The steady decline in transit ridership, combined with the growth of driving, is revealed in passenger-mile data published by the Department of Transportation. The table below shows changes in transit’s share of motorized travel for the nation’s 25 largest urban areas. Outside of these areas, transit’s share declined by more than 10 percent in Sacramento, San Jose, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlotte, among many others.
| Urbanized Area | 2016 | 2017 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT | 11.6% | 11.5% | -1.0% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1.9% | 1.8% | -4.7% |
| Chicago, IL-IN | 3.6% | 3.4% | -5.5% |
| Miami, FL | 1.1% | 1.1% | -2.5% |
| Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 2.8% | 2.4% | -11.2% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 0.6% | 0.5% | -4.9% |
| Houston, TX | 0.7% | 0.7% | -2.0% |
| Washington, DC-VA-MD | 3.5% | 3.2% | -9.3% |
| Atlanta, GA | 0.9% | 0.9% | -6.7% |
| Boston, MA-NH-RI | 2.9% | 2.7% | -6.5% |
| Detroit, MI | 0.4% | 0.4% | -0.7% |
| Phoenix-Mesa, AZ | 0.6% | 0.7% | 14.3% |
| San Francisco-Oakland, CA | 7.1% | 6.6% | -7.0% |
| Seattle, WA | 3.4% | 3.4% | 1.2% |
| San Diego, CA | 1.4% | 1.3% | -7.1% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI | 1.1% | 1.1% | -1.7% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL | 0.4% | 0.3% | -12.9% |
| Denver-Aurora, CO | 1.7% | 1.6% | -1.4% |
| Baltimore, MD | 2.3% | 2.3% | -2.0% |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 0.7% | 0.6% | -10.3% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino, CA | 0.5% | 0.4% | -8.2% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson, NV | 1.0% | 0.9% | -3.0% |
| Portland, OR-WA | 2.3% | 2.3% | -0.1% |
| Cleveland, OH | 0.8% | 0.7% | -11.7% |
| San Antonio, TX | 0.7% | 0.6% | -3.7% |
These calculations were made possible by the Federal Highway Administration’s release of table HM-72 for the 2017 Highway Statistics. This table shows the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per day by urbanized area. Multiply daily VMT by 365 to get annual VMT, then by average auto occupancies of 1.67 (based on the National Household Travel Survey) to get annual passenger miles. This can be compared with passenger miles from the 2017 National Transit Database, which was released last October.
You can download the Antiplanner’s updated summary of the 2017 National Transit Database to get my calculations of transit’s share of travel. I copied the daily VMT from table HM-72 into cells AR3881 through AR4367, converted to passenger miles in the adjacent (AS) column, and calculated transit’s share in the AT column. Transit passenger miles are in column L. A handful of urban areas (such as Nampa, Idaho) are in the National Transit Database but not Highway Statistics, while two (Norman, OK and Middletown, NY) are in Highway Statistics but not the National Transit Database.
Among the nation’s 50 largest urban areas, transit share grew only in Phoenix, Seattle, Cincinnati, Virginia Beach, Austin, Richmond, and Hartford. Except in Phoenix, where transit’s share is less than 1 percent, transit’s growth in these urban areas was tiny.
Meanwhile, the 5 to 11 percent declines in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco-Oakland, and Washington — in all of which transit remains somewhat important — are devastating. Ride hailing is clearly particularly strong in these regions.
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Ironically, the San Francisco Chronicle recently listed the Bay Area’s 11 biggest transportation projects: two were bike routes, two were highways, while the remaining seven were transit. Obviously, the region’s transportation planners are basing priorities on wishful thinking.
Counting all 480-some urban areas, transit carries less than 1.6 percent of urban travel. Transit carries more than 1 percent of travel in only 38 urban areas, and more than 2 percent in just 14. The Federal Transit Administration doesn’t require smaller transit agencies to estimate passenger miles, so many smaller urban areas are reported as having a zero percent transit share. In most if not all of these areas, the real number is between zero and 1 percent.
The raw numbers indicated that transit carried more than 10 percent of travel — about the same as New York — in the small community of Hanford, California. That’s deceptive, however, as the California Vanpool Authority, which oversees vanpooling in 18 counties, is headquartered in Hanford. Correcting for that reduces transit’s share in Hanford to a more likely 0.5 percent.
For what it’s worth, I also added up passenger miles of travel by state in rows 4376 to 4427. Column AR is millions of annual VMT from Highway Statistics table VM-2. Column AS converts this to thousands of passenger miles and column AT shows transit’s share. Transit passenger miles are based on the states in which transit agencies are headquartered, so there will be some errors where major agencies (such as New Jersey Transit) cross state lines. Transit agencies in Wyoming are among those that don’t report passenger miles, so transit’s share appears to be zero there. Even though it’s not really zero, it is still very low.
These numbers show that transit is not a vital part of any urban area except New York. While transit plays an important role in bringing commuters into the downtowns of a few other major cities — namely Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington — even in those cities its importance is declining. Outside of the downtown commuters in those cities, transit is practically irrelevant.
Carpooling is more efficient than transit. A six-seven passenger SUV if it gets less than 20 mpg, takes 6-7 people and 6 other cars off the road. Doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything. The average light truck (meaning pick ups, full-sized vans, and SUVs) used about 6,250 BTUs per vehicle mile in 2015, which is also about half what it was in the early 1970s. Hybridization will shave another 10% assuming large SUV’s ever get on the bandwagon. Ford’s 2020 next generation Explorer will offer a hybrid version and it’s in my sights…………
Of those 11 projects in the Bay Area, the Marin Sonoma narrows widening of the 101 is the most important. However, it may be too little, too late, with only one lane in each direction. With all the exurban sprawl in Sonoma County, Lake County, and north, it should be 4 lanes in each direction, and even 5 when considering adding a 5rh lane with dashed lines in areas of frequent intersections, such as Petaluma (the “Utah system” used in Utah, Arizona, parts of Nevada, and other areas of the SW).
To clarify, just increasing the number of lanes from 2 to 3 or 2 to 4 may not alleviate traffic. If a freeway is only widened by one lane in an area of frequent intersections, then merging traffic, especially during commute hours, may defeat the purpose of that extra lane, That is why adding a seperate lane with dashed lines, as in parts of the Southwest, provides more room for acceleration and deceleration at intersections. California does this infrequently. One place they just did it was through Thousand Oaks in Ventura County. As you drive on the 101, you never are distracted by merging or exiting traffic, since it is in the far right lane.
https://www.toaks.org/departments/public-works/construction/101-23-interchange/route-101-23-project-background
San Luis Obispo county is currently widening the 101. Hopefully they will do likewise.
The Marin Sonoma narrows should have this lane along with 3 and perhaps 4 additional travel lanes when it passes through suburbs such as Petaluma with frequent intersections.
The Express lanes on the article are also important, especially for the east bay (680), Livermore to Tracy (580), and 80. Long commutes out to Tracy, Stockton, and the central valley occur because Livermore voters voted for a tight UGB around their city of 100,000. Housing prices soared, and they have luxuries of beautiful open space in all 360 degrees in Livermore, even hunting grounds near the city limits, and the best rural cycling in the east bay, with mountain biking as well. Meanwhile, due to their decision to establish an UGB (and, other nearby municipalities), there is only one freeway going east west, the 580, up to 16 lanes. Parallel freeways going into the Central Valley cannot exist, as they would go over natural areas. The problem is that Smart growth towers in Dublin are too expensive for non-tech workers (about $2900 monthly), so they have to drive to cheaper apartments in the valley. An interesting analogy is Irvine, California, where under private planning (Donald Bren, The Irvine Company), the average rent of an Irvine Company apartment is $1900. Still too expensive, but Mr. Bren has publically stated that he ultimately wants to build enough housing in Irvine, so that nobody has to commute. Hopefully, he will succeed.
Cars and getting cheaper to operate. Too many forget that the avg American spends $8k \ yr on a car out off choice. Plus it’s an average. Far more spend much, much much less. Add that with growing wealth and it should be no surprise that less Americans are taking transit.
I find it hard to believe 8 Grand a year is spent on cars per year. The reason really is that luxury cars often maintained by professionals buck the average eliminate any car that costs more than 45,000 dollars and the overall costs decreases substantially…….
What Is the Total Cost of Owning a Car?