The Complex 50-Year Collapse of U.S. Public Transit

[M II A II R II K]

US Public Transit Has Struggled to Retain Riders over the Past Half Century. Reversing This Trend Could Advance Equity and Sustainability.


June 25, 2021

By Yonah Freemark

Read More: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/us-...sustainability

Back in 1970, 77 million Americans commuted to work every day, and 9% of them took a bus or a train. By 2019, the number of U.S. workers had nearly doubled, to more than 150 million. But the vast majority of these new workers chose to drive: The number of public transit riders increased by only around 1 million during those years, and their share of the country’s overall commuters collapsed to 5%.

- Fundamentally, the fading usefulness of public transit is a result of the fundamental lack of integration between federal transportation and land-use authorities, says Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute. — “In a number of other countries, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development are combined in one entity,” he says. “In the United States, we ended up with two different entities.” As a result, housing and mobility needs have been poorly aligned; the landscape is laden with housing that lacks access to public transportation, light rail lines that course through sparsely settled areas, and too many cities whose transit networks can’t connect riders with jobs. — Some cities have bucked national trends and gained transit commuters over the last 50 years. Coastal cities like New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston saw an increase of hundreds of thousands of transit commuters between 1970 and 2019.

- The flip side of the pattern can be seen in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland, which lead the list of cities, many in the Rust Belt or the South that have shed tens of thousands of transit commuters. This unequal pattern of transit commuting is even more acute when the share of commuters is taken into account. In New Orleans, for example, nearly a quarter of residents got to work via bus and streetcar in 1970. By 2019, only about 5% did. Similar drops are seen in smaller industrial cities like Buffalo, Richmond, Cleveland and Milwaukee. — “In the 1970s, use of public transportation was really common in cities all across the country no matter their size,” says Freemark. Now, widespread transit commuting is a phenomenon limited largely to large coastal metropolitan areas. “Other regions don’t have realizable public transportation people can depend on.” Cities where transit use has seen massive reductions tend to be those that have endured deindustrialization and suburbanization during the last 50 years, with a concurrent rise in investments in highways.

- The profoundly unequal geography of U.S. transit reflects and contributes to the economic gaps that have grown between cities; as struggling metros have shed jobs and wealth, their ability to maintain useful transit systems has likewise declined. “Most money that goes for transportation comes from state and local governments, and their ability to invest is based on their resources,” says Freemark. Poorer regions don’t have enough income to invest in transit, which in turn hampers economic growth even more. “It’s a negative spiral, a vicious cycle; there’s a trap situation going on.” — There are lessons to be learned from the handful of cities all in the western U.S. that have managed to grow their share of transit commuters since 1970, Freemark’s analysis concludes. In Seattle and San Francisco, for example, the city has made efforts to centralize jobs in downtown areas, and they boast extensive rail networks that can reach a larger share of commuters in the region.

- Seattle has also invested heavily in upgrading its bus service, while San Francisco reduced fares for people with low incomes. In Salt Lake City, housing growth in neighborhoods around transit has been prioritized; Portland’s urban growth boundary has been effective in limiting car-centric sprawl. Not every region has the means to make the kind of transit investments that would be needed to bring riders back to their 1970 levels, and there’s no question that reversing the effects of a half-century of transit-unfriendly land-use decisions is a tall order. But it’s also increasingly urgent, given the role of car-centric planning in boosting greenhouse gas emissions. “The federal government could play an important job filling the gap” between wealthy and struggling cities, says Freemark. “But they haven’t done that yet.”

.....

[mhays]

I didn't know Seattle had an "extensive rail network"! They hedge that claim later but it's wrong in the first instance.

The article doesn't get into core reasons very much. One big one is barely event hinted at: Managing outward sprawl and focusing residential growth.

[craigs]

Perhaps I missed something, but it stands to reason that cities with significant population loss since 1970 would also have significant decreases in transit ridership since 1970.

[ssiguy]

^^^ I agree it's not surprising that cities with shrinking populations see shrinking transit numbers. Not only are there fewer people to use the transit system but also depopulation, especially in the inner cities/downtowns, also creates decaying buildings which are often result in the destruction of buildings replaced by parking lots. In other words it makes driving to the downtowns easier and cheaper. There is another common denominator amongst these declining cities...........high crime rates which makes waiting and taking transit far less appealing for choice riders.

The issue here is not the decline in ridership in certain cities but rather the stagnation and/or decline of ridership in fast growing cities. Poor planning, a lack of infrastructure and operational funding, and a society that has transformed from seeing transit as an essential service to a social one and hence resulting in a very negative perception by most Americans is truly a killer combination.

[mhays]

This is about metro areas, and nearly all metros have grown.

But these are good points about hollowed cores and so on.

[Doady]

Milwaukee County Transit System has suffered massive ridership loss in recent years, from 45.7 million boardings in 2012 to 27.0 million in 2019. That's a 41% loss in just 7 years. Why? Because of major cuts to funding from the state. Nothing to do with population loss. Milwaukee County didn't lose 41% of its population from 2012 to 2019. The lost ridership is just due to neglect and discrimination against transit riders, especially bus riders.

When the USA stops obsessing over rail and stops discriminating against bus riders, it can start building useful transit systems. Useful transit system means a complete system, and that means a comprehensive bus network as well. A rail network can't exist in isolation. Portland is one of leaders of the USA, not because of its LRT system, but because of its bus system. Portland is poster boy for light rail in the US, but most of the transit ridership of Portland, 59% of Trimet's ridership, is on buses, not light rail. See also Seattle and Las Vegas for more examples of high bus ridership in the US. In Canada, you can see the bus-only system in Winnipeg has better ridership than any system in the USA besides NYC, SF, and DC. Winnipeg has better transit ridership and mode share than Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, and so on.

On the flipside, you can look at Dallas, the largest light rail system in the US, but it has the one of the worst ridership in the US, worse than the other big Texas cities, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Promoting rail and neglecting buses simply doesn't work. I think it's the pro-rail and anti-bus policies that are the root of the problem with transit in the US. If Seattle has been the best at gaining riders in the US, it's not because of rail, it's because of buses. Seattle has been expanding its rail system because of increasing ridership, not because of lack of ridership. Large rail systems are the result of high ridership, not the other way around.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Doady

Milwaukee County Transit System has suffered massive ridership loss in recent years, from 45.7 million boardings in 2012 to 27.0 million in 2019. That's a 41% loss in just 7 years. Why? Because of major cuts to funding from the state. Nothing to do with population loss. Milwaukee County didn't lose 41% of its population from 2012 to 2019. The lost ridership is just due to neglect and discrimination against transit riders, especially bus riders.

When the USA stops obsessing over rail and stops discriminating against bus riders, it can start building useful transit systems. Useful transit system means a complete system, and that means a comprehensive bus network as well. A rail network can't exist in isolation. Portland is one of leaders of the USA, not because of its LRT system, but because of its bus system. Portland is poster boy for light rail in the US, but most of the transit ridership of Portland, 59% of Trimet's ridership, is on buses, not light rail. See also Seattle and Las Vegas for more examples of high bus ridership in the US. In Canada, you can see the bus-only system in Winnipeg has better ridership than any system in the USA besides NYC, SF, and DC. Winnipeg has better transit ridership and mode share than Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, and so on.

On the flipside, you can look at Dallas, the largest light rail system in the US, but it has the one of the worst ridership in the US, worse than the other big Texas cities, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Promoting rail and neglecting buses simply doesn't work. I think it's the pro-rail and anti-bus policies that are the root of the problem with transit in the US. If Seattle has been the best at gaining riders in the US, it's not because of rail, it's because of buses. Seattle has been expanding its rail system because of increasing ridership, not because of lack of ridership. Large rail systems are the result of high ridership, not the other way around.

You made some great points, but overlooked one point I would like to add to the discussion. Climate. For half the year, it is too hot in Dallas to wait 30 minutes to an hour at a bus stop waiting for the next bus. It is just as hot in other Texas cities, so while they might have higher ridership, it is not that much higher.
Latest ridership statistics
Dallas DART 49 million
FY 2020 Bus Ridership 27.7 million
FY 2020 Light Rail Ridership 20.1 million
FY 2020 Commuter Rail Ridership 1.3 million
Houston METRO 62.6 million
FY 2020 Bus Ridership 49.5 million
FY 2020 Light Rail Ridership 13.1 million
Austin CapMetro 20.6 million
FY 2020 Metro Bus 16.4 million
FY 2020 Metro Rapid 3.8 million
FY 2020 Metrorail 400,000
Fort Worth Trinity Metro 5.1 million
FY 2020 Fixed Bus Ridership 3.9 million
FY 2020 Commuter Rail Ridership 1.2 million

When you add the 5.1 million from Fort Worth to the 49 million from Dallas, the DFW area's 54.1 million almost matches Houston's area 62.2 million ridership, but not quite as much for similar overall populations in their areas.

I think too many forget that transit agencies build rail systems to complement bus systems, not add more transit riders ontop of the existing systems. It should be expected to see riders that were using buses switching to rails.

[jmecklenborg]

The usefulness of a rail transit line has everything to do with station location and little to do with overall speed. Most new transit systems have only a few stations placed in ideal locations. More often, stations can't be reached on foot from traditional neighborhood business districts. Some riders will tolerate one "bad" station in their trip, but very few will tolerate two.

A single short subway line with stations beneath prominent pedestrian-oriented intersections will outperform a much larger light rail network comprised mostly of suburban park-and-ride stations.

Using abandoned railroad and canal ROW's for transit "works" but can't ever be transformative in the same way a traditional subway built right under Main St. will be.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by electricron

You made some great points, but overlooked one point I would like to add to the discussion. Climate. For half the year, it is too hot in Dallas to wait 30 minutes to an hour at a bus stop waiting for the next bus. It is just as hot in other Texas cities, so while they might have higher ridership, it is not that much higher.
Latest ridership statistics
Dallas DART 49 million
FY 2020 Bus Ridership 27.7 million
FY 2020 Light Rail Ridership 20.1 million
FY 2020 Commuter Rail Ridership 1.3 million
Houston METRO 62.6 million
FY 2020 Bus Ridership 49.5 million
FY 2020 Light Rail Ridership 13.1 million
Austin CapMetro 20.6 million
FY 2020 Metro Bus 16.4 million
FY 2020 Metro Rapid 3.8 million
FY 2020 Metrorail 400,000
Fort Worth Trinity Metro 5.1 million
FY 2020 Fixed Bus Ridership 3.9 million
FY 2020 Commuter Rail Ridership 1.2 million

When you add the 5.1 million from Fort Worth to the 49 million from Dallas, the DFW area's 54.1 million almost matches Houston's area 62.2 million ridership, but not quite as much for similar overall populations in their areas.

I think too many forget that transit agencies build rail systems to complement bus systems, not add more transit riders ontop of the existing systems. It should be expected to see riders that were using buses switching to rails.

The rainy climate in Seattle and Portland is not ideal for transit either. Las Vegas is not humid but it is still hot. And of course Winnipeg can get very cold. But looking at the 2019 number (pre-pandemic), Dallas was also behind the other Texas cities, and it did see a major ridership in gain in 2019 after a major expansion of their bus service (bus ridership in Dallas increased by a whopping 30% in 2019 and overall DART ridership increased by 14%).

Waiting 30 minutes or 1 hour for a bus is not going to be a recipe for success anywhere. Perhaps in harsh climates it is more important to reduce the waiting times, but you have to consider the walking distances as well. 30-minute frequencies means 15 minute average waiting time, but how long does it take to walk to and from the bus stop is another question. It's not just about the gaps between buses on a routes, but also the gaps between routes themselves.

Of course, agencies might be right to expect bus ridership to decline if they build rail to replace overly successful and crowded bus routes. Problem is, a lot of rail expansion in the US isn't built as a result of excess bus ridership and pro-bus policies. Most places in the US build rail because they think buses suck, buses cannot be successful. And so the rail system suffers too because of the lack of buses feeding into the rail stations. The transit system has too many gaps.

The anti-bus attitudes might also affect the design of new subdivisions. Even half-hearted TOD measures can make a difference in getting suburbanites to use transit, and have a complete system from the city centre to the outer suburbs without any gaps.

Look at what happened to Milwaukee since 2012: loss of state funding, resulting in larger gaps between vehicles, larger gaps between routes. Longer waiting times, longer walking distances. Too many gaps, and that is why a transit system collapses. In the low-density sprawl of USA and Canada, buses have an important role to fill in those gaps, but in the USA too often buses are considered the problem, rather than the solution. Places like Seattle, Portland, and Las Vegas show what is possible when places are willing to invest in buses and use them to build a truly complete and integrated transit system and fill in all the gaps.

[hkskyline]

It has always been an urban planning issue. People moving to new communities/suburbs explains only part of the story, but theoretically that moves the transit journeys out there, but I don't think that has happened. Suburb-to-suburb transit is even less sustainable / not profitable than suburb-to-downtown, so unless population density drastically rises, you really can't expect to provide a decent service unless the taxpayers are willing to foot a huge bill.

[Crawford]

The primary issue is that transit doesn't make sense for like 95% of Americans. The vast majority of people live in super-sprawly, car-oriented environments, vehicles and gas are relatively cheap, incomes are high.

The U.S. should concentrate transit resources on the few places where transit actually makes sense. Please no more light rail lines in the Tampas and Nashvilles of the world.

[jmecklenborg]

There has also been a hesitation to leave zoning unchanged (including parking minimums) near new expensive transit stations, meaning there is little opportunity for the transit lines to motivate densification.

[JDRCRASH]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Using abandoned railroad and canal ROW's for transit "works" but can't ever be transformative in the same way a traditional subway built right under Main St. will be.

Well for certain sprawling cities like Greater LA, I think it could be if it was a mode like commuter rail with stops every 3-5 miles.

After all when the PE network was built wasn't it's purpose more similar to Metrolink than Metro?

[Camelback]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The primary issue is that transit doesn't make sense for like 95% of Americans. The vast majority of people live in super-sprawly, car-oriented environments, vehicles and gas are relatively cheap, incomes are high.

The U.S. should concentrate transit resources on the few places where transit actually makes sense. Please no more light rail lines in the Tampas and Nashvilles of the world.

100. Pretty much all of this, although I disagree that other cities like Tampa and Nashville shouldn't begin the process of exploring/building some alternative transportation routes where it pencils out.

[Busy Bee]

Actually the Nashville proposal was pretty good though some of the routes shoehorned onto constrained arterial streets was of questionable wisdom. The downtown tunnel was the absolute correct thing to do and the extent of the overall plan of light rail, BRT and expanded bus was absolutely the level of ambition needed for a growing, and increasingly congested city like Nashville. The proponents failed to adequately sell the capital expense to the public and the car lobby swooped in and took full advantage of the vacuum to kill it. Hopefully it will be revived and a majority of voters will get it over the finish line in a new referendum in the near future.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

The proponents failed to adequately sell the capital expense to the public and the car lobby swooped in and took full advantage of the vacuum to kill it.

$5.4B for <71K riders is objectively terrible by almost any measure. And that's assuming the ridership projections are accurate, which I doubt given that Q4 2019 daily unlinked trips was less than 30K.

If Nashville transit supporters wanted something useful, they should forget the LRT for the next 30 years and concentrate on improving the bus routes for a fraction of the cost. Even before COVID, Nashville's bus transit ridership had been steadily dropping for years.

[Doady]

In 2002, before the beginning of the construction of its LRT system, buses in the Seattle area served around 130 million unlinked trips that year. You can also see Ottawa reached the limit with buses at around 120 million unlinked trips annually (Ontario side only). But Nashville not even close to that level.

The bus system in Las Vegas serves around 66 million trips annually without serious problems. Winnipeg Transit is also around 70 million annually, serving a much smaller population, so the riders are concentrated in an even smaller area than Las Vegas, but even there light rail is not needed yet, the capacity of the buses is still enough. When Nashville buses carry the same amount of riders as Las Vegas, then maybe it can start thinking about increased capacity with light rail. Until then, it's just a waste of money.

The idea of investing billions into 5 light rail lines to replace buses in a system that serves 10 million unlinked trips annually is really just ridiculous, and a good example of what is wrong with US transit. Nashville's transit ridership is around the same level as Spokane or Lansing. Do we need to spend billions of dollars on light rail in Spokane and Lansing as well? You can't get enough buses on the road, you can't even fill 40-foot or 60-foot long buses, but you want 100-foot long light rail vehicles, possibly coupled into 200-foot long trains? Don't blame the "car lobby" for such stupidity.

You want voters to support more government spending, it starts with making transit have at least some presence in their daily lives. That means a route on every major road, in every neighbourhood, and that starts with buses, not light rail. Seattle built up that culture over time, it slowly laid the foundation for the light rail it has now. Las Vegas is doing the same, and that's what Nashville and rest of the US needs to do. It's one step at a time and Nashville hasn't even taken that first step, just like so many other places in US.

[emathias]

It's ludicrous to try to fix transit amorphously., as though it were some independent force. That's how we ended up with the pedestrian unfriendly streets in too many places.

It has to be a holistic approach, and it has to consider the needs and wants of the people first. Do people even want transit anymore? Are they too stuck with their cars and SFHs now? And it has to consider zoning, etc. It also needs to be priced correctly, with long term costs included, such as global warming costs.

But just saying "oh, no, transit is declining, thrown more funding at it" is unlikely to be effective.

I'd love to see fast, frequent urban trail transit in every city, supplemented with smart bussing. But I'm not a typical person.

[Doady]

Cars and public transit are not opposite ends of the spectrum. Cars and public transit belong together, serving the longer urban trips. Transit dependence is as much a consequence of low density as car dependence is. It's walking that is the opposite end of the spectrum to cars in the hierarchy of urban transportation. Walking requires the highest densities and shortest distances of all. Cars, then transit, then cycling, then walking, each requiring progressively higher densities and shorter distances, and transit is much closer to cars than it is to either cycling or walking. So even a minimal and half-hearted effort is enough to make a new subdivision full of SFHs transit-friendly enough for high ridership.

You will see higher transit ridership in a big city compared to a small city or small town. Why? Because people in the bigger city have to travel longer distances, too far for cycling and walking. That's it. Likewise, in a sprawlier city, transit actually has a higher chance for success because people cannot bike or walk to work. In the sprawling environment, transit is the only potential alternative to the car, so there is less competition to begin with. So the USA, just like Canada, is already full of urban environments that promote or even force people to use transit. Canadian urban areas have high transit ridership because of sprawl, and the US should take advantage of sprawl to promote transit use as well.

You can see a typical sprawling Canadian suburb full of SFHs and strip malls like Brampton, Ontario with 40-50 million transit boardings annually. In the US, you can see in a mostly post-war city in Las Vegas with 66 million transit boardings annually in 2019, one of the leaders in the country. The car-oriented environment is exactly where transit can shine. It's not the pedestrians or cyclists, it's the car drivers and (especially) their passengers who are transit's biggest potential customers. Those SFH neighbourhoods full of cars are where the biggest opportunity for growth is now for transit in the US, but it is not being taken advantage of. The idea that people relying on cars and living in SFHs will not use transit, and so the inner cities and their rail systems end up becoming isolated from all those subdivisions and SFHs and businesses in the outer suburbs, that is why transit in the US fails. Those people living and working in those sprawling subdivisions are exactly where the US needs to start focusing its efforts.

You want to build taller, you want to concentrate growth in the centre? You need to start providing transit to the outskirts, and thus make the centre the most connected place. After all, who is going to choose living in the centre if it means becoming less connected, and becoming more isolated? That's the opposite of urban living. You want to build a transit culture, then you have to start building a transit system. The idea that we shouldn't build a transit system because there is no transit culture, that is the root of the problem in the first place. You can see the huge ridership gains in Dallas in 2019 after a major bus service increase how some willingness and effort to build a more complete system can have a huge impact and change the culture instantly. The numbers don't lie.

[Commentariat]

I’ve never really figured out why Canadians are prepared to take the bus in sprawling environments but people in other comparable countries aren’t. For example, Australians are more than happy to take rail transit. Sydney and Melbourne both had well over a million train/light rail/tram users per weekday pre-COVID. But virtually nobody in those cities is going to choose the bus instead of a car for a random suburban trip, no matter how frequently the bus comes. In Canada, at least some people might. Even in the UK, people generally dislike taking the bus. How come it’s different in Canada?