Six Things to Know About the Nation’s Much-Heralded Transit Growth
Infrastructure | 03/11/2014 10:40am | 1
Stephen J. Smith | Next City
Urbanist media was abuzz on Monday after the American Public Transportation Association released its transit ridership numbers for the fourth quarter of 2013. The headline number is how many trips Americans took on buses and trains last year: Nearly 10.7 billion, up 1.09 percent from last year’s count. Looking beyond that figure, though, here are six deeper dives into the APTA’s findings:
Transit Still in Long-Term Recovery
This year’s total ridership is the highest since 1956. But in 1956 the U.S. had a population of 169 million, about half of today’s 318 million. So while the absolute numbers are back up to mid-1950s levels, relative ridership is nowhere close to recovering. The country has taken a profoundly anti-urban turn since the end of World War II, and while it is clearly edging away from its suburban and exurban character — multifamily rental housing construction as a proportion of total housing starts, a leading indicator of transit ridership, hit 30.8 percent last year, the highest since data was first collected in the 1970s — a complete reversal doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Even cities that haven’t significantly suburbanized are off from their postwar peaks. In 2012, for example, New York only had as many transit riders as it did in 1950, despite having a slightly higher population.
Buses in Decline, But Still King
The lowly bus route may be in decline — total bus ridership was off 0.1 percent from 2012, with trolleybus numbers falling 1.35 percent — but buses still serve more trips than all forms of rail (heavy, light and commuter) combined, and will for the next few years at least. Americans took about 5.4 billion bus trip in 2013, compared with 4.7 billion across all modes of rail. While rail may be sexier, those looking to boost transit ridership numbers should pay at least as much attention to buses.
There was one bright spot for buses, though: In cities with populations of fewer than 100,000, bus ridership grew 3.83 percent.
Existing Heavy Rail Systems See Biggest Gains
“It’s all about, if you build it, they will come,” Michael Melaniphy, APTA’s president and chief executive, told Reuters about the data. But it seems that the main story of heavy rail — elevated and subway systems — is that larger ridership boosts are possible without new construction. Heavy rail ridership across the country grew by 2.79 percent over last year, with very little new construction.
Miami was the runaway winner in relative terms (the second time in less than a week), posting ridership increases of more than 10.6 percent a year. While the system did open its new stop at Miami International Airport in 2012, boardings at this station weren’t much higher at the end of 2013 than in 2012. The vast majority of the ridership jump, then, came from stations that were already in place 10 years ago. But while the new airport station is responsible for a minuscule bump in ridership, the increased service that came along with it — a new “Orange Line” service pattern was created, reducing headways in the system’s core — likely went a long way to attract new passengers.
Los Angeles saw the next highest relative increase in heavy rail ridership, with 4.78 percent more trips on its Red and Purple Line subways in 2013 than in the year before, despite not having opened any new stations since 2000. New York’s subway also posted ridership gains of 4.18 percent, despite closing a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan in August for Hurricane Sandy repairs.
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