The best U.S. transit systems you never knew existed 15

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1. 

   jessimonster Posted 8:46 am
   16 Jun 2009

   I'm suprised to see St. Louis on the list.  I have a lot of family in St. Louis, and once you get out of the down town area, there are no busses at all.  In fact, they don't even have sidewalks.  And the road system seems to be set up to encourage maximum driving.Although they couldn't afford to keep bus stops open to the outer edges of the city, and they don't bother to give their citizens side walks or bike lanes on their curvy, densly tree lined streets, they can afford to put a mile marker every .2 miles on every highway in the state.When peak oil gets bad, the people in the St. Louis metropolitan area are majorly screwed. I am glad to see Denver on the list though.  A guy I know was complaining about our public transportation system.  I believe I'll forward this to him in the effort to shut him up.  If he doesn't like Denver, I think he should leave.

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2. 

   StLGal Posted 7:43 pm
   17 Jun 2009

   JESSIMONSTER, I doubt you spent much time actually within St. Louis. What you describe sounds like the 'burbs. St. Louis has rich dense architecture and sidewalks galore. The buses and light rail extend way beyond the city limits. Yes, our transit system has experienced cutbacks (mostly in the far-flung suburban areas) and improvements could be made, but St. Louis is quick and easy to get around in with a usable transit system and is certainly walkable. We even have a strong biking community that is making headway all the time in improving bike lanes and routes. Come back and visit and this time actually spend some time in the city.

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3. 

   jessimonster Posted 12:37 pm
   18 Jun 2009

   Maybe I'm justs spoiled, because in Denver, busses and sidewalks extend out to all the suburbs.  If you live within an hours drive of downtown, you have busses.  And bike lanes.  And sidewalks.  It might take you a really long time to get, say, from Littleton to Aurora on the bus, but it can be done.  There is no way to get from St. Charles to Lake St. Louis on the bus (and St. Charles and Lake St. Louis are a heck of a lot closer to each other than Littleton and Aurora).  At least, there wasn't back in March, the last time I was there.I guess the real difference is, from what I understand, that people in Missouri don't really consider the suburbs to be part of your city's metro area.  There's nothing wrong with that, its just a different outlook on locality.  The distance between St. Charles and St. Louis is roughly the same as the distance between Littleton (where I live) and Denver, and yet, in Missouri, St. Charles is not really considered to be part of St. Louis, and in Colorado, Littleton is considered part of the Denver Metro Area.  Its all Denver.  When I go to Missouri, and I see a suburb of St. Louis, it just doesn't make sense to me that its not considered part of St. Louis, and given the same resources as it's mother city.  So what you see as a great system in the city (and it probably is), seems to me like a limited system that excludes a big portion of its citizens.  Its all matter of perspective, I guess.I sure wish when I came out there that I could spend more time in the city, because the city is undoubtably better than St. Charles (where most of my family lives) is.  Unfortunately, when I'm out there, I'm there to see family, and they usually have other plans for us.  Boring plans.  Plans that make me want to never go to Missouri again even though I know there sure are some beautiful and fun things to do in Missouri.Still, what will all those people in the suburbs of St. Louis do when peak oil gets bad?  They've got nothing!  Nothing but long twisty roads!  With no sidewalks (although, if its bad enough that there are no more cars, I guess that's not really a safety hazard anymore).

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4. 

   Design New Haven Posted 7:22 am
   19 Jun 2009

   New Haven, CT already has the busiest commuter rail line in the country, the highest % of employees who walk and bike to work of any city on the East Coast, and two Downtown train stations each serving thousands of suburban commuters. It is also one of the 10 busiest Amtrak stations in the country.The city is now lobbying for light rail lines to connect outlying parts of the city center.Maybe the great transit connections and hyper-walkability of the city is one reason why New Haven, CT and McAllen TX were the only two U.S. cities with 2009 employment growth, according to the Brookings report released this week.It is certainly the underlying reason why a developer is constructing a 36-story luxury apartment building downtown, across from one of the two train stations.Cities should invest in transit. It works! And according to the most recent U.S. Dept of Energy predictions, we're going to be in deep trouble if we don't.

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