Everything You Need to Know About Mass Transit

Matt Welch in the LA Times: Confessions of a Lapsed Transit Enthusiast:

In the beginning, I backed my words with shoe leather. Honest.

Despite all the well-researched data reasonable people keep churning out, I’ve long been an enthusiast for publicly financed transit, particularly the least-flexible, most-expensive variety: digging billion-dollar tunnels under a famously sprawling and NIMBY-tastic county. I know and respect most of the arguments, but I also love the ride and the galvanizing effect the Metro seems to have had on transforming neighborhoods, particularly my backyard of Hollywood along the Red Line. Besides, name a great city that doesn’t have a subway.

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Once I got the old T-bird running, I began to take the car in the morning whenever I needed to be somewhere not exactly on the Red Line after work — the movies, a friend’s house, band practice.

This is where the rubber meets the road on all transit debates, and it’s why there’ll never be a lack of stories about how almost none of the region’s public officials who have the most effect on transportation actually take the damned bus. People who can take their cars will take their cars, particularly if they’re in a hurry or need to make multiple stops. As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa explained his non-transit commuting to The Times in November 2006, “I’d like to do more, but my problem is I have to go all over the city. It’s very tough because of my schedule.” Sure. And it turns out many of us have hectic schedules as well.

At any given time, roughly 72% of the commentary about transit is based on the Invisible Rabbit of transit-oriented development and “sustainable growth”: That what we really need to do is to “get people out of their cars.” City observers — who I would bet out-drive the parents of public-school kids by a ratio of at least 2 to 1 — are perpetually surprised that their fellow car owners insist on using them, no matter how close they live to the spiffy new urban village. The following paragraph, from a June 30 Times story on the subject, needs to be seared on the forehead of every urban planner south of the Tehachapis:

But there is little research to back up the rosy predictions. Among the few academic studies of the subject, one that looked at buildings in the Los Angeles area showed that transit-based development successfully weaned relatively few residents from their cars. It also found that, over time, no more people in the buildings studied were taking transit 10 years after a project opened than when it was first built.

In the meantime, transit should be seen — and supported — for what is: A way for poorer people to get around until they become rich enough to buy a car.

Yep. Mass transit doesn’t go everywhere you need to go when you want to go, it’s slow, and you have to live your life on someone else’s schedule. Once people can afford a car they buy a car so they can have more freedom.

I agree with Welch that cities should have public transit for the poor, disabled, and elderly, but it’s fantasyland to think that most people in most cities will use them.

I’ve ridden subways or trains in New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, D.C., New Orleans, and San Francisco. For those cities rail makes sense, which is why they already have it, but outside of the nation’s 50 or so largest cities rail is generally uneconomical (emphasis mine):

There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don’t do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it’s far less–9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America–all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.–1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit.

Then there is the cost, which is–obviously–$52 billion. Less obviously, there’s all the money spent locally keeping local mass transit systems operating. The Heritage Foundation says, “There isn’t a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides.” Heritage cites the Minneapolis “Hiawatha” light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

Compared to rail, buses are more economical, more flexible in terms of changing capacity and routes to respond to growth and population movement, and don’t require expensive and disruptive construction projects..