to the airport, which actually is the one thing, the one mistake we could have made today, and we made it so uh, but it does feel like the metro line here hits more key places, there's a lot more density around the stations. Obviously, like you know, as you get further out, it peters down a little bit. Uh, the thought into having the BRT as an extension to it, that transfer experience worked really well. If they can dial that in and kind of, wow, we just watched a palm fall off of the palm tree. That's crazy. Alright. Look at the second bus. Uh I don't know. For all those reasons, uh, to me, it feels like the rail stuff worked out better here. From a bus perspective, it's a little hard to say. Yeah. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I'd say we we support our uh our higher our cities that are higher on the list just because of their regional connectivity. That is something that is lacking here in Miami. You can connect up the coast using Bright Line, using Amtrak, but reaching further out into the suburbs, uh, it does get a little sparse when you are, like you said, relying on buses that uh the frequency starts to tip.
SPEAKER_01But I mean, compared to other places in in uh a lot of places on the list, even the regional connectivity here is not bad. I mean, you do have the bright line, the tri rail goes way up. Um, but yeah, the the further out suburbs are a lot of buses. So um there are a lot of plans here too for future expansions and whatnot. So uh and and having uh organizations like the one we're gonna talk to tomorrow, which depending on the order of these coming out, keep an eye out for that. Um, we're fighting for more transit in the area is really important. So glad to see all that here.
SPEAKER_02But well, if you have not liked this video, please feel free to go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe, share it with your friends in Miami or in Florida, or if you are coming to Miami, comment and let us know if you found this video useful.
SPEAKER_01If there is anything we should have checked out that we didn't, uh definitely let us know below. Maybe we'll make it back at some point. Uh and if you have any other additional thoughts or questions, uh we are all ears. This whole Florida trip for the most part was geared based off of comments. Uh, we met with advocates in both Orlando and in Miami based on them reaching out after we just did an episode from afar talking about transit here in Florida. So if you want us to head to another city, no guarantee that it's gonna happen as quickly as this one did, because it was literally like a two months ago or something. Um, but we would love to visit a city near you. So, with all that being said, if you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon. You can also buy us a coffee or check out the merch store linked below. Uh, but with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Tenders Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00I'm saving that go.