Public transportation in the United States is in deep trouble. Despite new Clean Air Act requirements, the imperative to conserve energy, increasing traffic congestion and the emergence of new technologies, most large urban transit systems have stable or declining ridership. Understanding why this is happening is the key to ”saving” public transit.
– The automobile is tough competition. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gasoline today is actually lower per gallon than it was in 1967. Factor in increasing fuel efficiency, and the real-dollar fuel price per mile of driving a car has dropped substantially. While congestion is undeniably increasing in most urban areas, even highly congested cities such as Chicago are experiencing transit ridership losses. And the automobile continues to prove itself the most comfortable and convenient form of personal
transportation ever invented.
– As the public perceives that urban crime and violence are increasing, transit becomes less attractive. Even a few well-publicized incidents on transit further fuel the fire.
– Financial support for public transit-especially for operations-is increasingly scarce. Local governments are strapped to pay for essential public safety and human services. Transit authorities, most of which are sales tax-supported, are feeling the effects of the recession. Federal operating funds have been cut every year.
Decreasing ridership translates into less farebox revenue. Many transit systems have reached the point where further fare increases are
counterproductive, because they result in ridership losses so large that revenues actually decline, not increase.
Transit operating costs continue to rise. Complying with the new Americans with Disabilities Act, operating fixed-route service with wheelchair lifts and expanded specialized paratransit services for people with disabilities, will be expensive.
Caught in this cost-revenue squeeze, transit operators are unable to invest in transit service improvements necessary to serve growth areas or to make transit more competitive with the automobile.
– Transportation is what economists call a ”derived need,” that is, people travel in order to do or consume something else. Therefore, transit`s success is closely tied to the way residential, economic and social activities are arranged on the landscape-”land use.”
The majority of people and many of the jobs are in portions of our urban areas not served well by transit. Most of the growth in population and employment is occurring outside transit service areas. Therefore a limited, and shrinking, portion of our people and jobs are in areas where they could use transit even if they wanted to.
Are the prospects for public transit really so bleak? Not necessarily. Public transit can have a bright future, but we must change some of our fundamental beliefs about it.
We must recognize that it is extraordinarily difficult to coerce Americans to unwillingly change our behavior. To keep the transit riders we have, and get more people to try it, we must convince them that riding transit is in their personal best interest. Sure, we can promote transit use to reduce air pollution and energy consumption. But to be effective, such appeals must be accompanied by efforts to make transit an attractive alternative to the automobile. Here are seven fearless suggestions:
– We need to establish a solid local funding base for transit. This base must be large enough to support existing services, keyed to grow at least at the rate of inflation, and-ideally-sufficient to support service improvements. This is not only essential to improving public transit, it is critical to its survival.
– While transit can never provide the comfort and convenience of the automobile, that doesn`t mean that we shouldn`t work to improve it. Throughout the United States high-quality transit services are attracting people. Providing bus and rail express services with limited stops, accompanied by safe and comfortable transfer points, and treating the transit rider as a valued customer with clean vehicles, courteous and friendly staff, and frequent service are paying dividends for a number of transit systems.
– We need to improve transit security. More police are needed. So is innovative thinking in protecting transit riders on trains and buses and while waiting. Technology in terms of better communications, monitoring and alarm systems can help.
– We need to expand incentives for employees to use transit. Employers can provide discounted passes, comfortable and convenient waiting areas, and connecting shuttle services. They can help subsidize transit service extensions serving their facilities, or can locate new facilities closer to transit. And, they can be sensitive to the needs of those attempting to tailor their work schedule to the transit schedule. Of special note here are parents with child-care responsibilities.
– We need to re-examine where and how we provide transit service. Look at the 1992 map of transit routes in any large American city and compare it to the 1942 map. In many instances, diesel buses are operating over the same routes over which streetcars operated 50 years ago. And, in terms of vehicles operated, there was significantly more transit service available then.
Urban development has changed dramatically in a half-century. High-density areas have thinned out. Vast tracts of what was then farmland are now developed. Outlying suburban commercial and industrial centers have emerged. Transit can only deal with this changed landscape by changing itself. New and different ways of providing public transportation are needed, including circulator feeders, organized paratransit, managed ride-sharing, and other unconventional services. If our only idea of transit is to run 40-foot aluminum and steel boxes on fixed routes on fixed schedules, then we have already lost the transit battle.
– We need to get a better handle on how we use land. If we are serious about promoting efficient transportation and the use of public transit, we must search for better ways to guide and direct the use of our land.
– We need to embrace new technologies. Chicago and other cities are planning or building light rail systems and heavy rail extensions. High-speed intercity rail is being explored in a number of corridors, including the Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis corridor. Promising efforts are being made in developing improved paratransit dispatch and routing, automated automobile information, routing and control systems and other technologies.
Together, these initiatives offer a good chance to reverse the perception of transit as the mode of transportation of last resort for those who are too old, too young, too poor or too physically disabled to own or operate a car, and to convince people that transit represents an attractive alternative to the automobile.
While the challenges facing public transit in the United States are formidable, our approach should be one of confidence that transit can and will rise to them. Preserving and enhancing the quality of our urban environments in terms of air pollution, energy consumption, congestion management, land use and the ability of all of our citizens to access all the activities that our urban areas have to offer requires that our use of transit increase. But that will only happen if we improve the attractiveness of transit as an alternative to the automobile. We know what do do. The only question is whether we can find the will and the resources to save public transit.
