#danville

Assuming “subway” is referring to a heavy rail electrified rapid transit system, and not light rail, this would make it by far the smallest US city to have such a system (the next would be the Tren Urbano in San Juan, Puerto Rico, pop. 342,259). In fact, as far as I can tell, it would be the second smallest city in the world with a rapid transit system, next to Lausanne, Switzerland, pop. 139,111. This is especially curious for a small American city, a country known for its poor public transit- only on the east coast do you get a large number of metro systems, and there’s of course reason to think that Danville is in the west. The only odd exceptions are the highly urbanized, very populous state of California, which has several metro systems; and several cities in the Midwest (Cleveland and Chicago) which both have well-established metro systems- but of course these cities would have developed during the train/streetcar era, long before the establishment of the automobile, which is not necessarily the case for more western cities!

One other possible exception is Seattle, whose Link light rail system has some characteristics of a rapid transit system. But of course, Seattle is both a very progressive and very prosperous techy city, and the light rail only opened in the early 2000s, AFTER Seattle’s population and economic boom. Whereas Danville, despite having access to insane technology and (probably) a lot of money, seems extremely suburban and unassuming. The most urban skyline-y shot of the city we get is:

Which honestly looks just like any other city! So why the hell does it have a subway system?

there’s more. Danville seems to have a low crime rate, low unemployment, access to insane technology (as I’ve said), a thriving arts and music scene, AND it’s extremely walkable/ bikeable with strong public transport infrastructure. And it only has a population of 241,000? You’re telling me there was never a population boom, a mass flood of people into the city, like with Seattle in the 90s and early 2000s when it had many of the same conditions?

perhaps Danville is just isolationist- it’s hard to move there cause the government doesn’t WANT people to move there. But we see outsiders come in all the time, and in other ways the city governance is pretty lax and libertarian.