Miles in Transit
| Miles in Transit | |
|---|---|
 Taylor at Glen Mills station, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, 2022 | |
| Personal information | |
| Born | Miles Taylor January 17, 2000 |
| Origin | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania |
| Occupations | |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Years active | 2013–present |
| Genres | |
| Subscribers | 59 thousand[1] |
| Views | 8.4 million[1] |
Last updated: February 2, 2025 | |
Miles in Transit is a YouTube channel offering comedic coverage of public transit, often featuring obscure, infrequent, or especially underutilized services. It is presented by Miles Taylor (born January 17, 2000),[2][3][4][5] an American YouTuber and transit planner.
Taylor grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Greater Boston, and began writing a blog at the age of 13, detailing his experiences on buses and trains of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). He studied urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and expanded his blog's content into long-form videos during the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
Biography
[edit]Miles Taylor was born on January 17th, 2000 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. At the age of 13, he started a blog, titled "Miles on the MBTA," detailing his trips around the MBTA system.[7] In November 2013, Taylor accompanied British transit enthusiast Adham Fisher on a record-breaking trip to visit every station on the MBTA subway and light rail network, in a Boston version of the Subway Challenge. Fisher and Taylor completed the trip in 8 hours and 5 minutes, despite multiple delays.[2][8]
While attending high school at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, Taylor participated in a summer program at Cambridge Community Television, the public-access television provider in the city of Cambridge. By the time he graduated from high school, Taylor had reviewed every MBTA rail station and bus route currently in operation.[8][9]
Taylor enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 2018, and shifted his blog's focus to SEPTA services with a new "Miles on SEPTA" section.[7] He studied urban planning at Penn,[10] and returned to Boston during summers to intern at the MBTA.[11] As of 2024, Taylor works for the MBTA as a transit service planner.[6]
YouTube channel
[edit]
Taylor runs the Miles in Transit YouTube channel, which documents his experience with public transit services in the United States and beyond. His videos in the United States often feature obscure, infrequent, and underutilized services and stations. Taylor began posting to the YouTube channel in 2013, and expanded into long-form content during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Content
[edit]Miles in Transit videos often approach public transit from a comedic perspective, featuring analysis of underutilized services and absurd journeys interspersed with running gags and original music.[12] Some of Taylor's videos cover intercity transit, including Amtrak, Greyhound, and other intercity bus services. Other videos cover local transit, including buses, trolleybuses, ferries, rapid transit, and commuter rail. Most videos cover American and Canadian transit, with occasional trips outside North America.[13]
The Miles In Transit channel features a number of frequent collaborators, including fellow University of Pennsylvania students Jackson Betz and Aleena Parenti, and Rutgers urban planning student Jeremy Zorek. Taylor and Betz compose and perform original music for the channel (which includes a 2025 compilation album consisting of the channel's music Miles in Music [14]), and Parenti accompanies Taylor on many long-distance trips.[6] Zorek features in many videos that depict NJ Transit services.[15]
Advocacy
[edit]Many of Taylor's videos depict his experience on intercity bus services, including Greyhound and Megabus.[6] In a 2022 interview, Taylor argued that nationalized intercity bus service would improve the passenger experience: "You have to remember that Greyhound is a private company that just happens to have a monopoly over bus travel in the U.S., and because of that, they can treat people however they want. Nationalizing Greyhound will allow more money to be put into it to improve the service quality a little bit, like invest in new stations."[16]
Taylor also advocates for simpler and easier-to-use transit fare systems. In a 2021 visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, Taylor rode the entire BART system and met with BART general manager Bob Powers to argue for more integrated fares between BART and other Bay Area transit services.[17][11] Taylor's advocacy for simplification of public transit fares also takes a more comedic tone: in a 2022 video depicting his journey from Cape May, New Jersey to Warwick, New York on NJ Transit local buses, accompanied by Zorek, the pair kept a running tally of their fares on a large whiteboard. The whiteboard highlighted the difficulty of understanding NJ Transit bus fares, which Zorek argued were "infamous for being kind of hard to understand."[15]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "About Miles in Transit". YouTube.
- ^ a b Powers, Martine (November 26, 2013). "British rider completes journey of subway in just over 8 hours". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on August 13, 2020. Retrieved December 30, 2024.
...Miles Taylor, a 13-year-old transit blogger...
- ^ Larson, Shannon (July 20, 2022). "3,792 miles, 4½ days, and 16 states: Boston transit enthusiast chronicles journey across the US by bus". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 20, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ Miles in Transit (January 23, 2017). Miles on the MBTA Anniversary Rodeo!. Retrieved January 5, 2025 – via YouTube.
- ^ Miles in Transit (January 29, 2025). Denmark - Least Used Amtrak Station in South Carolina. Event occurs at 1:10. Retrieved January 29, 2025 – via YouTube.
By the way, for any editors of the Wikipedia page I inexplicably have, this is my birthday today.
- ^ a b c d Wong, Derek (August 9, 2024). "Miles In Transit Wants To Push Transit to the Limit". 34th Street Magazine. The Daily Pennsylvanian. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ a b Laughlin, Jason (July 5, 2019). "He wants to learn about the 'real' Philly — by riding every single bus, train, and trolley run by SEPTA". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on March 3, 2024. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ a b Lepiarz, Jack; Amer, Yasmin (January 11, 2018). "This Teen Has Reviewed Hundreds Of MBTA Stations And Lines". WBUR. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ Michaelson, Rob (March 30, 2018). "Teen Uncovers the Hidden Secrets of the MBTA". New England Cable News. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ "I graduated college, and the process almost broke me. | Miles in Transit". milesintransit.com. Retrieved March 8, 2025.
- ^ a b Robertson, Michelle (July 20, 2021). "Transit guru who's tried 50 systems rates BART". SFGate. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ "Around the BART system in 6 hours: transit fan rides all BART lines and shares his passion". BART News. July 19, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ Moscovitch, Philip (April 26, 2024). "Riding 'the world's most adorable ferry'". Halifax Examiner. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ Miles in Transit. "Miles in Music". Bandcamp. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b Wilson, Colleen (November 23, 2022). "Two college buds spent 19 hours riding 10 NJ Transit buses across NJ. Here's how it went". NorthJersey.com. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
- ^ Bikales, James (July 19, 2022). "What's it like to cross the U.S. on Greyhound? Two students found out". The Washington Post. ISSN 2641-9599. Archived from the original on July 19, 2022.
- ^ White, Marcus (July 21, 2021). "Meet the 21-year-old who rode all of BART in 6 hours, loving every second". KCBS Radio. Retrieved December 24, 2024.
External links
[edit]
- Official website
- Miles in Transit on YouTube
