There Isn't a Surge in Transit Ridership

Mike Smart, Mike Manville and I wrote an op-ed in today's Washington Post.  The recent APTA ridership report claims that transit ridership is surging, and we argue that this is simply not true:

But the association’s numbers are deceptive, and this interpretation is wrong. We are strong supporters of public transportation, but misguided optimism about transit’s resurgence helps neither transit users nor the larger traveling public. Transit trips did rise between 2008 and 2013. But so did the U.S. population, from 304 million to 316 million, as did the total number of trips made. Simple division suggests that, if anything, transit use fell between 2008 and 2013, from about 35 trips per person annually to 34. Many numbers look impressive without denominators, but anyone who examines transit use as a rate — whether as trips per person or share of total travel — will find that transit is a small and stagnant part of the transportation system.

We argue:

So there is no national transit boom. Why does this matter? The U.S. transportation system is deeply troubled. The country has difficulty financing improvements to its aging infrastructure, and heavy reliance on driving creates congestion, increases carbon missions, pollutes our communities, and is a leading cause of injury and death. No one should pretend these problems are spontaneously solving themselves because Americans have decided en masse to ride transit instead of driving. 

Nor should we misdiagnose problems caused by too much driving as problems caused by too little transit. Building transit systems is not the same as having people ride them, and people riding transit more is not the same as people driving less (plenty of transit riders are people who used to walk). Additionally, transit is not the only viable alternative to using a car. The environment is helped when drivers switch to buses but also when drivers switch to bikes.

Do read the whole thing for a more complete argument. I actually find the recent transit ridership statistics deeply troubling and suggestive that transit might be losing core riders at the expense of system expansions. This, of course, needs additional research, but we should not think that our current approach to transit is working well. We should be outraged at how little actual effect the billions and billions and billions of dollars of investment have produced. We can and should do better with our public transit investment.

The Relative Size of Transit Systems

Twin Cities Metro Transit just celebrated its three billionth rider. Here is a Star Tribune article about this feat. That sounds like a lot of riders, except Metro Transit started counting upon its creation in 1967 1972.* At that time the Twin Cities had about 1.8 million residents. There are now over 3.1 million people.

As a point of contrast (but without making any larger point), three billion riders are about 15 months worth of subway and bus ridership in New York City, not including commuter rail.

*I wrote the wrong year originally. Metro Transit was created in 1967 but started current operations in 1972. It took 12 years for the first billion riders, 15 years for the second billion, and now 13 years for the third billion.

Is Transit Ridership Up Enough?

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) released a report this week highlighting that transit ridership in the first quarter of the year is up five percent over last year. Here is the press release. This is good news for transit, and I guess we should be happy. However, I argue that we should not get overly excited about any increase in transit ridership because we have been spending billions and billions of dollars over the past couple of decades with the intent of increasing ridership. We should consider first whether transit ridership increased as much as it should have. Between 1990 and 2011 overall transit ridership increase about 20 percent (from just under nine billion to about 10.5 billion, data available as an Excel file through the APTA site linked above) while the US population increased over 23 percent. Cities like Los Angeles, after 25 years of massive investment in rail, have achieved the same ridership levels in absolute terms that they had in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, bus ridership, which represents well over half of all transit ridership and most ridership outside of a few cities, has declined over the past twenty years by almost eight percent.

While is is certainly good that transit ridership has increased, it is important to also consider if ridership has increased as much as it should have considering the investment made. Planners rarely, if ever, go back to review how their plans work out. In the case of transit investment, some reflection on how successful it has been is worthwhile and should be encouraged. Perhaps the ridership gains are worthy of the amount spent, but that's not immediately obvious. It seems we should be asking if ridership is up enough before getting excited about the gains reported this week.