Sunday’s New York Times Magazine reported on the Obama administration’s Race-to-the-Top education program and how it is subverting the power of the teachers’ unions. The administration would do well to adopt a similar program for transportation in general and transit in particular.
As the late UC economist Charles Lave noted 16 years ago, there was a “large decline in the transit industry’s productivity” after 1964, when Congress began funding transit with federal dollars. Noting that inflation-adjusting operating costs per unit of output had nearly doubled, Lave commented that, “It’s uncommon to find such a rapid productivity decline in any industry.”
Transit productivity has continued to fall since 1985, when Lave’s data ended. According to historic data published by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), inflation-adjusted operating expenses have grown by 70 percent since 1985, and the number of operating employees has grown by 48 percent, yet transit ridership has grown by only 17 percent. APTA does not report capital costs before 1992, but since that year capital expenses have grown by 131 percent, yet transit ridership (which was actually lower in 1992 than 1985) has grown by only 24 percent.
