Nationwide transit ridership was 3.1 percent less in June 2018 than it had been in June 2017. Ridership fell for all major modes of transit, including commuter rail (-2.6%), heavy rail (-2.5%), light rail (-3.3%), and buses (-3.8%). These numbers are from the Federal Transit Administration’s June update to the National Transit Database, which was posted on line yesterday.
June 2018 had one fewer work day than June 2017, which may account for part of the ridership decline. But ridership in the first six months of 2018 was 3.0 percent less than the same months of 2017, and again ridership declined for all major modes of transit.
As usual, the Antiplanner has posted an enhanced spreadsheet that has all of the raw data from the FTA spreadsheet but includes annual totals from 2002 through 2018 in columns GZ through HP, modal totals in rows 2125 through 2131, transit agency totals in rows 2140 through 3139, and urban area totals for the nation’s 200 largest urban areas in rows 3141 through 3340. The same enhancements are included on the “VRM” or vehicle-revenue miles worksheet.
The Antiplanner has added some new columns to the spreadsheet. June 30 is the end of the fiscal year for many if not most transit agencies, so now we can compare transit’s 2018 fiscal year performance (column HV) against 2017 (column HU). Nationwide ridership in FY 2018 declined 2.7 percent from 2017 and of course it fell for hundreds of transit agencies.
Of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, June ridership grew in eleven, January through June ridership grew in ten, and fiscal year ridership grew in just six. Seattle is one of the six, having grown by 1.4 percent, the others being Pittsburgh (0.2%), Providence (1.1%), Nashville (3.5%), Hartford (3.3%), and Raleigh (6.1%). Except Seattle, these cities have seen declines in other recent years so this increase is not a great victory and probably won’t be sustained for long in the future.
As the Antiplanner has previously noted, Seattle has enjoyed steady growth because it has increased downtown jobs from 216,000 in 2010 to 292,000 in 2017. Downtown jobs are the key to transit ridership because most transit agencies run hub-and-spoke systems focused on central city downtowns. But replicating Seattle’s downtown growth is impossible in most regions, as all but six American cities have far fewer downtown jobs; nor would most people agree to accept the costs Seattle is paying in terms of subsidies to new employers, traffic congestion, and high housing prices resulting from land-use restrictions that prevent jobs and housing from moving to the suburbs.
Fiscal year ridership declines in many urban areas were much larger than the increases in the few regions where ridership grew. The worst were Charlotte (-15.1%), Cleveland (-11.7%), Miami (-10.3%), St. Louis (-8.2%), Memphis (-7.7%), Jacksonville (-7.0%), Baltimore (-6.6%), Richmond (-6.6%), Philadelphia (-6.5%), Cincinnati (-6.2%), Virginia Beach (-6.1%), Dallas-Ft. Worth (-5.9%), Phoenix (-5.6%), and Boston (-5.2%). This is in addition to significant declines in all of these urban areas between 2014 and 2017.
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Officials at the Charlotte Area Transit System must be real proud that the light-rail expansion they opened in March led to a 65 percent increase in June light-rail ridership over June 2017. Yet this was a hollow victory as the agency lost 36,000 more bus riders than it gained in rail riders.
Transit agencies get about a third of their operating funds from fare revenues, and the decline in ridership has forced many to reduce service. The vehicle-revenue miles page shows that nationwide transit service declined by 5.1 percent in June 2018 vs. 2017. While some people blame the ridership declines on the service reductions, at least one study says it is the other way around.
Transit ridership has declined in many urban areas despite increasing service. Among many others, Phoenix increased 2018 service by 11.0 percent yet lost 5.6 percent of its riders; San Jose increased service by 3.1 percent but lost 4.2 percent of its riders; Indianapolis increased service by 4.3 percent yet lost 3.9 percent of its riders; Austin increased service by 6.5 percent yet lost 1.1 percent of its riders.
It appears that ride hailing is the principal factor in ridership declines. A recent study estimates that ride hailing grew by 710 million trips in 2017. If just 36 percent of those trips were people who would otherwise would have taken transit, then ride hailing is responsible for all of the decline in 2017. Declining ridership leads to service reductions, which results in more ridership declines, producing a death spiral of revenue shortfalls followed by service reductions followed by more revenue shortfalls.
Some cities are supplementing transit revenues by taxing ride-hailing companies, which — as the Antiplanner has pointed out — is a little like taxing word processors to protect the typewriter industry or pocket calculators to protect the slide rule industry. At least one city is looking at taxing marijuana to subsidize transit; it’s not hard to imagine what whoever came up with that idea was smoking.
It doesn’t really matter. The decline in transit ridership is beyond the control of transit agencies, and increasing subsidies to what is already the nation’s most-heavily-subsidized form of transportation won’t make much difference. The only question is when will appropriators realize that it is pointless to continue subsidizing a dying industry and start winding down those subsidies.
Poor people buy cars, and give rides to other poor people.
Informal carpooling or as we call it “Bum rides” was decimating transit long before Uber and Lyft existed. I’m not poor but I used and gave Bum rides all the time.
So their attempt to get high income people out of their cars; they’ve shifted transits focus away from what used to be their primary customer base. The chief demographic transit was originally meant for, the Poor, the Handicapped, the elderly and children. Paratransit services have largely outmoded collectivist transit approaches of taking care of the elderly and handicapped by offering essentially door to door service. Vans can carry children to their afterschool destinations and back or the soccer moms with their 7-8 passenger SUV’s. And programs aimed at helping poor people buy a car are statistically shown to better alleviate poverty, because once you have an automobile you’re no longer locally geographically bound to a career and are free to pursue work or even a new residence elsewhere….which is what cities fear most; people fleeing. The automotive revolution and the building of the interstate allowed people to leave the geographic constraints of cities for better places. Transit is merely the methodology of urban planners to re-acclimate people back to urban appreciation. THEY FAILED.
So their next option is to hire more planners and this time around, use the power of the law to craft the next “Livability” standards. Attracting high income earners is meaningless, for one even if they rode transit there aren’t enough of them to patron the system in a financially sound manner. Two, unlike airlines with 1st, business, coach seating; a taxpayer public subsidized organization cant discriminate the fares be higher just because that person just so happens to be a wealthier person unless they pay for premium services that they offer or something like that. Third, Attracting high income people means building transit in high income areas which still costs taxpayers Billions but serves very little use because again……….THERE AREN’T THAT MANY OF THEM. Once again they overlook in the areas that need transit the most….which again overlooks the individuals mentioned above. This only alienates the people further, makes the transit agency look more incompetent,Wastes taxpayer money, further fuels political regimes to formulate even greater ways to milk the taxpayer for expanding the program to compensate for their own failures; the result of the very policies they implemented as the solution for the problem they already were facing.
Only government can somehow manage to take a problem, promise to fix it, create a program aimed at helping to alleviate the problem, exacerbate the problem, promise to fix the exacerbated problem while ignoring the fact they worsened it; expand the program to compensate for their own incompetence trying to fix the problem in the first place that really wasn’t that big a problem but thanks to them is an even bigger problem. Then create new problems when the entitled complain about the problem…and even if they fix the problem they retain the program that’s no longer necessary cause the problem went away and that creates a problem.