4 out of 5 top transit cities are on the East Coast

Walk Score put together a list of the country’s top transit cities, based on the company’s transit scores for more 1 million locations in the largest 25 cities with open public transit data. (Lack of data meant Atlanta and Phoenix were left out.) And, surprisingly, four out of the top five are on the East Coast: New York (No. 1), Boston (No. 3), D.C. (No. 4), and Philadelphia (No. 5).

San Francisco (of course!) is the one West Coast spoiler. (You can check out the full list is below the jump.)

I was surprised to see Boston and, in particular, Philadelphia come out on top of cities like Chicago and Seattle that I think of as public-transit friendly. One interesting wrinkle in the Walk Score methodology is that it measures not just the extent of public transportation but its “usefulness.”

NRDC’s Kaid Benfield explains:

In calculating a Transit Score for a particular location, a “usefulness” value is assigned to nearby transit routes based on frequency of service, type of route, and distance to the nearest stop on the route.

Which, when you think about it, makes a ton of sense. Having a subway line or a bus route near you is great … unless that train or bus never comes when you want it to and drops you off ages from wherever you really want to go.

Here’s the full list: