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Why Is American Mass Transit So Bad? It's a Long Story. (citylab.com)
Jonathan English, writing for City Lab: One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.
This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies' only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.
Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations -- the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative -- are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. And it very rarely is.
This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies' only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.
Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations -- the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative -- are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. And it very rarely is.
Powerful people don't use mass transit, therefore there is no priority on mass transit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Many US cities had streetcar lines up until the 50s/60s. They were by and large privately owned, later bought by GM/Firestone, and went bust to be replaced by busses, which required tires. So the cities tore out miles and miles of track.
Stupid right? It's a failure of government that just wanted to move on to cars, and didn't see any value in buying this infrastructure (already on the publicly owned and maintained streets).
The US has long had this fantasy that everything can just be done by private enterprise. For some things it's true. I'm not a fan of government telecom owned telecom monopolies or the government owned energy monopoly in Mexico. But some things provide positive externalities like transit, or roads or bridges really should be owned and operated by the government.
Most other countries figured this out long ago. We still thought we could give short shrify to transit, and hope people just get along with cars, and move further and further away (some weird obsession with wanting more property).
Transit Utah is surprisingly good for mountain state.
I used it to commute for several years. The problem was the increased time spent in the commute.
Using the trains my commute was 1.5 hours from my door to my office. On motorcycle it is 45 minutes. In a car it was someplace in between. They offered wifi on the train, but the quality was too poor to do anything beyond a git push, email or basic browsing. Forget using a VPN. To make the train time useful I had to save work for the train. If I didn't have that kind of work to do, then the extra hour and half was coming out of my personal time. (my quality of life)
Now I work closer to home. Self transport is 15-20 minutes now. Mass transit is 50 minutes but only runs twice a day. But even if it was every ten minutes, I wouldn't do it because I want to be productive.
Self transport (Automobile/Motorcycle) equates to freedom in the US; go where you want when you want.
Mass transport puts you on someone else's schedule instead of your own.
Mass transit can't seem to function in the US because there is just too much space to cover. For densely populated areas there is enough mass to make it work. Without the population density, it cannot make enough money to pay it's own bills, so it naturally fails unless it is propped up by a government.
That statement presupposes that "improving service" could ever have allowed mass transit to keep up. How do you "compete" with personal transit that takes you from door to door, on your own schedule, day or night, from the convenience of your own home, without having to worry about being assaulted or robbed by someone riding with you? It was inevitable that mass transit would lose out when automobiles came on the scene.
The problem with the mass transit debate is two-fold:
(1) It is dominated by people who moan and moralize about what other people "ought" to be doing, rather than what they choose to do as a matter of personal convenience and time savings.
(2) Many of the people doing the moaning and moralizing don't believe in eating the dog food being served to the plebes; they drive their own vehicles. You see, their personal time is extremely valuable, even if they don't consider yours to be.
There is no "conspiracy" against mass transit. Commuters are quite capable of making their own choices about the quickest, safest, most convenient way to getting from point A to point B. Mass transit just can't compete with personal transportation, except in the very densest urban environments.
Most large European cities were large long before the advent of the automobile. This meant their transit infrastructure was designed at most for horse and buggy. To build roads to accommodate automobiles would mean tearing down buildings to widen roads. America by contrast grew up with automobiles and wide open spaces so except for the North East coastal cities the roads are at least big enough for most passenger cars. Several other factors contributed to make mass transit less of a necessity leading to low ridership.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We are told we need single-family houses to make us happy and wealthy - so we buy single-family houses. We are told we need cars to make us happy and productive - so we buy cars.
Mass transit has no effective marketing. It's just there, like municipal water service. You can use it or ignore it. And as we keep telling people that the "good life" is outside the city - and hence outside the reach of many transit systems - they don't invest the effort in using them.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
But almost all public infrastructure in USA are in very bad shape. USA got a D+ rating in 2017 from (ASCE) American Society of Civil Engineers https://www.infrastructurerepo...