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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.
IN CA, Metrolink already has moved to apps or physical kiosks for payment only, cant do it over the web at all. Its absolutely disgusting. I had to call to find how much a monthly pass was between two points because they locked that info up in the app and removed it form the web. Public infrastructure should not be distributing exes ONLY to closed stores. There is absolutely no reason for public infrastructure to deploy apps to closed stores. We are on a terrible road.
Good-bye
When I was a teenager in NYC, one could walk up to a subway platform and count on a train showing up in 3-5 minutes.
Today, that time is more like 10-30 minutes, depending on how broke the MTA is from it's monthly pension obligations that month.
The reasons ridership is down is because it's faster to simply walk or to take a cab.
Mass transit suffers from the Amtrak problem. It is unable to provide adequate service because 80% of its budget is spend paying the unsustainable pension promises of yesteryear, and paying absurd salaries to current employees. Seriously, clerks working in MTA token booths get a compensation package worth well in excess of $100K per year, just to change US currency into subway tokens.
Fix that problem, and you fix mass transit.
Waiting for technology is the sign of failure of planning and thought.
Self driving cars are 20-30 years away. Wide scale deployment of waymos level 4 service is 10-15 years away.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
My employer is willing to deduct the cost of a monthly transit pass (in Portland, OR) from my check *pre-tax*, so they are showing their support by offering this incentive and convenience. (The pass arrives by mail each month)
That pass is good for; bus lines, train lines, streetcars, and the buses that run between Portland and Vancouver. It's quite convenient. (easy)
That ease of access should never be underestimated. Even though I got the pass for commuting to work, I have used it to travel to concert venues - I then don't experience that right-after-the-concert-crush of people trying to drive out of a huge parking lot.
Yes, using transit takes longer. There are many instances where I would not dream of using it because of the total transit time involved. But for a lot of reasonably-short-distance travel, it's great.
If more employers installed more bike racks, offered convenience in buying transit passes, encouraged telecommuting, etc. we would all benefit in many (some subtle) ways.
Seriously? You think we buy houses because we're stupid and fall for marketing tricks? We buy houses because they're nice and have yards. Ever lived in an apartment and had the unit one floor up get renovated? 8am sanding and drilling? What about assholes who blast music at 2am? People the world 'round prefer single family dwellings. The largest they can afford. It's not some stupidity like you imply.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If you want to list liberal cities that don't have good public transportation, I'd go with LA and Seattle.
Transit use in Seattle is growing at an absurd rate - something like 40% of all downtown workers ride transit now. Light rail has been the primary driver in the shift.
For a long time Seattle relied totally on a bus system. Which is silly - busses travel the same roads as cars, and get stuck in the same traffic messes. They finally wised up and started creating dedicated bus lanes... and, in some cases, bus-only roads.
But the real game changer has been light rail. Quite expensive to build, but it’s reliable and moves lots of people.
#DeleteChrome
We also have NIMBYs. For example, BART wasn't allowed to go through the expensive Menlo Park so so there was no service to the south bay. Turns out the south bay became a hot item later where tons of people and the high paying jobs were, while S.F. slowly became more of a bedroom community. You plan for today but the result may not be as useful tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be no budget or capability to change. Also Menlo Park has not allowed expressways through the city, so there was often a fanout of autos coming off of the bridge.
Now BART is going to the south bay but it's still complicated, it goes around the east bay so as to bypass Menlo Park. It will help a lot of people for sure but not as many as it could if it became a ring.
Then there's the issue that it's not enough. To get to BART in the first place is tricky. There's park-and-ride which just means drive for awhile and then park in a high crime area before taking mass transit. Or you take a bus or light rail for an hour first. Plus the cost; still less than the cost of a car, but if you already have a car because you need it to go get groceries and take the kids to school then it's an added burden; especially with Cal-Train which is not cheap.
On the bright side however, I see more and more higher density (and luxury) apartments being built very close to mass transit stops, BART, Light Rail, etc. These are no longer associated with poor communities. On the downside, many of those who can afford the luxury apartments seem to prefer Uber or other inefficient modes of transportation that defeat the purpose of mass transit.
Overall, from what I've seen in many areas in the US, mass transit has these problems: sparse, does not go where you want to go, is slow and requires multiple changes, limited hours. Areas with high tax revenue are low density and don't want mass transit; areas with high density tend to have relatively low tax revenue and can't afford the mass transit or don't have the political clout.
Powerful people don't use mass transit, therefore there is no priority on mass transit.
Powerful people want a society enslaved and subservient to them (the Democrats don't even hide this agenda). A good mass transit system that would make people dependent on it to get around would further that goal. Just imagine if you couldn't go anywhere unless mass transit took you there, on a scheduled dictated by the powerful, and it tracked all of your comings and goings. That would be hugely beneficial that would be for "the powerful".
It's THE PEOPLE who don't want it. I can tell you that personally, I wouldn't use it even for FREE, because it is inconvenient and unreliable. Hell, I don't think you could even pay me to use it, under present circumstances. Now, you can argue that even if I am right - if it were MADE convenient and it were MADE reliable, that people would want it. That would be true - until taxes were raised to cover the ENORMOUS expense involved to make that happen. Then they would say "fuck that!"
Laying in mass transit can work, if you're starting from scratch (your nation was bombed out, and you never developed a car culture of significance). But trying to lay it in after the fact would be so expensive and so disruptive and so unpalatable from the confiscation of private property and wholesale city redesign that would be required, a fair portion of the population will resist it - and it's not the powerful, who, in fact, would stand to gain the most since as they would control it.
If you want to do something for "the people" - promote motorcycle use every way you can. Less congestion, less parking required, etc. etc. etc. Yes, you can't drive them in the snow (easily), but if even 20% of the cars on the road commuting to work with one fucking person in them were replaced by motorcycles, that would be a huge win, for EVERYBODY.
The reason LA trains don't go to LAX is the powerful taxicab commission that has spent decades lobbying the city to keep the trains at least 2 miles outside the airport so they can carry the passengers the final distance. Only the future Olympics (2028) has finally caused a slight break in that firewall; the city is extending light rail to a station 1 mile from LAX, and are building a brand new people-mover train from the station into LAX. So, the airline passenger can take the light rail all the way to the Crenshaw station, get out and transfer into a people mover to the airport, letting you off inside the center of the horseshoe so you can walk to one of the 8 terminals to get to your flight. If they are true to form, it will be like North Hollywood where you have to walk across a wide boulevard to make the transfer.
Have a Day!
When I travel in Europe I never use a car. It's really rather liberating and I can stay longer because I'm spending less money. (Admitted minor point)
After that, I spent a good while being lower income when I was younger. Oh lord would it have been nice to live in a country where public transportation was widely available and I didn't have to spend such a significant portion of my income on a car and all of it's associated bills. When I go shopping or out to eat literally anywhere the vast majority of those people operating those stores are in the exact same boat as I was back then. The extra money saved by these masses would likely be spent elsewhere contributing far more to job growth then buying and maintaining a car whose construction is largely automated.
And then after that, I remember when I had to commute by car at a slightly older age. What a garbage fest it is commuting by car. I'd have a traded a slightly longer commute by mass transit where I could read, work, or just plane space out the entire time over stop and go traffic where I'm just stuck sitting there having to focus on the road.
And then after that, in all my travels in the US, our highways are never wide enough during high traffic periods and likely never will be under our current transportation model.
In summary, a car is a major expense for most Americans. Sure the convenience of car ownership is nice and I currently thoroughly enjoy it but for many Americans it's an absolute burden.
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