[gphil]

Not really. Portland is the 19th largest MSA and 29th largest city in US. There is only one city in the US that is 10x Portland in population (NY) and there are no MSAs that are 10x the size of Portland's (not even NY's.)

You don't need to be NY for transit to make a huge difference. Portland is a squarely mid-size American city and its quality transit is a key selling point.

[Retric]

OPS, used wrong numbers for Portland. It's the metro area that's important not the nominal city lines.

Any way. Nominally DC has a population of 646,449, however the DC metro area is 5.8 million. The Baltimore Metropolitan Area has grown steadily to approximately 2.7 million and has fewer issues with transit, but it's getting steadily worse.

And the NY metro area is 23.5 Million people.