Search Results for: peak transit

Transit Losses From Poor People Buying Cars?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
2 Comments

A new report from the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies finds that the main cause of declining ridership in southern California is poor people buying cars. Between 1990 and 2000, when ridership was growing, the Los Angeles region grew by 1.8 million people but only 456,000 cars, or about one car per four people. Between 2000 and 2010, when ridership was shrinking, the region grew by 2.3 million people and gained 2.1 million cars, or nearly one car per new person.

There is certainly something to this, but other factors are probably more important than the report estimates. The report says that neither ride sharing nor changes in transit service and fares have played an important role, and I suspect these conclusions are wrong.

The report shows that transit trips per capita peaked in 2007 and have declined in most years since then. Certainly the decline before around 2012 or 2013 was not due to ride sharing. But the decline steepened after 2014, and I suspect much of that decline is due to ride sharing. Continue reading →

Another Nail in Transit’s Coffin

By | | Transportation
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A light-rail train in Minneapolis derailed last week, forcing Metro Transit to bus riders around the train for several hours. The Phoenix light rail is suffering from major problems due to homeless people, leading the agency to try to force people off the trains.

But the biggest hit against transit is the me-too movement that encourages women to speak out against sexual harassment and other sex crimes. “The me-too movement is a public transportation issue,” says Washington Post writer Martine Powers. “If you’re a woman who rides public transportation, you’re almost guaranteed to experience the kinds of demeaning or threatening encounters that fit squarely within the bounds of the #MeToo conversation.”

The good news is that women are more likely to report such assaults than they were a few years ago. Powers notes that reports of sexual harassment on the Washington Metro system are up 65 percent in 2017 over 2016. Similarly, reports of sex crimes on the New York City subway have gone up 50 percent in the last three years. We can hope that these increases are because women are more willing to speak out and not because harassment is actually increasing. Continue reading →

Transit’s Accelerating Decline

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Nationwide transit ridership in September, 2017, was 4.6 percent less than in the same month in 2016. That compares to a 3.5 percent drop in August and a 2.8 percent drop in July. Transit ridership for the first nine months of 2017 was 3.0 percent less than the same months in 2016.

These numbers are from the latest monthly data (8.3-MB) from the National Transit Database. As usual, the Antiplanner has enhanced this file (7.9-MB) by adding columns showing annual totals and rows showing totals by transit agency (starting at row 2100) and for the largest 200 urbanized areas (starting at row 3100).

A few months ago, Streetsblog observed that cities such as Houston and Seattle that had redesigned their bus routes (generally by replacing a hub-and-spoke system with a grid system) seemed to be exempt from the decline in transit ridership. That’s no longer the case, as Houston’s ridership declined by 4.3 percent in September and is down by 1.5 percent for the year to date. Continue reading →

Portland’s Transit Experiment Has Failed

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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As in most other cities, Portland transit ridership is declining, and TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, promised to tell its board of directors why in last Wednesday night’s meeting. Before the meeting, one TriMet rider tweeted, “because it’s unreliable and unsafe. It’s not a mystery.” The “unsafe” part partly referred to last May’s murder of two people who were trying to defend a teenage girl from a bigot on a light-rail train.

The report to the board ignored the safety issue but listed all the other usual suspects: low gas prices; competition from Uber and Lyft; late buses due to traffic congestion. But then it added a new one: rising housing prices. Graphics on pages 21 and 22 of the board report (actually a PowerPoint show, so there’s no explanatory text) show a correlation between neighborhoods with the fastest rising housing prices and the biggest declines in transit ridership. TriMet staff apparently suspect that housing costs are forcing transit riders to move to lower-cost neighborhoods that are less accessible to transit.

It is interesting to note that two of the region’s policies for boosting transit — densification (which makes housing expensive) and congestification (which makes buses late) — are now suspected of hurting transit. Of course, no one at TriMet would ever suggest that these policies be reconsidered. Continue reading →

Dallas Area Rapid Transit Regroups

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
11 Comments

Dallas has spent more than $5 billion (more than $8 billion in today’s dollars) building the nation’s longest light-rail system, and has very little to show for it. In 1991, just before Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) began building its first light-rail line, the region’s transit systems (including Ft. Worth and various suburban lines) carried 19.4 transit trips per capita. That’s not much, but it’s more than they carry today: despite having 93 miles of light rail and a 34-mile commuter-rail line, the region carries just 14.1 trips per capita.

At first, the public seemed to respond to the light rail. In 1995, the year before it opened, DART buses carried 44 million trips. By 2001, with 23 miles of light rail, buses plus light rail carried more than 60 million trips. Per capita ridership peaked in that year at 20.1 trips.

Ridership continued to grow and reached 75 million trips in 2004. But it wasn’t keeping up with population growth, as trips per capita had fallen back down to 19. After the financial crisis, DART bus and light-rail ridership fell to 55 million and today has only partially recovered to 66 million. One reason for the decline was financial: vehicle miles of bus service have fallen by nearly 10 percent since 2005. Continue reading →

The Transit Apocalypse

By | | Transportation
19 Comments

With declining ridership, growing costs, and increasing competition, the nation’s transit industry is on the verge of complete collapse. The trends leading to this collapse appear to be permanent, yet transit officials across the country are pretending they are only temporary. Instead of preparing for the collapse, they are simply seeking more subsidies.

The Antiplanner has witnessed in the collapse of an industry before, and the results are not pretty. I spent the first two decades of my career fighting money-losing timber sales on federal forests. Between 1990 and 2000, those sales declined by 85 percent, turning communities built around sawmills that purchased federal timber into near-ghost towns.

Some communities could see the handwriting on the wall and made the transition to a recreation economy. Bend, Oregon, near where the Antiplanner currently lives, is thriving as a resort and recreation town, with one of the fastest-growing populations in the country. Coos Bay, Oregon, near where the Antiplanner used to live, turned up its nose at the recreation economy, saying its high-paid union millworkers would not be satisfied flipping burgers and changing bed sheets. The area is currently depressed and–despite outstanding beauty and recreation opportunities–its population is stagnant.

Like timber communities, transit cities have the choice of preparing for or denying the impending collapse. Those that prepare for it will enable a smoother transition to future transportation systems while those that deny it will create huge problems for local taxpayers. Continue reading →

LA’s Rail Transit Problem

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
4 Comments

The Los Angeles Times reports that L.A. bus ridership is falling, so the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) is “looking to overhaul the system.” Unfortunately, the Times didn’t make the effort to figure out the real problems, instead relying on transit agency claims that they were due to “factors beyond its control.”

In fact, in the past ten years, the number of vehicle miles of revenue bus service offered by Metro has declined by more than 21 percent, from 86.3 million miles to 67.7 million. Transit riders are probably more sensitive to frequencies than anything else, and this 21 percent decline probably did not involve the cutting of many bus routes; instead, it represents a reduction in the frequencies of most routes. That factor was completely within Metro’s control.

Metro’s bus ridership peaked at 399 million trips per year in 2007 (which buses traveled 85.4 million miles), but has since declined to 318 million trips. The 20.2 percent decline nearly matches the decline in bus miles. Continue reading →

Interlude
Most Europeans Don’t Ride Transit Either

By | | Transportation
15 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, Europeans don’t ride transit a lot more than Americans. In fact, most rarely use transit.

Conventional wisdom holds that Americans drive cars while Europeans ride transit and intercity trains. In fact, while there are some differences in travel habits, differences in rail and bus travel are a lot smaller than most people believe.

In 2009, the European Union published a Panorama of Transport that compared passenger and freight transport between members of the European Union and several other countries, including Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and the United States. Page 100 shows 2006 data for the EU-27 (the 27 members of the European Union at that time) and the United States. For accuracy in the table below, I extended the data to more significant digits by dividing total passenger kilometers by 490.0 (for the EU-27) and 301.3 (for the US).

Continue reading →

Transit Notes from All Over

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
16 Comments

A few questions to consider when you are not watching today’s election returns.

Should cities be car-free, or simply driver-free?

Has Atlanta reached peak transit?
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Should Indianapolis spend nearly $100 million on a bus-rapid transit line that will increase congestion and greenhouse gas emissions?

Does the new DC streetcar go 12 miles per hour or 4 miles per hour? And why, after more than a decade of planning and construction, hasn’t the city figured out how it will collect fares?

Transit Down, Driving Up to Downtown Portland Jobs

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
6 Comments

The Portland Business Alliance’s latest survey of downtown Portland employers shows a massive decline in transit commuting and a massive increase increase in commuting by car to downtown jobs between 2013 and 2014. The 2013 survey found that about 44,800 downtown workers commuted by transit and 36,600 commuted by car; in 2014 transit declined to 38,600 while auto increased to nearly 46,400.

At least some of this shift is likely due to survey error. As the above chart shows, 2013 numbers showed a huge increase in transit commuting combined with a sharp decline in auto commuting, both deviating from trend lines from previous years. The Antiplanner didn’t find 2013’s numbers to be credible, and this year’s survey bears that out.

Continue reading →