Over the past 25 years, the population of the Pittsburgh urban area has remained fixed at about 1.8 million people. Driving, however, has increased by almost 50 percent.
During this period, Pittsburgh has spent hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading light-rail lines, building exclusive busways, and — in the latest project — building a $435 million transit tunnel under the Allegheny River. Despite (or because of) this investment, transit ridership has dropped by more than 25 percent.
Although the numbers vary slightly from place to place, Pittsburgh’s story is pretty typical of transit everywhere. Sure, some cities have seen ridership gains, but subsidies to transit are huge and transit does not make a notable (meaning 5 percent or more) contribution to personal mobility in any urban area except New York (where it is 10 percent).
Bill Steigerwald, an editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, surveys the failure of the transit industry through an interview with the Antiplanner’s friend, Wendell Cox. Cox’s comments are scathing.
