Transit agencies and supporters arrogantly believe that we should be dependent on them, thus justifying their gigantic subsidies, rather than being dependent on (meaning liberated by) automobiles. A case in point is the Maine Public Transit Advisory Council (PTAC), whose latest report claims that Maine transit is falling 89 percent short of meeting transit “needs.”
Click image to download a 5.8-MB PDF of this 66-page report.
The report counts “need” by estimating the number of trips that zero-car households would have taken if they had cars, based on how many trips people who have cars take per day, and assuming that all of those trips would be taken by mass transit. This completely ignores such facts as people who don’t have cars often don’t have the same mobility needs as people who do and they meet what needs they do have with other ways of travel that usually don’t involve mass transit.
The 2023 American Community Survey, for example, reveals that just 7.3 percent of Maine workers who live in households with no cars commuted by transit, while 45.1 percent drove alone to work, 9.2 percent carpooled, 20.5 percent walked, and 11.9 percent worked at home. The PTAC report assumes that all of those people ought to be transit riders taking around two transit trips a day.
The most breathtaking number here is that Downeasters who don’t have cars were nevertheless six times more likely to drive alone to work than take transit. How is that possible if they don’t have cars? The answer in most cases is that they are driving autos supplied by their employers. That immediately reduces the “unmet needs” calculated by the PTAC by almost half.
The report also makes an implicit assumption that everyone who doesn’t have a car must be poor. The American Community Survey found that 6.3 percent of Maine households don’t have cars. While it doesn’t break it down by income, it does say that more than a third of carless-households own their own homes. If they can afford to own their home, they cam probably afford to own a car.
The transportation habits of Maine residents whose incomes were low (under $25,000 a year) are not significantly different from higher-income residents, but low-income residents actually relied on autos more than very high-income (over $75,000 a year) residents in 2023. The American Community Survey found that 79 percent of low-income Maine workers traveled to work by car compared with 80 percent of other workers. But only 73 percent of high-income workers commuted by car. This is because 24 percent of high-income workers worked at home, compared with just 11 percent of low-income workers. The PTAC report implicitly assumes everyone who happens to live without a car “needs” more subsidized transit when the data suggest that low-income people are only a little more likely to have no car than other people.
Of course, work isn’t the only place people go, but people who live without cars are smart enough to find alternate means of travel. They locate within walking distance of shops, they bicycle to school, or they simply stop their employer-supplied vehicle at the supermarket on their way home from work.
The report includes the usual drivel about the supposedly high cost of driving but never mentions the high cost of transit. In 2023, Maine transit cost taxpayers nearly $130 million yet carried only 7.5 million trips, which meant each trip cost taxpayers more than $17. It probably would have been less expensive to pay for people’s taxi, Uber, or Lyft rides.
The Public Transit Advisory Council was created by the Maine legislature and currently has 31 members. These predominantly include representatives of urban planning agencies, transit agencies, and representatives of senior citizen and disabled people’s advocacy groups. In other words, the deck is stacked in favor of more transit subsidies, with few people on the committee willing to take an objective look at the question. Maine taxpayers should hope that the legislature is takes a skeptical view of this report.
Road maintenance is largely proportional to usage; A decline in ridership doesn’t pose existential maintenence threat to roads because the proportion of road surface requiring additional repair. Rail Transit infrastructure isnt; it’s proportional to time, as vast majority of the weight comes from the train, not it’s passengers, 20 trains per hour fully loaded or empty weigh largely the same hence the amount of wear and tear they accrue doesn’t vary much Hence they are extremely vulnerable to ridership declines and loss of fares.
Streetcars died off in 1920s-30s in America, as private railroads that owned them couldn’t afford the upkeep because Post World War I inflation ruined the Value of the original Nickel fare. But buses and high capcity cars had fewer limitations.
Jitney’s were common in San Francisco up til the 70’s. In the 1910s, there were 1,400 jitneys operating in the city, according to SFMTA records, and they remained ubiquitous into the 1970s, patronized by the city’s Asian and Latin community. But around that time the city wanted to encourage public transit use on MUNI and BART. It disliked the competition, so began issuing fewer permits and forcing jitneys to raise fares, as not to undercut the public option. In 1978, the city stopped issuing permits altogether and Jitney’s were sunk. When Chariot started in 2010s following a wave of deregulation they swiftly took market share and by 2015 carrying 50,000 daily riders and by 2017, the company folded because SF reinstated new regulation. At it’s peak Ford owned Chariot operated 100, 14-passenger vans and was carrying 7000 daily passengers or just 4% BART ridership on a 9-5 work day averages 8 people per van per hour. WAY more efficient average occupancy of cars of 1.67.
Outside the USA, Uber/Lyft and various unheard of rideshare companies do not suffer the transit’s regulatory burdens that places so much stiff rigid rules on operating private transit vehicles. In fact Uber competes with public options and even runs full sized buses. 1000 Jitney’s could carry 70,000 or a quarter of BART’s capacity.
Maine doesn’t have a single city with a population above 100,000 thus no downtowns capable supporting transit’s traditional hub and spoke model. Transit doesn’t accommodate populations it accommodates job densities.