best us cities for mass transit

Walkscore rates American cities - you can quibble about their methodology, but it appears to be a good rough cut. I'd agree with their top three.

Cities are looking increasingly desirable for many...

 

Comments

[Roger]

I have been to most of the cities listed in that survey, and I am having a hard time agreeing with the ratings. First, I would not live within 100 miles of any of those cities. Second, I would never breathe air anywhere near those mass transit systems. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7946838.stm

From the above article:

"You do have a choice on whether you smoke, drink, exercise or what type of food you eat. But you do not have a choice on what air you breathe." — Dr Douglas Dockery, Harvard School of Public Health

That is only partially true. I do have a choice of avoiding big cities, their air pollution, and especially polluted air around their mass transit systems.

Boston! The clean city... Again from the above article:

"Even in Boston, which has comparatively clean city air, pollution levels change suddenly from being safe to highly dangerous. Bruce Hill, a scientist with the Clean Air Task Force, measured two sets of pollution levels. One was on a bridge over a highway with only cars and the other over a highway with diesel-powered trucks. 'Just now that truck passed and the levels spiked up to five times higher than they were in the rest of the city,' said Hill. 'Now, see, it's gone 25 times higher.' From there he went down onto the underground platform of a commuter train station. 'This is bad,' he said. 'The monitors can't go any higher, meaning the level here could be a hundred time higher than the cleaner air outside. Some people commute for five per cent of the day, which is the amount of time they're being exposed to these particles.'"

And Boston was rated number three in the survey!