MA: Boston rated ‘the best U.S. city for public transportation for travelers.’ Really?

A recent study from the luxury vacation home rental platform Wander ranked Boston as the best U.S. city for public transportation for travelers, even ahead of New York City’s vaunted subway system.

Boston earned that designation for having the highest ratio of public transit stations to residents, the company said: 41.45 per 100,000 people.

The MBTA is certainly not the largest nor most used transit network in the country, by a long shot. New York City’s MTA is in a class of its own, transporting 3.7 million people on the subway and 1.3 million by bus on weekdays last year.

New York City has 472 subway stations serving its 8.5 million residents, or about 5.5 per 100,000 people.

The MBTA has 125 stops across the Red, Orange, Green and Blue lines, which stretch north, south and east into Boston’s neighboring communities.

The MBTA’s average weekday ridership in July, the last month for which it published data, was 715,000 on the subway and bus. Another 101,000 people rode the commuter rail.

Still, Boston leads most other U.S. cities for public transit usage.

The T falls into the second tier of ridership among the nation’s transit agencies, along with those of Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to Citizens for Regional Transit.

Chicago’s CTA had just under 1 million weekday riders in July. The D.C. Metro served about 900,000 people on weekdays in May.

In addition to the subway, bus and commuter rail, the MBTA also offers paratransit service through The RIDE and ferry service, which it has made a recent effort to expand.

New York City’s subway system — like the city itself — never sleeps.

While the MBTA does not operate around the clock, in August it announced a long-awaited expansion of late-night hours on weekends. Unlike previous short-lived attempts to better serve Boston’s night owls and night shift workers, officials said they expect this expansion of hours to last.

Customer satisfaction with the T is also up under General Manager Phillip Eng, who arrived in March 2023 (from New York) and promptly committed to ridding the transit network of slow zones that had long frustrated riders.

The agency delivered on that promise in December. Data showed notable improvement in train speeds.

In March 2023, when Eng took over, riders were giving the MBTA 2.4 stars out of 5 in satisfaction surveys. In June of this year, the last month of available data, that grade had risen to a 3.4 out of 5.

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