The Federal Transit Administration has published the 2011 National Transit Database, which has cost, fare, ridership, and other data for every transit agency, broken down by mode, that receives federal support. You can download the raw data in two formats: the database, which is easier to manipulate, or data tables, which are easier to read (links download self-extracting .exe files; if you have a Mac, you can expand these files using Stuffit Expander).

Either of these self-extracting files includes about 20 to 30 spreadsheets with data ranging from operators wages to energy consumption. It has become an annual ritual for the Antiplanner to extract the most interesting data and compile it in a single summary spreadsheet. The 2011 summary presents the following data by agency and mode:

1. Transit agency identification number
2. Mode
3. Who runs the service (DO=the transit agency, PT=a contractor)
4. Full agency name
5. Agency nickname
6. City (usually the headquarters city of the agency)
7. Urban area
8. Passenger trips
9. Passenger miles
10. Vehicle revenue miles
11. Fares
12. Operating costs
13. Maintenance costs (what the database calls “existing service” capital improvements)
14. Capital costs (what the database calls “expanded service” capital improvements)
15. Number of vehicles
16. Total number of seats on those vehicles
17. Standing room on those vehicles
18. Directional route miles (rail only–note that 50 route miles of rail equals 100 directional route miles)
19. BTUs of energy consumed
20. Pounds of carbon dioxide emitted

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The 2010 National Transit Database has been available for a few weeks. As usual, it comes in two formats: either some 34 data tables that are easy to read but difficult to manipulate in Excel or some 20 data files that are easy to manipulate in Excel but difficult to read.

The Antiplanner has summarized the database in a single Excel file that includes annual transit trips, passenger miles, vehicle revenue miles, fares, operating costs, capital costs (which the database calls “expanded service” capital costs), maintenance costs (which the database calls “existing service” capital costs), number of vehicles, total seats, total standing room, BTUs of energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions for each transit agency and mode of transit. The BTUs were calculated from the energy table using energy factors from the Energy Information Agency. Carbon dioxide outputs were calculated using state electrical generation data from the same source.

Rows 2 through 1392 include the data by transit agency and mode. Rows 1396 through 1412 are sums by transit mode. Rows 1416 through 1431 are sums by transit mode including only those modes for which energy data were published. Rows 1434 through 1798 are sums by urbanized area. Eventually, I’ll add more columns that include calculations of various factors, but with these raw data you can do the same on your own.

Some people are chortling over a recent Pew survey that finds the share of Americans who think that cars are a “necessity” is the lowest since pollsters started asking the question in 1973. Perhaps, some are suggesting, that’s because young people aren’t driving as much as older Americans, so we shouldn’t invest much more in highways.

Another interpretation of the numbers is that more people think they should tell pollsters that they don’t need cars as much as they used to. The Antiplanner prefers to rely on revealed preferences rather than survey data. Here are a couple of revealed preferences.

Table B25044 of the 2009 American Community Survey indicates that 113 million out of 123 million American households–that’s 91.1 percent–have at least one vehicle available. Despite the recession, this is up from 105 out of 126 million households (89.7 percent) in the 2000 census (see table H44, summary file 3 or this brief).

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According to census data, about 4 percent of American workers–5.9 million–live in households that have no automobiles. Conventional wisdom suggests that these are people who are either too poor to own a vehicle, and we should pity them; or people who for environmental or other reasons have learned to live without a vehicle, and we should admire them.

There may be a third category, however. As demographer Wendell Cox recently discovered, table B08141 from the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey shows how people get to work by how many vehicles they have in their household. It turns out that nearly 1.2 million people who have no vehicles nevertheless drive to work in a single-occupancy vehicle. That represents 20 percent of workers with no vehicles. Another 730,000, or more than 12 percent of people with no vehicles, carpool to work.

My first thought was that this must be some kind of sampling error. But the Census Bureau insists the 1.2 million number is accurate to within plus or minus 2 percent. Another possibility is that some people didn’t understand the questions. But another possibility is that nearly 1 percent of workers live in households with no vehicles but still manage to drive alone to work. Maybe they use company cars?

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