[thebradbain]

Perhaps a better example than MARTA is Dallas’s DART: it’s one transit agency, in total control of all the busses, rail, and streetcars within the service area, which includes all of Dallas, almost all of the suburbs, and even the wealthy enclaves like the separate township of Highland Park.

From a customer perspective, it seems to work well: one map, one timetable, one fare payment program, one branding, regardless of what city or suburb or wherever you’re in.

It does have the occasional political snag though of suburbs occasionally spreading core service in Dallas proper thinner than they should be (e.g. in order to get DART representatives from the suburbs to sign off on a second subway alignment through downtown, urban Dallas representatives had to agree to fund a suburban-only E-W line that could have been better located also in the city proper). But, each city does contribute an equal proportion of funding (1% of all sales tax revenue) to DART, so it seems fair enough.

The result? From having no rail network in 1996 to having the US’s longest* single light rail network by 2020

*by track mileage; that isn’t to say the breadth of the system doesn’t have its own flaws, mainly that some high density urban areas are woefully underserved in the effort to have a single station in every (very car-oriented) member suburb