Ranking U.S. Commuter Rails (Part 2 - the South and Midwest)

How come you give WeGo that low of a rating? You realize nashville traffic gets REALLY, REALLY bad. Yet metra which basically uses THE SAME equipment gets a C? REALLY?

i'm guesing caltrain will be in S tier

Did he forget about the Piedmont?

There is a new MBTA Heritage Unit GP40MC 1129. It’s now testing on Rochester before going to the MBTA Lines.

Go transit has 6 and 10 car trains too. Please don't be lazy.

"ideally, you want to see trains every 20 minutes at peak times and every 40 minutes or so during off-peak times"
Everywhere except New York: you get once an hour if you've been good

I live near Hudson Lake Indiana and I hear and see south shore go by every hour or 2

I don’t think you understand why so little commuter railroads are electrified in this country. It’s not because we enjoy being “old-fashioned” and avoid trying newer things—it’s because the high cost of electrifying a commuter rail system is almost never justified here. Heck, the only reason so many eastern US commuter lines are electrified is because the electrification pre-dates the modern era of commuter rail (by which I mean all commuter operations are subsidized and/or operated by their respective state and local governments)

Go Transit needs a higher score it is the best commuter in north America it has buses and trains probably the only on this list ( not because i am go transit fan)

"GO Transit has poor frequency because of long trains", mate really?

A quick look at the network will show you that A) Most trains don't actually run full 12 car consists outside of specific times (usually rush hours), and B) the reason why frequencies are often bad are due to limited infrastructure (single tracking, single platform stations, etc). We are building tons of upgrade and improvements to fix this, many stations have been double tracking over the past several years in order to allow for improvements, but the last thing you can accuse GO of doing is sacrificing frequency in favour of longer trains, because that's just completely wrong.

Those sunrail horns sound like they're being strangled

I'm surprised Sunrail scored so high because it is almost totally useless without a direct connection to Orlando International Airport. The tracks are there but politicians keep sitting on their butts while Sunrail struggles to survive.

wtf, Sun Rail horn sounds an elephant LOL 😂😂😂

TRE is only replacing the F59s i think, not the F40s

Great video series but I have some suggestions for scoring before you upload your "West" video and tally the final rankings:

1. Railfan score: reduce the weight to 5/40. As a railfan I appreciate this category but function should far outweigh any "cool" or "historical" factor.

2. Usefulness score: Factor in the number of transfer points and the number of available connections (especially heavy rail, light rail, intercity, and other commuter rail connections) in your score. Connection availability dramatically increases the appeal of commuter rail lines (especially for single-line systems). Maybe also look at the practicality of major stations, like the concentrations of nearby employers, residences, etc. (Walkscore is a good metric)

3. Frequency: You may already factor this in but weekend and late-evening/night service should be considered

I would also review the scores for consistency. As others have said a 4/10 for Metra's usefulness is kind of mind-boggling, especially given all the transit connections available. You should look at the each system holistically and not let uniquely low-scoring or high-scoring individual lines weigh down or boost the score too much.

That said I mostly agree with your overall ranking although I would move Metro-North in A tier, and Metra GO Train and MBTA to B-tier

For South Shore Line the highliners are kind of desirable to catch because they don't run them quite often.

METRA!!!!

Metro Transit should invest some money in making the Northstar’s frequency better and transforming the bus lines in the area into feeder buses that bring passengers to the Northstar.

When will you make part 3. Its been 2 weeks and i'm getting impatient.

Northstar does not go to Saint Cloud, it ends at Big Lake. It was supposed to go to Rice, just west of Saint Cloud, but a lack of cash ended it at Big Lake.

Just saying, there's something wrong with your audio. No idea if it's your mic, or you're accidentally bumping into your mic, but there's this really distinct bass boom that keeps occurring. It makes it really hard to listen to your videos. It should be pretty easy to fix in an audio or video editing software through using a high pass filter.

As a Torontonian, GO Transit should absolutely be higher. I think the railfan score here robs it and generally should be omitted from this list. Not only does GO Transit have all day frequent service on most lines, but also has a vast long-distance bus system that supports it. I use it all the time and should have gotten it a higher usefulness score. GO Transit should be at the very least a B tier if not an A tier.

Ooh the Sunrail horn sounds like an elephant yelling. Then again I think it's okay because there are elephants in Orlando's Animal Kingdom

Was in DFW in 2015 not a fan of TRE because a lot of DFW is still car and bus dependent. Had a hard time figuring out where to park my rental car. However Amtrak has agreed to operate high speed rail in TX from HTX to DFW which I think could qualify TRE for a score revision. For railfan rating: If you are the laid back railfan it might be for you. If you are the "I want to create quality train content railfan" then it's not for you. For content creators like me, the railfan appeal is not as catching on as Caltrain, Coaster and Metrolink.

I always wanted to ride GO Train, it has a good frequency on some lines. They did some epic things like do a Test train to the city of London, ON. The test train is like striking diamonds in the railfan world. It has a good history and was ahead of it's time. GO train works well with both tourists and locals. One train station is near this really cool mall in Markham. I like the color it's trains and buses are in.

I think GO deserves higher points - the huge trains are also a result of the success of the network and frequencies can be as low as 5 minutes in the peak direction on the Lakeshore lines. And I believe 80% of services are two-way, with the major ones being said services

You should do Ranking Amtrak services

You forgot bright rail and the Piedmont

Brightline should buy Sunrail and get them new trains

The elephant horns sound funny

corruption, that makes US railways bad no funding

I live in Salt Lake City Utah. I would love to see if the UTA Utah Transit Authority would rate? As a disabled person I have no choice but to ride public transit and I would love to see a video rating public transit systems where they meet up with other public transit systems. Most of the trains in videos 1 and 2 looked dark and not bright and unique. It's almost like the cars were cookie-cutter cutter and the cars and locomotives that had bright designs looked better than most of the other trains that you mentioned. If you could not only rate each train in the different letters but within each letter rating rate them from top to bottom and do this for all three videos?

To be fair to Northstar, in years past service WAS indeed provided daily. However due to ridership declines over the past few years, that led to significant service cutbacks

The South shore line. America's last interurban. Give it an A. Give Metra an A.

The sunrail horn scared the daylights out of me

I keep saying this time and time again but South Shore is NOT the LAST interurban. The Norristown Hi-Speed Line still exists in Pennsylvania and operates almost the same way it did as the Philadelphia & Western Interurban Railway. Also South Shore canned their street-running. It was replaced with an at-grade private right-of-way. :( Killed the one unique thing about the line however it now allows for faster operation through Michigan City.

That tier list was brutal

commuter railroads based on my basic opinion

SunRail: free head explosions from the horns! What a steal!

TriRail: beach commuter

TRE: yeehaw

WGS: absolute doodys because no moneys

GO Transit: bro i got off at a station and its right next to the highway

Metra: EMD addiction

NorthStar: mid

SSL: streetcar but entire railroad

As a rider on the Metra ⚡️ District , it is very useful cause I can take it to MSI, McCormick Place, & Museum Campus in ➕ to Downtown & if I can’t take the ⚡️ District to Downtown, I can take the 🪨🏝️ District so the usefulness score should @ least be a 7️⃣

Metra is the best for railfanning cause u can railfan @ Ogilvie for the UP 🚆, LaSalle for RID 🚆, 12th (Roosevelt)/Canal for SB Union 🚉🚆, Clinton/Fulton Market for NB Union 🚉🚆, & Millennium for the ⚡️ District 🚆 if u wanna railfan in Downtown but if u want further, I recommend Berwyn for the BNSF 🚃, Hubbard Woods for the UPN, Elmhurst for the UPW, Palatine for the UPNW, Edgebrook for the MDN, Franklin Park for the MDW, Belmont Ave (Franklin Park) for the NCS, 143rd Street (Orland Park) for the SWS, Joliet for both the HC & RID, & Flossmoor for the ⚡️ District 🚆

⬇️ Shore Line is also 🆒 for railfanning cause u can do it in Chicago or in Indiana & my fav place in Chicago to railfan is Millennium while Portage/Ogden Dunes is my fav in Indiana

As somebody who lives near WeGo trackage, I can agree on how poor frequency is at times. But when you only have 4 locomotives on the whole roster, it makes a bit more sense why the frequency sucks. Honestly though, railfanning the Star is quite fun, definitely more fun than Sunrail since our trains have some of the best K5LAs and P5s you can hear in the modern day.

SunRail has fixed their horns. As somebody who lives in Orlando, FL, this gets a 10 on every level.

The only SunRail 2008's horn sounded like that was because it was worn & broken. Understand that.