Transit Score Not Believable

The Oregonian brags that Portland is “the 10th best city” for transit in the United States. But a close look at the web site doing the ranking reveals this may not be true.

First, they only counted the nation’s 25 largest cities for which they had data. This means cities such as Honolulu and Oakland, both of which are much more transit-friendly than Portland, didn’t even get considered. In addition, “second cities” in urban areas, such as Arlington VA and Long Beach CA didn’t get considered even though they had the data and the cities are among the 25 largest in the United States.

Second, the transit score methodology is based solely on proximity to and frequency of transit routes. Whether those transit routes are actually useful is another story; some may be too slow or not reach many jobs in an urban area.

The Antiplanner prefers to rely on “revealed preferences,” that is, actual transit usage. The table below compares transit scores with the share of commuters using transit (according to the 2010 American Community Survey). Based on this, the transit score ranks Washington and Cleveland too low while it ranks Dallas and San Jose too high.
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Transit Score Rank vs. Transit Market Shares

Transit’s market share of commuting for cities and urbanized areas vs. transit score ranking. Urbanized area data not shown for “second cities” such as Arlington, Fort Worth, and Long Beach; look to the primary city for that urbanized area for those data. Transit shares are from the 2010 American Community Survey.

A third problem is the use of data for cities rather than some other geographic unit, such as urbanized areas. The problem with using cities is that some cities make up only a tiny portion of their urbanized areas while others make up a very large portion. Miami is only 7.4 percent of its urban area while San Antonio is 89 percent of its urban area. If the transit score were counted only for the central 7.4 percent of San Antonio, it might have scored as high as Miami.

These types of ranking systems are really just ways for special interest groups to lobby for more money for transit. Yet the real reasons why some cities score lower than others are buried deep in history and can’t be fixed with money. New York has by far the highest share of transit commuting because New York has such a huge number of jobs in Manhattan, plus the population density of most of New York City (other than Staten Island) is massively greater than any other American city. Neither smart growth nor more transit spending will turn other American cities into Manhattan.