Tag Archives: transit

The Guardian has published comparison maps showing historic transit systems vs. modern systems in those same cities, leading commenters to lament that “big oil and the automobile industry destroyed public transport.” Yet the maps that make up the article were made more for artistic purposes and not as any scientific study of the history and fate of public transit.

The first thing to note is that the maps only include rail lines, not buses. Yet, as another article in the Guardian notes, American transit systems began converting rails to buses as early as the 1920s, with 20 percent of them having completed the conversion by 1930 (years before the so-called General Motors streetcar conspiracy). The maps misleadingly make it appear that transit service has shrunk when all it did was change modes.

The second thing to note is that, on most maps, the artist only included streetcars and rapid transit (light and heavy rail). One historic map shows interurban lines, but none show commuter rail. In Los Angeles, for example, commuter rail has replaced some of the longer-distance Pacific Electric lines, but this isn’t shown on the maps. Continue reading →

A recent news story reported that DC Metro ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2000. Another story reported the Philadelphia bus ridership had fallen to its lowest level since 2002. While the Antiplanner has been tracking the decline in transit ridership for several years, I never thought of expressing it in this particular way.

So I decided to look at major urban areas and transit agencies to see how many years it has been since their ridership has been as low as it was in 2018. If nothing else, this would give me the ability to casually say at cocktail parties, “Did you know that Los Angeles transit ridership is the lowest it has been since 1997?” Unfortunately, for some reason, the Antiplanner doesn’t get invited to too many cocktail parties.

In any case, I decided to compare calendar year 2018 ridership data with the Federal Transit Administration’s historic time series. One slight problem is that the historic time series is based on the fiscal years of the individual agencies, so the 2018 data, when it is published, won’t be exactly the same as the calendar year 2018 numbers. But the historic time series goes back to 1991, while the monthly time series that is the source of the calendar year data only goes back to 2002. Continue reading →

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is upset that the Trump administration doesn’t want to fund new tunnels under the Hudson River. Cuomo sent an angry letter to Trump earlier this week accusing the president of being prejudiced against New York and New Jersey because they didn’t vote for him. Cuomo claims the tunnels should be federally funded because “the Northeast is home to 17 percent of the entire population and contributes 20 percent to the national domestic product.”

But population and regional populations aren’t among the criteria Congress established for federal funding of transit infrastructure. Instead, one of the most important criteria that the Department of Transportation is required to use is whether the project is “supported by an acceptable degree of local financial commitment.” Based on the lack of local support, the Federal Transit Administration’s 2020 New Starts funding recommendations gave the project a “medium-low” rating, and under federal law, that makes it ineligible for funding. Not counting some small starts (such as the downtown Los Angeles streetcar), the only other project to get a medium-low rating was the Portal North Bridge, which is also part of the Hudson Gateway megaproject.

Cuomo argues that Trump has ignored “the financial commitments made by New York and New Jersey.” The FTA’s profile of the project reveals just what those commitments are. Continue reading →

A new study finds that Cleveland transit riders save $51.8 million a year taking transit rather than using their own vehicles. That sounds impressive until you realize that the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) spends $268 million more on operations and maintenance than it collects in transit fares. In other words, taxpayers spent $5 for every dollar supposedly saved by transit riders.

The study also claims that RTA’s economic impact on the region is $322 million a year. Considering the agency’s total annual budget is more than $320 million, spending that money digging holes and filling them up would have a bigger impact on the economy.

Continue reading →

“The fiscal year ending on June 30, 2018, continued the District’s historic journey to excellence,” says the Sacramento Regional Transit District’s 2018 financial report. Really? Based on the June 2018 National Transit Database report, Sacramento RT carried 4.5 percent fewer riders in FY 2018 than it did in FY 2017. Ridership had fallen 22 percent since FY 2014 and 42 percent since 2008. Among major transit agencies, only Greater Cleveland Regional Transit and Memphis Area Transit are doing worse.

Back in 2012, RT opened its quarterly ridership reports with a chart showing ridership each year for the previous twelve years. By 2018, RT’s ridership reports had given up on showing past ridership — too depressing, no doubt — and instead opened with charts showing on-time performance. The agency’s monthly performance reports are densely packed with information but only compare the month’s ridership with the same month of the previous year, not any years before that.

Recent ridership declines happened in spite of a 7 percent increase in service (measured by vehicle-revenue miles) since 2014. However, service declined a stunning 34 percent between 2009 and 2012, no doubt due to reduced tax revenues after the 2008 financial crisis. Recent increases in vehicle miles still leave service 27 percent below 2009. Continue reading →