Transit ridership is declining almost everywhere in the United States, partly because there are increasing alternatives to transit that are more convenient, including increased auto ownership and ride sharing. The Journal of Public Transportation has devoted a whole issue to the future of transit, as if to reassure the industry that it has one (most of the writers were optimistic, but at least one was more skeptical).
So naturally, transit advocates have come up with a new reason to spend more taxpayer dollars on a dying industry: transit deserts. According to someone’s painstaking but questionable analysis, the “demand for transportation exceeds supply” in large portions of major cities, including San Francisco (13.5% of which is supposed to be a transit desert), Philadelphia (8.5%), New York City (7.0%), and Chicago (6.8%).
Supposedly, they used the American Community Survey to count the number of “transit-dependent people” (people over the age of 12 who can’t drive) in each neighborhood and compared it with the transit services to that neighborhood. But the American Community Survey doesn’t ask about transit-dependency, so they had to use proxies that probably miss a lot of things. For example, people who can’t drive may have other people in their households who drive for them, or they may have ready access to taxis or ride-hailing services. Even if transit served their neighborhood, they might not use it.
The fundamental assumption behind these so-called transit deserts is that everyone has a right to have access to publicly subsidized transit no matter where they live and no matter how much it costs the taxpayers to provide it for them. Yet the reality is that the average American moves about ten times in their lifetimes. When they can drive, they move to auto-friendly neighborhoods. If they prefer or need to use transit, they move to transit-friendly neighborhoods. One of the downfalls of government-owned transit is that transit agencies insisted on sending transit services to neighborhoods that didn’t want or need it, thus reducing transit loads and the ratio of fares to costs.
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As an economist, the Antiplanner always bristles when planners use the term “demand.” They talk and write as though it were a fixed number that can be identified. But demand is not a point; it is a line that shows that the quantities people will use usually decline as prices increases. When there are plenty of alternatives to a particular good or service, then the quantities demanded will decline rapidly with small increases in price.
That is the situation that transit has had to face for more than one hundred years. In 1915-1917, transit companies largely succeeded in regulating some of their competition out of business. Since 1970, transit agencies have used a two-pronged strategy of capturing highway dollars (thus simultaneously growing their empires while increasing road congestion) and guilt-tripping voters and politicians into giving transit more subsidies to help the poor, save energy, clean the air, and so forth.
The transit desert is just the latest guilt-trip, and it is as phony as the others. Let’s hope that politicians don’t fall for it.
A Ctrl-F on autonomous or driverless in the Transit Deserts article yielded no results. But it doesn’t matter because of the scary headline:
Stranded Without Transit: Millions of people lack adequate access to transportation, and the consequences could be dire.
The U.S. News article goes on to cite several left-wing sources which probably means that government employee unions are freaked out about the upcoming Janus v. AFSCME case ruling in the US Supreme Court. The predicted ruling against the union will severely reduce union cash which will lead to a reduction in graft. Without the cash, politicians will no longer have an incentive to fund government collective transit boondoggles. Add in AV’s certain taking of transit’s market share in most metro areas and the transit bureaucracies are facing an existential crisis.
Which is very good news for taxpayers, riders, and the environment.
My experience in rural areas is that people start to gets rides with others going in the same direction with varying degrees of organization and payment. I recall a newspaper delivery van driver who drove through a relatively remote area between 2am and 4am in the 1950’s saying he became the informal transit system being willing to pick up people on his fixed route for a small fee. He then dropped them at the Greyhound station at the end of his route. On another rural route where I got stuck with no bus I was put in touch with a commuter who drove to work every day at the same time and picked up people on the way to and from work. Simply making this service more formal with licensing and using an Uber like system with smartphones, etc might work well, self organizing and turning a profit for drivers with no government subsidy.
An example of a similar system that has thrived even in the face at least initially of government opposition is the casual car pool in the San Francisco Bay area. Google “casual carpool” or go to http://sfcasualcarpool.com/routes for an example of this system. My understanding is that this web site is entirely run by volunteers. Note in particular the “etiquette” http://sfcasualcarpool.com/etiquette page with the informal rules that have naturally developed with this system.
After initially trying to shut this system down to try to force riders to take public transit it now appears that the metropolitan transport commission for the bay area is beginning to realize this is a viable transit option. It should be encourage and see how it develops.
My personal experience using it has been good. However understandably there are relatively few women who use the service. I have suggested that women drivers could put a sign in their window saying “women only” and pick up just women. This would probably increase the number of women who felt comfortable taking the service. This suggestion has not been taken up.
During its regular meeting yesterday, the San Francisco MTA board of directors voted unanimously to start a pilot program to issue permits for electric dockless scooter rentals in the city of San Francisco. In other words, Fork over 500 dollars for permission to use a scooter, after all they’re loud, dangerous?
Neither scooters nor cyclists have ever killed a pedestrian to my knowledge.
Maybe these folks will forward their analysis to the nation’s transit providers and let them know about all those crisp $20 bills they are leaving on the sidewalk by not serving these “transit deserts”.
Of course it’s always intriguing when commentary like this suggests that transit operators are providing service in such a far-from-optimal manner, yet argue in the same breath that they deserve a lot more money to do more of it. I also can’t wrap my head around a concept of demand which suggests that voluntary (non-income constrained) zero-car households are choosing to locate in relatively transit-poor neighborhoods. Really makes you think.