Does spending a lot of money on transit improvements boost transit ridership? Since 1992, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston have each spent about ten times as much money on transit improvements as San Antonio and Austin. Transit systems in all four urban areas carry fewer riders today than they did in 2000. While Houston ridership has grown since 2012, it is because of a low-cost restructuring of its bus system, not because of transit capital improvements (e.g., new light-rail lines).
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To find out whether it is generally true that spending more on transit can generate more riders, I gathered data for more than 100 of the nation’s largest urban areas. The not-so-surprising result is that spending more on transit improvements doesn’t do much to increase ridership. Moreover, the data indicate that urban areas that spend a lot on transit capital improvements don’t grow faster and may grow considerably slower than areas that don’t. Finally, the numbers show that increasing urban densities may have once had an effect on transit ridership, but doesn’t seem to anymore. Continue reading
