Search Results for: peak transit

May Transit Ridership Down 81 Percent

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The nation’s transit systems carried 81 percent fewer riders in May, 2020 than in May, 2019, according to data posted yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This drop is almost as great as the 84 percent decline reported for April.

Rail was hardest hit, with an 89 percent fall in ridership, while buses lost 74 percent of riders. For the year to date, nationwide ridership is down 41 percent, with rail losing 44 percent and bus 38 percent.

The biggest declines were in urban areas that see the most transit ridership: New York lost 90 percent of its riders, Washington 89 percent, Philadelphia 88 percent, and Boston and San Francisco-Oakland 85 percent. Falldowns were smallest in urban areas such as San Antonio (-45%) and Las Vegas (-54%) where transit plays a relatively insignificant role in the region’s transportation. Continue reading →

44. Fighting Obsolete Transit

By | | Iconoclast
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In 1991, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. It should have been called the Obsolete Transportation Inefficiency Act, as among other things it created a multi-billion-dollar annual slush fund to give to cities to build new rail transit projects. This fund, informally called New Starts and more formally called Transit Capital Investment Grants, had no limit on the amount of money any city could take out of it, which gave cities incentives to propose the most expensive projects they could so they could get the most “free” federal money.

This law was actually a continuation of a 1973 law that allowed cities to cancel planned interstate freeways within their borders and spend the federal dollars that would have gone towards building those freeways on transit capital improvements instead. The 1973 law was instigated by then-Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent, who wanted to cancel some freeways in Boston but didn’t want to be accused of “losing” federal transportation dollars. Boston, of course, has lots of rail transit and could easily absorb the federal dollars from a cancelled freeway by buying new railcars, installing new signals, replacing track, and so forth.

Sargent’s law gave hope to Portland Mayor (and infamous pedo) Neil Goldschmidt, who wanted to cancel an interstate freeway in east Portland. But Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, only operated buses, and if it used all of the freeway funds to buy new buses, it wouldn’t have enough money to operate all of those buses. Continue reading →

Transit’s Dim Future

By | | Policy brief
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Thanks to a late-year surge in New York subway ridership, nationwide transit ridership in December 2019 was 3.0 percent greater than December 2018, and ridership for 2019 as a whole was 0.1 percent greater than in 2018, according to data released last week by the Federal Transit Administration. Take away the New York City subways and nationwide ridership fell by 1.5 percent in December and 1.2 percent for the 2019 as a whole.

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New York City subway ridership (not including PATH trains) grew by a phenomenal 14.7 percent in December and 3.6 percent for the year as a whole. While subway ridership peaked in 2014, it rose in 2019 to the second highest in its history. Its post-World War II peak was only about 2.0 billion trips a year compared with 2.7 billion in 2019. Continue reading →

Honolulu’s Terrible Folly & a Transit Mystery

By | | Policy brief
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Honolulu is building what may be the most expensive above-ground rail line in the world. The 20-mile line is expected to cost $9.2 billion, more than the cost of the 243 miles of light-rail lines in Sacramento, Saint Louis, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and San Jose combined. While the FTA classifies Honolulu’s line as heavy rail, it’s passenger capacity will be about the same as light rail, as platforms will only be large enough for four-car trains.

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Meanwhile, the city’s transit ridership is plummeting, having fallen by 21 percent since rail construction began. Rail ridership projections assumed bus ridership numbers would grow by more than 50 percent, not decline. Continue reading →

Reducing Mobility to Boost Transit

By | | Policy brief
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Reeling from five years of ridership declines, the transit industry is stumbling around looking for a new mission, or at least new strategies to restore some of its revenues. New research and on-the-ground experience suggests the task will be difficult and may be hopeless.

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The opening pages of the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA) recently released 2019 Transit Fact Book present a cheery picture of transit’s success by comparing 2018 transit numbers with numbers from the 1990s, which saw historic lows in transit ridership. Yes, ridership grew from 1995 to 2014, but bus ridership peaked in 2008 and rail in 2014 and both have been declining since then, a reality APTA hopes people will overlook. This is typical of the kind of cherry-picking of data that transit advocates so often use to promote their agendas. Continue reading →

How New Starts Harms Transit Riders

By | | Policy brief
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Rail transit lines built with federal support have done more harm than good to transit riders and urban transportation systems as a whole. Too often, the high cost of rail has forced transit agencies to cut bus service and raise fares. In the worst cases, the systems lost more bus riders than they gain rail riders. In most other cases, per capita ridership and/or transit’s share of commuting declined. These regions and transit systems would have been better off without the federal government enticing them into build rail transit.

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A little over a century ago, more than a thousand American cities, including every city with more than 15,000 people, had some form of rail transit. Then, in 1927, the first buses were produced that cost less both to buy and to operate than rail transit. By then, many of the rail lines built in the nineteenth century were wearing out, so transit riders appreciated the buses because they were faster and more comfortable than the railcars and could easily take on new routes. Buses can also move more people per hour than almost any rail line because buses, though having lower capacities per vehicle, can safely operate far more frequently than rail lines. Continue reading →

7. April Transit Ridership Grows 2%

By | | Policy brief
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Nationwide transit ridership in April 2019 was 2.0 percent greater than in April 2018. According to the latest ridership update from the Federal Transit Administration, this gain can be almost entirely attributed to a 6.6 percent increase in New York subway ridership, a result of ridership recovering from maintenance and repair work done in April, 2018. (See the end of this post for information on the Antiplanner’s enhanced version of the FTA data file.)

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The New York urban area is the 430-pound gorilla of the transit industry, while all other transit agencies are 4 ounce to 60-pound monkeys. This means what happens in New York can swamp nationwide industry numbers and cover up things happening elsewhere. Continue reading →

5. DOT Data Reveals Transit’s Irrelevance

By | | Policy brief
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As last week’s brief showed, census data reveal that the number of Austin-area commuters taking transit to work has declined by more than 10 percent in the last decade despite a 59 percent increase in the number of workers. Ignoring this decline, Austin city officials are seriously considering a $6 billion to $10.5 billion program to build dedicated bus lanes, light rail, or other transit improvements.

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This week’s brief will look at Department of Transportation data to gather more information about how important transit is to the Austin urban area. The most important source of data is the National Transit Database, which has tracked ridership, costs, and other transit data since 1982. Continue reading →

3. 1st Quarter Transit Riders Down 2.6%

By | | Policy brief
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Nationwide transit ridership in the first quarter of 2019 was 2.6 percent below the same quarter in 2018, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) last week. Transit’s most recent downward spiral began in 2014, and ridership over the twelve months prior to March 31 was 8.6 percent below the same twelve months four years ago.

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Ridership is declining for all major forms of transit travel. First quarter bus ridership was 2.1 percent below 2018 while first quarter rail ridership declined by 3.2 percent. Commuter rail, light rail, heavy rail, and streetcars all lost riders. Continue reading →

Transit Commuters Up But Ridership Down

By | | Transportation
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Here’s a puzzle: between 2014 and 2017, the number of people who said they took transit to work in the San Jose urban area grew by 25 percent. Yet actual San Jose transit ridership fell by 15 percent. What accounts for this apparent discrepancy?

Similar but smaller discrepancies exist in a few other large urban areas. New York transit commuting is up 4% but ridership down 3%; Chicago commuting up 6% but ridership down 7%; Atlanta commuting up 12% but ridership down 8%. In some smaller urban areas, the discrepancies can be much larger: Cape Coral, Florida transit commuting is up 77% but ridership down 20%; Wichita commuting up 79% but ridership down 37%. In a few urban areas, the trends are reversed: Houston transit commuting is down 8% but ridership is up 4%; Greenville, SC commuting down 35% but ridership up 152%.

Of course, not all transit riders are commuters, so commuting can increase even as ridership drops if transit ridership for other purposes declines by more than the increase in commuting. This seems a likely explanation in many cases as most ride-hailing trips that substitute for transit are not commuter trips. Continue reading →