John Naviaux, an undergraduate student at UC Irvine, compared the greenhouse gas benefits of getting people out of their cars and onto buses and found that, while it saved a little carbon dioxide, it wasn’t worth the huge subsidies required. As his faculty mentor, David Brownstone, comments, “there are no significant CO2 emissions benefits from moving a traveler from a personal automobile to an Orange County urban bus. This is a strong negative result since the Orange County bus fleet is among the cleanest in the world with almost all buses running on natural gas, and this shows that it will be difficult to reduce CO2 emissions in the U.S. by simply getting more people to use urban mass transit.”
The Antiplanner has the highest respect for Dr. Brownstone, but there may be a couple of problems with Naviaux’s paper. First, he counted all the subsidies to bus transit against the savings in greenhouse gas emissions. Transit advocates would be quick to point out that there are supposedly other benefits from transit, so greenhouse gas reductions are merely the icing on the proverbial cake.
Even if you don’t buy this argument–and the Antiplanner thinks the social benefits of transit are a lot smaller than many transit advocates claim–Naviaux compared the average emissions from cars with the average emissions from existing buses and the average subsidies from running those buses. But many conceivable bus improvements could significantly increase average bus occupancies at a very low marginal cost.
For example, transit agencies could curtail bus service (or use smaller buses) in low-density areas while increasing it in inner cities. That would mean eliminating buses that carry few passengers while boosting ridership on buses that carry many passengers. The marginal cost to taxpayers of getting one more rider would be nearly zero, but the benefits would be significant.
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But some systems carry well above these averages. The Brazos Transit District, which serves 18 counties in east Texas, carries an average of 29 passengers per bus. Honolulu buses carry an average of 23. Los Angeles Metro carries more than 20. Many other systems that focus on commuter service also carry an average of 20 to 30 (and, in one case, 44) passengers.
The problem that Naviaux (and Brownstone) correctly critique is that expanding transit service does little good for reducing emissions if that expansion is costly and doesn’t result in an increased average number of passenger per bus. The same is true, magnified by several times, for building rail. Unfortunately, we’ve designed our transit systems to focus on inputs (union jobs, construction contracts) rather than outputs.
Rather than focus on these inputs, or on “getting people out of their cars,” transit agencies should focus on making themselves more efficient, and one measure of that efficiency is the average number of riders they carry per vehicle. Agencies that can greatly increase this number will produce many positive side benefits, such as saving energy and reducing pollution. Plus doing so should increase firebox revenues per dollar of operating cost, which should allow them to reduce subsidies or at least provide better service for the level of subsidies they get today.
The federal government can help. Currently, the feds give billions of dollars a year to transit agencies, but this money gives agencies little incentive to improve their efficiency and much of it encourages them to be increasingly wasteful so they can be eligible for more federal dollars. At least some, if not all, if the federal money should be distributed using a formula that rewards efficient transit systems and systems that carry more riders per vehicle. If this happened, then studies such as Naviaux’s could find that the marginal cost of reducing emissions by getting one more rider onto a bus is very low.
Lets see:
1. Transit costs more than driving (all costs)
2. Transit is slower than driving.
3. Transit does not reduce energy use (hence CO2 & pollutants)
4. Transit is heavily subsidized (30-50%)
Just what is the social good of mass transit?
thanks
JK
From JK “Just what is the social good of mass transit?”
While I certainly advocate that those that can drive should have assistance (in many cases advice not monetary assistance) in getting a cheap used car, many of the elderly and young who cannot drive may benefit from mass transit. The elderly and young (students) are not as affected by the time taken to travel somewhere but are affected by cost. There may also be some benefit to commuters who travel to the historic city centers that originated before the automobile.
However, these services could be provided much more cheaply by licensing individuals to be able to drive their own vehicles and pick up using mobile phone apps, etc. Without the monopoly on transit that taxi cab medallions and government transit operators enjoy this should provide much better service at lower cost.
I suspect that there is no mass transit system on the planet that can beat “Slugging” in Washington DC in categories of cost, time, and environmental impact. And, as far as I know there was no government authority involved in its creation. (Correct me if I’m wrong).
@JK:
“Just what is the social good of mass transit?”
To reduce congestion, from which the car drivers (i.e. the majority) benefit.
“1. Transit costs more than driving (all costs)
2. Transit is slower than driving.
3. Transit does not reduce energy use (hence CO2 & pollutants)
4. Transit is heavily subsidized (30-50%)”
That depends on how you set it up. Transit can be faster than cars, cheaper than cars, with low energy consumption. If can also be slower than cars, more expensive than cars, and with higher energy consumption.
FrancisKing: “Transit can be faster than cars, cheaper than cars, etc, etc.” is only true if artificial assumptions are made or there is a refusal to build/maintain roads.
The major artificial assumption to claim speed for transit is straight line travel. A road net is mathematically, inherently, faster for the travel most of us do, from one transit inconvenient location to another.
As for refusing to build or maintain roads, it’s worse. The socialist fool planners, but I repeat myself, where I live are doing everything in their power to degrade roads. Removing lanes so a couple of hundred bicycle riders can ride to and from work in the 6 non-freezing months we have. “Traffic calming” meaning road closures, road narrowing and reduced speed limits.
“faster than cars, cheaper than cars and low energy consumption” is like the old commercial joke: “fast, cheap and perfect, pick any two”.
“The randomly selected Orange County bus routes Naviaux studied carried an average of about 14.5 “riders per mile,” which I assume to mean passenger miles per vehicle mile.”
Probably per revenue mile.
@ Fred_Z:
“Transit can be faster than cars, cheaper than cars, etc, etc.” is only true if artificial assumptions are made or there is a refusal to build/maintain roads.”
No artificial assumptions are required.
Did you see the video on Boulder, Colorado that Antiplanner posted a while back? They are carrying 25% of commuters on their buses. The main difference with other transit organisations is that they give a damn.
Buses, like many other things in life, live at the intersection of two circles -the vicious circle and the virtuous circle.
If passenger numbers fall, the only way to make the books balance is to increase fares. This makes the buses less attractive, and fewer services run and/or the fares go up again. Where I live (Bath, UK) the fare is £4 ($6) return, a distance of 1.5 miles each way. It’s a joke. It must be a year since I last caught a bus, and then only because I had just had a stroke, and I couldn’t walk too well.
If passenger numbers rise, fares can fall, and more services can be run. A virtuous circle.
Things we could do:
At the moment, buses rely upon passengers walking to the stops, hence the bus keeps stopping every 200 metres. If you had a car which kept stopping every 200 metres, wouldn’t you trade it in? How about providing bicycle racks at bus stops, so that people can cycle there? (Please see Boulder, Colorado video).
Also, if people have to pay, this slows down the buses. Plus, every time they handle cash it reminds them of how much it costs, whereas car drivers put it on their credit cards and the extreme costs of motoring are hidden.
One of the things that reduces the cost of driving a car is that the driver comes free. Can we get one of the passengers to drive the bus?
“Removing lanes so a couple of hundred bicycle riders can ride to and from work in the 6 non-freezing months we have. ”
Solution – design bicycles which you can use all year round. Possibly four wheels for stability, electric assist, windscreen.