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.

Comments

It's simple..

[fluffernutter]

Powerful people don't use mass transit, therefore there is no priority on mass transit.

Re: It's simple..

[jwdb]

Unless you are down and out with regards to money, why would anyone choose it?

Avoiding traffic and the hassle of parking and maintenance. Because you have a disability (say, blindness), or a general dislike of driving. Because you want to sleep/read/... an extra half hour. Because you want to do your bit for global warming. Because that extra bit of walking it requires keeps you just a little bit healthier.

Parking and traffic may be fine where you live, and I agree that walking in 95F/98% is unpleasant, but driving isn't the only solution and not everywhere has such problematic weather. Uber's fine on occasion, but not for regular use.

Re: It's simple..

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Every consider that the modern person just doesn't want to ride mass transit for their daily lives? Even if it was clean, on time and lacked smelly bums.....why would I choose public transportation when I can more easily and directly have door-to-door services with my own car?

Lucky you. I live in Chicago and it would cost me something like $450 per month to park where I work downtown.

Fortunately our public transit system is pretty good. I leave my car in the garage under my building and either walk 20 minutes to the train, or go to the corner and catch a bus. It's fantastic and it doesn't matter if I'm tired, drunk, high, whatever, it's a safe ride. My workplace is a block from the train stop and it's a 15 minute ride.

Even with the walk I get in to work faster than I would if I drove and parked. Plus, I'm burning like an extra 300 calories a day.

Re: It's simple..

[iwbcman]

Spoken like a true American.

Your lack of experience of what modern mass transit is actually like, ie. what we, as Americans, for the most part do not actually have, can be forgiven as a basis for your negative attitude.

Modern mass transit offers multiple advantages over our current Hobsian all-against-all free for all of individually driven cars, given your ignorance, let me list some:

1) modern mass transit has amazing air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, I have never sweated or froze in modern mass transit. You don't have to sit in place warm up your transit for 10 minutes prior to departure in the morning, you don't have to sweat and gasp for air while waiting for your transit to cool down from 120 degrees Fahrenheit, upon entering your transit after a long days work. It's virtually never too hot or too cold in modern mass transit.

2) modern mass transit is clean, well maintained and quite pleasant, and you might just be sitting next to corporate executives and/or high ranked politicians, for in places with modern mass transit, even the well off prefer using mass transit. Only in *expletive* societies like the US is mass transit considered only good enough for the poorest of the poor.

3) modern mass transit allows you to make great use of the 3-4 hours a day that countless Americans waste driving their cars. Modern mass transit has internet, electricity, tables to work on and places where 4-6 people can, if they so choose, sit together. You can text safely while riding in modern mass transit, whereas in a car you threaten the life of yourself and everyone around you. You can read, write reports, hell you can even code, surf the web, watch videos or listen to music. And god forbid if you are so inclined you can even *speak* to another also present human being.

4) modern mass transit is amazingly quiet and smooth. In some cities the trams are so quiet that bicyclists wearing headphones cant even tell their coming, ie. that's how little vibration and noise they make nowadays. Rapid high speed trains, a critical part of modern mass transit, are so frigging smooth you can fill a glass of wine on your table and leave it untouched over a 500 miles trip at speeds in excess of 250 mph on average. We have nothing like this in America, so I forgive you for being ignorant.

5) modern mass transit systems consist of multiple separate yet inter-linked systems. Your experience as a passenger is as if there is a single moving sidewalk, because you can effortlessly and quickly switch from one to the next to the next of these separate inter-linked systems. Modern mass tranist systems usually consist of inter-linked high speed trains, subways, trams and bus systems. These inter-linked system connect cities and towns over larger geographic areas, metropolitan areas can extend hundreds of miles in all directions, meaning you can easily work or study hundred+ miles from where you live, and still spend less time in-transit than you currently do with your car.

6) modern mass transit systems are incredibly reliable in terms of timing, if for no other reason than that are entirely isolated from automobile traffic and do not compete with cars. Modern mass transit systems run almost 24 hours offering service from whee early in the morning (5:00AM), until quite late at night(12:00 - 2:00 AM), and they operate on the weekends. If you want to be guaranteed to be on time to work or classes, use modern mass transit.

7) modern mass transit systems ensure that where you want and need to shop is almost always within some smallish number of yards from mass transit stops. This means far less walking than what is entailed when shopping in places surrounded by epically large parking places. It also means you can easily do a little bit of shopping on your way back home from work or school 2-3 times a week rather than trying to buy everything needed for half a month and being exhausted from carrying 100 plus bags of goods for your family every time

There is also the issue of urban planning

[filesiteguy]

I live outside of Los Angeles. In my case, there's a rail station about five miles from my house. There is also a train station a block from my office. I *could* ride a bike there and then take a train. I honestly would like to. However, the total commute by car is about 40 minutes (17 miles) door-to-door. The MINIMUM commute by rail would be three hours door to door.

Thanks, I'll take my car.

Re:Answer: The Koch Brothers

[spudnic]

We had a pretty forward looking transit plan up for a vote here in Nashville recently. It really was quite innovative and had good support.

The Koch Brothers came in and spent millions on anti-transportation ads. They rallied the residents in lower income areas behind the idea that they were going to be stuck with old buses when the more affluent areas would get the new infrastructure.

The proposal was voted down with more votes from those precincts casting ballots than for almost any other election.

Sad.

Sustainable Transportation Professional Here!

[eepok]

I work with transit agencies, city planners, major employers, and the commuters themselves. Here's what I know to be the causes:

1. Low population density - If you go to the denser parts of LA, you get good transit. Same with SF, NYC, etc. If you head out to the land of single-family homes, population density drops to the point where you need massive subsidies to keep a route going. But then, you're fighting against...

2. Suburban Road Network Design - When you have mile-long block-faces along arterials, you guarantee that transit riders will need to walk .5-.75 miles on average to a bus route... not even likely the route they need. Then there's the whole issue of...

3. People Don't Live Near Work - Most people have to balance housing affordability, proximity to work, and living in a home they like. Part of that is because those who can afford to buy a home typically want a back yard, front yard, and a two car garage (see #s 1 and 2) and the other part is that given the demand to live near major work centers, the cost per square foot to live near work is pretty damn high. And then there's the issue of people buying up homes for investment (rentals) instead of living in them thereby exasperating the "drive til you qualify" problem, but that's a whole other discussion.

4. Free parking and ignorance of the cost of commutes - People don't want to pay for public transit they're not using, so they vote down funding. That increases user fees and thus makes it unattractive to use because most people don't have separate parking fees. Instead, employers underpay their workers to fund parking costs. Moreover, people assume that "gas need to be bought" so they don't factor the cost of fuel into their commutes and thus can't accurately compare the cost of a monthly transit pass to the cost of a drive-alone commute.

5. Transit Fare Interoperability - Transit systems are typically city-wide or county-wide. Very few cross county jurisdictional boundaries. They are thus, in effect, silo'd. They have their own fare/rate structure (cost per boarding, discounts for multi-boarding passes), pass structure (monthly passes vs. 30-day passes), and absent a multi-jurisdictional agreement (Like Clipper in the Bay Area), many people need to purchase and maintain multiple bus passes for daily commutes. State SHOULD pass laws that require that each county get onboard with multi-jurisdictional pass/pricing schemes by 202X and then set another deadline to have groups of neighboring counties merge their pass/pricing schema until we have statewide transit passes. After all, it has taken over 20 years for the SF Bay area Clipper Card to get to where it is and it still only includes 22 of the local transit agencies. There are over 164 transit agencies in California alone.

I could go on....

Re:Because we're suckers for good marketing

[sootman]

> We are told we need single-family houses to make us happy and wealthy - so we buy single-family houses.

Is that why we buy them? I bought mine so I wouldn't have to share walls with inconsiderate assholes.