What is the largest city in the US without public transportation. I mean none at all.
Not like say Phoenix which has Public Trans but it isn’t good. (I singled out Phoenix as it came in dead last for quality of public transit on a list I read)
Do buses count? Because I can’t think of any city without buses.
How about taxis? Or a `bus’ service that’s really just vans, and is limited to a specific segment of the community (say, residents of a retirement housing project)?
Because I think Havre has both. We may just barely have taxis, though.
“Havre has it. Don’t catch it.”
I was talking about regularly scheduled public transit. (buses trains etc)That is available to anyone and runs on a schedule (even if just mon-fri). Rather than a dial a ride.
I was thinking it would have to be like a large suburb of a city lying outside the transit authority.
Can the OP claify their question? Are we talking the largest metropolitan area without transit, or are we including large suburbs that don’t have transit in metro areas that otherwise have a transit system?
Greenville, South Carolina used to be cited as a large US city without public transit, but Googling around, I found they have a small bus system.
Famous last words: I doubt you’ll a semi-heavily populated area completely w/o access to any public transportation in the U.S. The issues in American Public transportation are focused much more on expanding into rural areas (obviously after issues surrounding making what is here already better) where rural welfare folks often have poor roads and no cars & no jobs – & no bus.
There is a County in WA of 35,000 people w/o public transportation – but it is almost the size of Connecticut — which I doubt you are looking for … there are quite a few large (usually HUGE), lightly populated poor rural areas w/o PT – but that is not what you are asking for – right?
If I am wrong re the first para I will be interested – good Q.
I think the OP answered his own Q. Phoenix only has buses and they only run til 9pm (I think). I dunno, I lived there for 5 years and one could basically say, Phoenix has little to no public transportation. I rarely saw any buses.
If busses don’t count, then there’s not really any public transportation in Detroit and its suburbs. If busses do count, well, discount my testimony. Well, for what its worth, our busses suck and there aren’t a lot of routes.
Oh, wait, there’s the People Mover in Detroit – it’s a small train that goes between some major buildings – it’s a closed loop with maybe six stops.
Good, clean, safe public transportation would be cool. I’d easily make my car payment to a company that could get me back and forth to work whenever I want to. Instead of a 1/2 drive doing nothing but driving, I could actually so some work or recreation.
I’ll propose the city of Bend OR, population 52,000. According to the city’s web page, it has dial-a-ride but not scheduled buses.
Houston. Hands down.
They have no public transportation, per se. There is a Harris county-wide public transportation system called METRO that was started some time in the late 70s and gets it’s funding from a $0.01 county sales tax. But the city itself doesn’t provide any funds for the service. In every other major city that I can think of, the public transportation system is funded by the member cities’ sales tax. At any rate, every Houston resident I’ve spoken with comments that public transportation there is virtually non-existant, METRO or not. There’s no rail system, only buses. And apparently there aren’t nearly enough of those. And to top it all off, they also have no zoning. Crazy, huh?
My cousin who used to live in one of Houston’s suburbs filed me in a little on the history of that. Apparently during the height of the McCarthy era the Houston area somehow got sold on the idea that zoning, public transportation, etc. were somewhat socialist ideas, and the city has been turning them down ever since. From time to time the issue of zoning comes up (1948, 1962, and then again some time recently - maybe 2000 or 2001), but it fails every time. Today it’s become a private property rights issue. Most Houston residents are used to it, so it’s hard to get much support behind creating zoning ordinances now, and frankly it would be too late anyway. Suffice to say, Texas has always had a strong independant streak in it, which is not to say that it’s a bad thing. It just sometimes comes out in funny ways.
I’d be interested in hearing from other Houston residents who might be able to comment on the history behind Houston’s lack of city planning.
Round Rock, TX is a suburb of Austin with about 75,000 residents. It is not part of the metro bus system (it used to be, but the residents decided to stop paying the taxes).