Skip to Content
Streetsblog California home
Log In
Streetsblog USA

How Good Is the Transit Where You Live? Measure It With AllTransit

8:20 AM PDT on April 20, 2016

transitrank
The top ten rankings are great conversation fodder, but the real strength of AllTransit is its deep reservoir of data, enabling multifaceted analysis of transit quality at many different scales. Table via AllTransit.

Do you have the sense that transit in your city could be a lot better, and you want to show your local elected officials what needs to improve? Look no further: Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology has produced a new tool called AllTransit that assesses the quality of transit down to the neighborhood level.

AllTransit lets you evaluate your local transit system in several ways. You can look up how many people in your city live within a half mile of transit service, for instance, or how many jobs are conveniently accessible via transit from your neighborhood compared to your city as a whole.

The tool combines route and schedule information from 805 American transit agencies with a wealth of Census data, making a broad spectrum of uses possible. With AllTransit, you can compare different facets of transit service across neighborhoods, cities, regions, states, or electoral districts.

To help people summarize complex comparisons, AllTransit offers an overall "performance score" incorporating several factors, including the extent of frequent service and how well transit connects people's homes to jobs and other destinations.

The emphasis on frequency is unprecedented, said Linda Young, director of research for CNT. "Frequency is so important because it’s really the determinant of how people are going to use transit," she said.

Here are a few ways you can use the tool, with Madison, Wisconsin serving as an example. Keep in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive list. Below are the city's performance score and top-level stats -- click to enlarge.

Image: CNT
Image: CNT

You can drill down and look at transit accessibility from a number of perspectives. Employers looking to see how many people could get to a potential workplace via transit in a reasonable amount of time, for instance, can call up this view:

Image: CNT
Image: CNT

You can also layer in demographic data to see how well different populations are served by transit. This map shows the share of black residents in Madison who live within half a mile of transit:

Screen Shot 2016-04-18 at 2.54.44 PM

AllTransit's ranking feature lets you look up the top performance scores within a given area. Madison rates sixth among Wisconsin cities and towns with more than 5,000 residents:

Screen Shot 2016-04-18 at 3.00.40 PM

This only scratches the surface of what you can do with AllTransit.

CNT and TransitCenter, which funded the project, see AllTransit as a powerful tool to help local transit and housing advocates, public officials, business leaders, and other interested parties understand the strengths and weaknesses of transit in their communities and make compelling arguments to improve it.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog California

Caltrans Readies Guidance for Complete Streets, with a Big Exemption

But somewhere along the way, highway interchanges - roads crossing and going under and over freeways and highways - were exempted from the guidelines

September 29, 2023

Guest Opinion: Ten Years In, CA Active Transportation Program Lays Bare a Tale of Two Agencies

L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects

September 29, 2023

Commentary: Let’s Talk About the Real “Fatal Flaw” on Valencia

How many people have to die before professional advocates stop endorsing the Valencia Street "experiment" on people?

September 29, 2023

Friday’s Headlines

Caltrans, we need complete streets everywhere, including at freeway interchanges (or maybe especially there); Public agencies and academics join forces to develop AV standards; Republicans really want to suspend the gas tax; More

September 29, 2023
See all posts