US States by Number of Subway Stations per Mile of Track

The chart above shows the number of subway stations per mile of track in each state.  Only four states have more than one station for every mile of track.

Findings

• The difference between the state with the most subway stations per mile of track, New York, and the state with the least (that has a subway system), California, is 1.25.
• New York has 3.58 times the subway stations per mile of track that California does.
• Pennsylvania and California have two subway systems, New York has three, all other states have one.

Caveats

• Data is from 2017.
• Hawaii is currently working on building a subway system for Honolulu which is slated to have 1.05 stations for every mile of track.
• All figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Details

Considering that California has the second most miles of subway track in the US, but ranks in the middle in terms of number of stations, it is a state whose subway systems encompass a large geographic area but whose stations are placed sparsely on those lines.

New York has three heavy rail systems all in the city of New York.  The New York City Subway has 1.79 stations per mile, the Staten Island Railway has 1.50, and PATH has 0.94.  California has BART in San Francisco with 0.41 stations per mile and Metro Rail in Los Angeles with 0.92.  Pennsylvania has two systems in Philadelphia.  SEPTA has 2.04 stations per mile (the highest in the country) and the PATCO Speedline has 0.92.

Data

State	City	Name	Stations	Miles of Track
Georgia	Atlanta	MARTA	38	47.6
Maryland	Baltimore	Baltimore Metro Subway	14	15.5
Massachusetts	Boston	MBTA Subway	51	38
Illinois	Chicago	Chicago L	145	102.8
Ohio	Cleveland	RTA Rapid Transit: Red Line	18	19
California	Los Angeles	Metro Rail	16	17.4
Florida	Miami	Metrorail	23	24.9
New York	New York City	New York City Subway	424	236.2
New York	New York City	Staten Island Railway	21	14
New York	New York City	PATH	13	13.8
Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	SEPTA	75	36.7
Pennsylvania	Philadelphia	PATCO Speedline	13	14.2
California	San Francisco	BART	45	108.6
Washington DC	Washington, D.C.	Washington Metro	91	117

Sources

Wikipedia.  2019.  "List of Metro Systems."  Accessed February 24, 2019.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems.