Transit on the Rise

Via Ryan Avent, Reuters reports that mass transit is gaining in popularity: "Mass transit use increased by more than 2 percent in 2007 to the highest level in 50 years, with Americans taking more than 10 billion trips on public transport while the number of vehicle miles traveled was flat in the first 10 months of the year." Light rail (including street cars) led the way, followed by commuter rail and then subways.

You sometimes hear discussions proceed in which decisions about transportation are portrayed as almost entirely inelastic. Often this involves the supposition that the entire population of the United States lives either in Manhattan or else Wyoming. In reality, lots of people -- including most New Yorkers -- live someplace in-between. If the negative externalities of driving aren't prices, and the federal government divvies up its spending 40:1 in favor of roads over transit, and local governments mandate that "free" parking be built everywhere then, naturally, people in those in-between places will tend to drive. But as gas prices go up, behavior does change.

If we priced gasoline consumption and road use properly and spent more money on improving existing transit infrastructure and building some new systems, then things would change even more. Even for people who live in pretty sprawled-out bits of suburbs and rely on cars to get them around their community can find a good commuter rail line to be an appealing means of getting to work.

Photo by me; available under a Creative Commons license

Comments

No! No! No! I live in [City X], where large-scale mass transit is inherently unworkable because of the [weather/city structure/other limitation], and it's ridiculous to imagine that [citizens of City X] will ever move one inch from auto-based transportation!

Posted by James Gary | March 11, 2008 10:34 AM

No! No! No! I think everyone in [City X] should just ride bicycles! Mass transportation requires energy, and Americans are disgusting and fat!

Posted by Sam L | March 11, 2008 10:36 AM

That weather comment is no joke though. Mass transit in Phoenix doesn't work nearly as well because of the heat and the spaces between bus stops.

Posted by TonyDogs | March 11, 2008 10:37 AM

BRING LIGHT RAIL TO KANSAS CITY!

The dumb argument against it here is we don't have the density. We don't have the density because we haven't invested in it, using tools like....light rail.

Posted by Jayhawk Max | March 11, 2008 10:40 AM

Consider this:

As you know, supply and demand curves often have elasticity. For example, when the government imposes taxes on cigarrettes, cigarrette usage goes down somewhat due to increased prices. However, much like cigarrettes, there is only so much elasticity in US auto usage.

I commute to work by car, and I would love to take the city's mass transit. However, I have tried this and the results are less than pleasing. The buses are unreliable in when they arrive at the stop, how long it will take to deliver me to my destination, and they take a long time. My commute time more than doubles.

I believe that a lot of America lives as I do. I would love to hop on the subway to work, because the subway doesn't run slow due to gawkers looking at an accident. Something that runs on time and quickly. But right now America is in a weird place where the under 30 crowd like Matthew and I think more mass transit (not buses) is good. But the 40+ crowd is pretty much mystified. Watch the comments and try to guess how old the anti-mass transit crowd are.

Anyways, my point is that this is really a sign of larger things. People's ability to ramp up their usage of mass transit is pretty much at capacity. Meaning those that could switch to mass transit have. Those like myself are stuck in a car dependent city and have no choice but to drive. The elasticity of the transit switch has been maxed. So when gas jumps to 3.75 a gallon watch out.

Posted by freddiemac | March 11, 2008 10:45 AM

Freddiemac- don't the traffic problems that apply to busses in your example apply to cars, too, including yours? At least if you're stuck in traffic in the bus you can read and it's not your gas that's being wasted. (I took the bus regularly in Philly the last year I lived there to and from work/school and found it pretty easy. The bus drivers were usually well informed of where the traffic problems were and knew how to get around the worst of them and were allowed to do so.)

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | March 11, 2008 10:51 AM

as a commuter light rail/ferry boat user myself-- we are succumbing to an excluded variables bias: 1) increase in urban parking fees, 2) increase in public rail/commuter projects coming on stream and 3) increase in urban access toll charges. Together these variables could explain much of the increase (along with gas price increases).

A better output measure would be capacity utilization of public transport which would control for available transport capacities. I don't have those numbers in an aggregated form.

Posted by mike c | March 11, 2008 10:54 AM

People's ability to ramp up their usage of mass transit is pretty much at capacity.

Not if, say, "we priced gasoline consumption and road use properly and spent more money on improving existing transit infrastructure and building some new systems." Then, likely "things would change even more."

Posted by Aaron (stealing from MY) | March 11, 2008 10:54 AM

MattY, cars are a revenue-generator: car-owners pay registration fees and gas taxes. Even if the cost of parking is nominal, that generates money, too. Public transport is a cost-center-- the better it is, the more money it drains from the public coffers. Governments are going to provide just enough rudimentary bus service to prevent riots, which seems to mean that they're willing to serve a route only once every 20-30 minutes.

The political culture is against the idea of effective delivery of government services because "everyone knows" that "government doesn't work," so I really have little hope for improved transportation services...

.. and I say this as someone who rarely uses his car outside of his commute to and from work.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 10:55 AM

Using transit, it takes about 30 minutes for me to get to work, longer if there is adverse weather (as the buses are full and don't stop at all stops.) Using a car, it takes about 5 minutes -- longer if I need to shovel the drivway.

Also, transit takes a lot longer (as much as an hour) if I want to come to work early, of leave late.

I'll use transit if it takes no more than 50% longer than driving a car, and is at least 90% as reliable. Until then, unless I get a job where I have tons of free time, like blogging for a living, I'll drive.

Posted by Ikram | March 11, 2008 10:56 AM

"People's ability to ramp up their usage of mass transit is pretty much at capacity."

Wasn't MattY's point that we can increase this capacity by spending more on transit infrastructure other than roads? The modern suburb, for example, is as much a creation of mass transit as a driver of it. Why not move farther in that direction. It's not that people should give up their cars, but features like "Park and Ride" can help fill in the gaps.

Posted by Without a car | March 11, 2008 11:08 AM

Ikram, if you can drive to work in 5 minutes, I'm betting you could walk in 20. Maybe transit really is longer due to the route network but it!s not as though you are without options.

Posted by ERM | March 11, 2008 11:08 AM

The St. Charles Ave. streetcars are finally back. I wonder how much of the increase they account for.

Posted by L. | March 11, 2008 11:09 AM

Matt (not the famous one),

No, if there is an increase in traffic for no particular reason, I can find an alternate route. The bus cannot. Additionally, the bus cannot easily change lanes or accelerate.

Here is a great story about riding the bus: this winter my girlfriend rode the bus to classes. Some days we got hit with a lot of snow, and on those days the bus driver decided that, in order to keep up time with his route, he would skip her stop completely! Have an exam? Too bad. Shoulda left for school 2 hours early I guess.

Posted by freddiemac | March 11, 2008 11:13 AM

Mass transit is filthy, unreliable, inefficient, abysmally managed and overpriced. I'd also be swimming Sheetz Crick upstream without it, so let's make it cleaner, more reliable and efficient, better managed and more reasonably priced.

Oh, and word to bicyclists: there are signs posted at every corner on the boulevard athwart my building, and they clearly instruct you not to ride on the sidewalks, promising a fine of $250 for each infraction. There are officially designated bike routes on the one-way sidestreets located one and two blocks over.

Next one of you who either cannot read or is just too damn good to obey the law gets a broomstick shoved in your spokes. Pedestrians come first, and you are on notice...

Posted by A. Straphanger-Schlepper | March 11, 2008 11:16 AM

Without a car,

Well, I think that Matt's point was that transit usage is a function of pricing, and that if gas prices were increased, along with congestion based tolling, then mass transit use would increase. I think that we are really at the point where much of transit's ability to sap up that demand is met, and without a huge increase in mass transit development, you won't see an increase in ridership. Case in point: the city where I live has a transit system composed solely of buses. If they built some sort of a reliable commuter rail system, I would take it. I live along a main artery, I work in an office park, so the lines would probably go right past where I live and work. But since there is none (and I've sat in on transit meetings here, there won't be), I will be commuting by car until I relocate somewhere else.

Posted by freddiemac | March 11, 2008 11:20 AM

Having just moved from Dallas to Chicago, and sold both cars, I'd estimate that my transit usage has jumped roughly 2,009,045% in recent months. And I have to say, the results have been awfully ... cheap. I don't think most people realize how expensive cars are until they don't have them anymore.

Posted by strannix | March 11, 2008 11:23 AM

There is a plausible, though inconvient, method by whch I can take public transport to work. In fact, I would probably use it today were it not for the fact that I have to leave my office by 5:30.

All that has to happen for me to start using the public transport method to get to work is a moderate increase in gas prices combined with the ability to stay at work an hour or two longer, and I would be off the road at least a couple of days a week.

However, that would cost money, and the public has clearly decided it is more worth their while for my car to be on the road than it is to serve my public transport needs.

And buses? Don't get me started. DC's red line is probably one of its most crowded metro lines. Georgetown and the National Cathedral areas have no metro connection. You would think that the Dupont-to-Georgetown and Duppont-to-Cathedral bus routes would run every 5-to-10 minutes to ensure that these neighborhoods were steadily and easily served by public transport. Instead they run every 20 minutes. This strikes me as a "just inconvenient enough" style of planning. Most other cities I've lived in seem to adhere to the same philosophy.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 11:29 AM

The longer cities put off putting public transit in place, the worse the situation becomes. I lived in Austin for years, and the argument was that there was too much sprawl for light rail to be workable. But the longer the question was debated, the more the city sprawled.

Portland, OR approached the question more aggressively and put in several streetcar and lightrail lines in the past two decades and declared a policy of infill. The ridership on public transit is brisk, and the districts around the lines themselves have thrived. Give people viable options and they will use them.

Posted by Crumit | March 11, 2008 11:31 AM

Tyro, The 30 buses go up and down wisconsin past the cathedral directly into Georgetown. There are 4 different lines that do this. Yes they have a tendecy to bunch up sometimes, but it is not that bad, for the most part they did run every 5-10 mintues when I lived up there two years ago. If you insist on going to Dupont first, sorry I can't help you.

Yes the red line can be crowded but I don't find it too bad. I will admit my biases as I spent a year dealing with Tokyo subways and thus have never been on a train since then that I would define as crowded.

Posted by nathaniel | March 11, 2008 11:42 AM

I wish I could get to work in a reasonable time without taking the car. I live 4.5 miles from my office. That means less than 15 minutes door-to-door by car. If I take the bus, it takes about 45 to 50 minutes door-to-door with the three-quarter mile walk to the bus stop for the route that goes to my office. A bicycle would be an option on sunny, relatively warm days, but in Northern Virginia, unlike say in coastal California, it tends most days of the year either to be too hot, too cold, or too wet. So I drive. My wife takes the Metro to work in the city, which takes her about an hour door-to-door, about what it would take driving, and much more cheaply.

Posted by TheOtherCyrus | March 11, 2008 11:43 AM

As always, it is crucial to note the elasticities depend on the timeframe. In the short run, the demand for things like cars, gasoline, parking, and highways (collectively "driving") versus public transit is indeed relatively inelastic, but it becomes a lot more elastic over time. Indeed, that is in part because people do relocate over time, and their next relocation decision may be influenced by the price of driving versus using public transit for their commute.

To be clear, the suggestion is not that people will move simply because of a change in the pricing of driving relative to public transit. Rather, the idea is that people are moving anyway, and when they move, they will factor in commuting costs as they make their decision about where to move.

The upshot is that if the price of driving goes up relative to public transit, then there will be relatively little immediate substitution. But over time as people move, there will be more substitution as the price change influences where people end up moving.

Indeed, there is reason to believe there is eventually a feedback effect where in response to price increases for driving versus public transit, places near decent public transit can become more desirable even to those people who won't actually use the public transit. That is because generally, more people wanting to live in a given area eventually tends to lead to better shopping and restaurants, stable appreciation, better schools, and so on, which leads to even more people wanting to live in those areas. In fact, more people in higher density areas actually leads to more efficient public transit, so public transit is also likely to get better as a result of migration. Accordingly, in the even longer-term, a significant and stable price increase for driving relative to public transit can ripple into an even larger effect than we might originally expect.

As a final note, that is why one should not be overly persuaded by anecdotal stories to the effect of "I would like to use public transit, but my current public transit options aren't good enough, and that likely won't change unless I move." Again, the question is whether this person might take commuting costs into account when making their next relocation decision, and it just takes a marginal effect on such people to eventually cause significant substitution through migration. Moreover, the communities near public transit may become more desirable by the time this person makes that decision, and indeed public transit itself may become more desirable.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 11:46 AM

Google Transit is what made Pittsburgh's bus system [finally] viable for me. Now that I can just enter where I am, where I need to get to, and when I'm leaving or need to get there, why shouldn't I use the buses?

Once it's everywhere, I'm sure transit use will rise even more. (And don't tell me about some transit system's website. They all suck.)

Posted by Adam | March 11, 2008 11:52 AM

DTM,

Very well said. I see your point about long term elasticity, and indeed my own anecdote about commuting options should include "I don't plan on living in this crappy car-centric city too much longer. Eventually I'll relocate someplace like Chicago where I don't have to drive everywhere for everything."

Posted by freddiemac | March 11, 2008 12:01 PM

Both my house and office are very close to a direct bus route. I still drive because it is cheaper. Gas/insurance/depreciation on my car runs about $3 a day driving, while the bus costs $4.50 a day, $2.25 each way.

Also driving is 15 minutes, the bus, when it runs on time, takes about 45 minutes. It is also filthy and frequently contains smelly people.

I tried to do mass transit, I really did. But I like driving, and I am certainly not going to spend both more time and more money on it.

NE liberals I think don't realize just how pleasurable driving is to those of us who live in metro areas without crowded roads.

Posted by bob | March 11, 2008 12:09 PM

MattY, cars are a revenue-generator: car-owners pay registration fees and gas taxes. Even if the cost of parking is nominal, that generates money, too.

Car registration and inspection fees generally don't pay enough to offset the costs of operation, never mind any external costs associated with automobile ownership. In the District of Columbia, the city is considering "decentralizing" (that is, permitting private concerns to compete with the city) vehicle inspections since the current inspection center loses over $1 million per year. Well, it turns out that preliminary estimates suggest that the price for a vehicle inspection would need to nearly double (from $25 to $45) before any private company would consider putting in a bid.

Likewise, gasoline taxes fall short of paying for the roads people for people to burn the gasoline on. In 2004, the highway highway spending bill clocked in at $275 billion. Even if you buy the Heritage Foundation's claim that a third of the spending wasn't actually for highways (they argued that non-highway pork-barrel spending accounted for the rest), that's still $184 billion in highway spending. By way of comparison, in FY2004 the total gasoline tax receipts provided to the Federal Highway Trust Fund were under $30 billion. Yes, a portion of gas tax receipts are diverted to other purposes, but those additional receipts are, shall we say, rather less than $154 billion.

Posted by cminus | March 11, 2008 12:09 PM

I just did a price comparison on Greyhound and driving my beat-up minivan alone around Texas next week, and the price is still about even. Minivan wins tiebreakers.

To the critics, I suggest spending an extra hour every day on your commute to take public transportation here. Then, by all means, moralize.

To the poster above, population density implies desirability? So, uh, what exactly was "white flight"?

Posted by guyminuslife | March 11, 2008 12:12 PM

NE liberals I think don't realize just how pleasurable driving is

Apparently not! I hate driving!

Actually, this relates to an earlier thread-- driving is like talking on the phone for me: something that takes up my time and consumes my attention when I could spend doing something else.

At the same time, this might not be a NE liberal thing as much as a professional/personal issue: for lots of people, driving is the only time they can spend alone in peace and quiet when they have jobs in a cubicle farm or open-office-floorplan that resembles a crowded bus.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 12:13 PM

Gas pricing: it would be nice if we allowed petroleum products' prices to be set without the giant subsidy known as "a big chunk of our military spending". Admission: I don't know how much this is, but we've spent a lot of money trying to achieve greater price stability in the mideast---effectively, we've kept prices down for petroleum products, and the manufactured good made with and of them (the latter often abroad), with the expence paid to current and future tax-payers.

Note that this policy also ends up driving down real estate values in inner cities....

Posted by Michael Turyn | March 11, 2008 12:17 PM

NE liberals I think don't realize just how pleasurable driving is to those of us who live in metro areas without crowded roads.

Are they smelly NE liberals, by any chance?

Posted by strannix | March 11, 2008 12:19 PM

DTM, that is a good point but gas and parking are going to have to be very expensive before people decide to sell their car and live in a transit corridor on their next move.

I already live in one, and won't be giving up my car for my commute anytime soon.

Also, as transit areas become more popular, prices increase offsetting the savings from not having a car.

I think the most progressive solution to fund public transit is an ad volorum car tax. Gas taxes are hated and regressive, but an annual tax on a car's blue book value in excess of, say, $15,000 makes car ownership more expensive only for those who spend a lot of money on their car, and makes the pleasurable experience of driving a late-model luxury or sports car more expensive.

If I had a '97 Neon then maybe the bus wouldn't be so bad, but I love driving my A4 each morning.

Posted by bob | March 11, 2008 12:20 PM

To the poster above, population density implies desirability? So, uh, what exactly was "white flight"?

The times, they are a-changin'.

Posted by strannix | March 11, 2008 12:23 PM

Much of the recent job growth has taken place in suburbs of large cities. It will take years of investment for public transportation to catch up. If you need to commute between suburban towns, public transportation is usually terrible - time wasting, expensive, not available.
Also, people change jobs more often than they actually move. You may settle in an area, buy a house - if you change jobs you will often look for something commutable, unless your new employer is offering relocation (which fewer are these days).

Posted by CParis | March 11, 2008 12:26 PM

I timed my car commute and public transport commute, and going by car took 30 minutes and the public transport took about 50-55 minutes, plus I had to leave work promptly at 5:30 if i took public transport. So, I started driving, but mostly because I had to stay in the office later to get more work done.

The consequence? I read less, my newspaper subscription is no longer worth as much, and the time saved was just time that had to be made up in the form of doing things that I used to be able to do while sitting on public transport.

Even without large amount of traffic congestion, the concept that the "ideal" commute involves spending 30-45 minutes in a car using that time listening to the weather report or books on tape or NPR is pretty distasteful compared to the potential alternatives. It's just that the alternatives generally suck even more-- but they could be better, and if they were better, I'd certainly have no interest in driving for its own sake.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 12:33 PM

But for all this talk of commuting, I think a lot of congestion issues would be solved if we just took commuting to work "off the table" when it came to problems to address. Just assume that there's so much job changing and suburb-to-suburb commuting that creating enough transit to connect them is impractical. If we accepted that people were going to drive to work but instead designed communities such that their errands and shopping and visits to friends could be handled through public transport, we'd make great progress in addressing transport and congestion issues right there.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 12:38 PM

Also, as transit areas become more popular, prices increase offsetting the savings from not having a car.

This seems flatly wrong to me, at least here in Chicago. I pay $75 per month for unlimited ridership on the CTA (including the L and all buses). My last car, a Toyota Matrix, cost about $18,000. That's 20 years of CTA ridership just for the cost of my auto, without even factoring in things like insurance, gas, maintenance, fees, etc.

Hell, my insurance alone was running slightly higher than the $75/mo I pay for the CTA. Cost increases in transit here would never come close to matching the cost of car ownership.

Posted by strannix | March 11, 2008 12:39 PM

Before increasing spending on rail services, I would like to see implementation of the following:

1. More secure bike parking at transit stations. This is the single biggest gap in the multi-modal dreams of Bay Area transit agencies, where I live.

2. Increase dense transit-oriented mixed-use development.

3. Congestion tax implementation.

4. Bus Lanes with Intermittent Priority (BLIPs).

5. Educate the public on the value and importance of governmental eminent domain powers to stem rise of voter-approved Anti-Kelo initiative measures. Hamstringing governmental ability to acquire property for future transit infrstructure poses a serious threat to future transit planning.

Posted by Stax | March 11, 2008 12:40 PM

All the excuses by people who won't give up their cars and/or suburban houses are laughable. Basically, "middle class" Americans (and I include myself) are a bunch of proletarian riff-raff who have neurotic delusions that they are some kind of aristocracy can live like it, too. The suburban house and the private auto are symbols of their supposed aristocratic (or at least non-proletarian) status.

Riding transit is nothing less than mechanized pedestrianism, and going on foot has long symbolized being of the lowest orders of society. Thus Americans have some pretty strong emotional hurdles to overcome before they will give up their cars. Either that, or circumstances will make it give them up, which will cause some pretty nasty emotional dysfunction some time in the near future.

I've blogged a bit more about it here, for those who are interested;

http://green-gearhead.blogspot.com/2007/04/over-at-daily-kos-diarist-devilstower.html

(By the way, I'm personally an "extreme commuter" with a 50 mile one-way commute that takes 2 hours and involves an 8-mile drive to the station, an hour-long commuter train ride, a 15-minute bus ride, and about a half mile of miscellaneous walking to make connections.)

Posted by The Green Gearhead | March 11, 2008 12:48 PM

green gearhead's commute: 2 hours x 2 (trips per day) x (250 work days a year) = 1000 hours spent commuting per year. Of course, I'm presuming that all goes right and you don't have to factor in buffer time (e.g. get to the station early so you can park, pay for parking and get to the station platform). IMNSHO, Insane.

Posted by mike c | March 11, 2008 12:59 PM

I live in New Orleans, one block off the streetcar route. I use it during crazy-tourist-mayhem times of year, when moving my car becomes an exercise in racking up parking tickets.

Otherwise, it's actually cheaper for me to drive. I have a Prius, and even with gas as high as it is, it's cheaper and faster (and, obviously, relatively low emissions) for me to drive the 10 minutes back and forth to work, rather than paying $1.25 each way.

NOLA public transit is kinda crappy - and honestly, the streetcar ridership is mostly tourists who think it's quaint. Before the storm it ran 24/7, meaning it was really convenient for residents, but since they've brought it back, they've sort of forced it into this tourist cachet since the hours are not that great for those who work, live, and play here all year round.

Posted by alli | March 11, 2008 1:19 PM

The theme of Green Gearhead's first paragraph is developed at length in "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kunstler.

Posted by applecor | March 11, 2008 1:19 PM

"Of course, I'm presuming that all goes right and you don't have to factor in buffer time (e.g. get to the station early so you can park, pay for parking and get to the station platform)."

The two hours I quoted includes all such "buffer time."

"IMNSHO, Insane."

Believe me, I know people who have longer commutes than that. An all driving, too.

Read this article about one Judy Rossi:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten

She works in Midtown Manhattan and lives in the POCONOS, in northeastern Pennsylvania. Her 3 hour 15 minute commute involves a subway ride, a commuter train from Penn Station to Secaucus Transfer, another commuter train to Port Jervis, a 30 minute drive home, and about 15 minutes of buffer time so she can catch her train. (If she misses it, she has to wait a pretty long time for the next.)

Posted by The Green Gearhead | March 11, 2008 1:21 PM

guyminuslife,

Population density per se does not necessarily imply desirability. Rather, it just makes certain things some people enjoy more efficient. For example, I think most people would like to be able to walk a block or two from their home and get to a variety of attractive restaurants, shops, bars, and so on. But for that to be efficient, population densities have to be higher.

To be sure, though, different people have all sorts of different preferences, and there will always be some people who like rural and low-density neighborhoods. The point is just that a significant change in the price of driving relative to public transit can cause a shift in relative demand, which in turn can have ripple effects as far as where people are investing money to make neighborhoods more desirable.

By the way, "white flight" was a complex dynamic. It is true that the rise of car culture (aided by large public subsidies) made it easier for people to move out of cities if they so choose, and as I noted it is certainly the case that some people prefer that style of life. On the other hand, part of what was going on was a mass contraction of the industrial sectors in certain older cities, which effectively forced migration out of those cities. Meanwhile, there was also a black migration out of the South and in fact into many of those same cities, even as jobs were becoming more scarce. On top of all that, there were various harmful governmental decisions, such as poorly conceived urban development and low-income housing projects.

Anyway, the upshot is that in many cities "white flight" has now started to reverse, and "gentrification" has begun. So, I don't think "white flight" proves anything about the desirability of urban living in general, but rather was the product of a combination of contingent factors.

bob,

It is true that eventually a new equilibrium will be reached between driving and public transit. But the most obvious point is that this new equilibrium could result in significant amounts of substitution along the way, particularly when you consider the ripple effects.

By the way, it turns out that it is pretty easy to efficiently scale up public transit to meet demand--indeed, there are large scale efficiencies as long as population densities remain somewhat high. And on that point, it is also pretty easy to efficiently scale up higher-density housing to meet demand--in fact, land is the ultimate constraint on the supply side, and obviously higher-density housing requires less land.

So, there are no real supply-side constraints that might prevent significant switching. Accordingly, in the long run the new equilibrium can reflect whatever develops on the demand side (including any ripple effects).

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 1:27 PM

"The theme of Green Gearhead's first paragraph is developed at length in "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kunstler."

Yes, that's my original inspiration, but I don't think that Kunstler discusses the class aspect of pedestrianism. (I hooked on to that from a short passage in Michael Korda's "Horse People", and my experience as a father of an equestrian.) He's also not explicit about the neurotic aspects of it. That is, we claim to support democracy and "all men are created equal," yet most of use apparently have a secret desire to be the Lord of the Manor.

Posted by The Green Gearhead | March 11, 2008 1:32 PM

cars are a revenue-generator: car-owners pay registration fees and gas taxes. Even if the cost of parking is nominal, that generates money, too. Public transport is a cost-center-- the better it is, the more money it drains from the public coffers.

In this analysis you have included the revenue from car registration and taxes, but excluded the much higher costs of building and maintaining roads. Likewise, you *include* the cost of providing transit, but exclude the revenue generated from transit users. So it is no wonder driving comes out ahead.

I also think your analysis of public transit is wrong, because the better it is, the closer it comes to paying for itself. Poor transit systems generally have low ridership, and, therefore, a much higher cost/user.

Posted by McKingford | March 11, 2008 1:34 PM

Both my house and office are very close to a direct bus route. I still drive because it is cheaper. Gas/insurance/depreciation on my car runs about $3 a day driving, while the bus costs $4.50 a day, $2.25 each way.

Also driving is 15 minutes, the bus, when it runs on time, takes about 45 minutes. It is also filthy and frequently contains smelly people.

I tried to do mass transit, I really did. But I like driving, and I am certainly not going to spend both more time and more money on it.

NE liberals I think don't realize just how pleasurable driving is to those of us who live in metro areas without crowded roads.

Your math doesn't add up. If you drive 15 minutes one-way, on uncrowded roads, let's figure that you're averaging 40 mph and and so you're driving 10 miles. The IRS reimbursement rate, "based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile," is 50.5 cents/mile. So your commute by car probably is costing you about $5 each way, more than twice what the bus costs. If you're driving 5 miles each way at 20 mph, it still costs more than the buses and the driving can't be all that fun.

Obviously, this calculus places no value on your time, or recognize that it's fun to drive. (I agree! Although I like to read the newspaper or a book on the bus, too.) But someone is subsidizing your parking. If parking costs very little where you work, and if the roads aren't crowded, then mass transit may not make economic sense. But once you have a critical mass of people, it's not hard to see why it would be cheaper (even ignoring the externalities) to have lots of people take a bus instead of each driving their own car.

It is a problem that the bus takes three times longer than your car does to drive the route. Perhaps you don't live and work close enough to the bus route, in which case we need more bus routes. Perhaps it doesn't come often enough, a problem solved with more buses. Perhaps it stops too often, a harder problem to solve.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | March 11, 2008 1:37 PM

First four paragraphs there should have been italicized -- sorry.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | March 11, 2008 1:41 PM

By the way, shorter driving commutes actually tend to be more expensive on a per mile basis than longer commutes, largely because of the fuel inefficiencies and wear at start-up plus the lower-to-no time driving at more efficient gearing. From what I have seen, as a result many people actually underestimate the likely costs of their commute.

But that is all for gasoline-powered cars. Something like a plug-in electric car would indeed mostly scale down to short commutes.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 1:51 PM

Not to mention, that if the $3/day *includes* depreciation and insurance, the only way the math works is if he's driving an uninsured 1982 Chevette - which can't be the case, because he said he enjoys driving...

Posted by McKingford | March 11, 2008 2:02 PM

McKingford,

Although to be fair, if you gave me a roll cage, a disguise, and a good escape route, I'd quite enjoy driving an uninsured 1982 Chevette for a day.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 2:39 PM

I actually took a taxi once instead of the train because I was late to work.

Even though I bitch about how long my (~9 mile) train ride is from the far north side of chicago to the central business district -- the taxi ride was probably about 5-10 minutes slower at 7:45am.

Also, I find the smell of other people's exhaust far more disgusting than the rare occasion I'm faced with sitting or standing near a homeless person trying to stay warm.

The fact that you have shitty transit options does not mean that non-shitty transit options are impossible, only that they do not currently exist. (note also that the CTA is pretty slow and is trying to fix the fact that their tracks are in such bad shape they have to run 5-15mph over many sections).

Posted by dbt | March 11, 2008 2:53 PM

Back in my GLAA days, my huge aerospace company employer encouraged us to use the then new commuter train by providing a couple of vans to shuttle us between the nearest station and the plant site. It actually took me a bit longer to get home, but it was much more relaxing, and when comparing gas vs. tickets, cost about the same. Not putting miles on the car was a plus.

For metro areas with an LA-like sprawl problem, mini-buses and vans, in addition to the regular bus routes, can plug the gaps to the rail stations. However, if you think of buses as something only criminals and poor people ride, then enjoy siting in traffic.

Posted by cmholm | March 11, 2008 3:14 PM

By the way, buses can in fact be a success with commuting professionals, but it really helps if they are combined with things like dedicated bus lanes, and preferably busways. Indeed, you could combine high speed buses with dedicated highway lanes featuring automatic guidance and get a pretty competitive alternative to rail even over medium distances (because you could form efficient high-speed bus "trains" on the highways, with individual buses entering and leaving the trains to service various destinations).

And that gets back to the fundamental point that the efficiency of public transit is in fact a function in part of the density of housing, because the necessary infrastructure becomes inefficient if you have to spread it out over too much territory for too few people. Still, the more efficient you can make public transit through means such as technology, the more territory you can service, and also the more people will be willing to sacrifice a bit of yard or an extra bedroom to live near public transit (since more efficient public transit means lower ridership costs and commute times).

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 3:52 PM

TGG,

This kind of moralizing is nothing but detrimental to your cause. Assuming you don't live where I do (which is safe since there is no train system here, but brutal brutal traffic, guess!), figure with morning traffic in a city your 50 miles takes an hour. The percentage of people who are going to trade 2 hours of daily commuting for 4 hours is so vanishingly small that I'd feel comfortable saying NO ONE would choose that if you weren't providing a single example in yourself.

I work from home so don't commute, but in the past I've both specifically chosen a place of residence based on the train/subway system and just driven, depending on the quality and coverage of the public transit system in other cities where I've lived.

But taking the most immature and irritating possible condescending stance about your own choice to commute 4 hours out of you 16-18 hours per day is going to convince approximately 0 people that the X tons of carbon emissions they save and with all the different bus and train passes you use quite possible the X dollars they lose is worth 2 hours less per day with their family, friends, gym, pool, yoga class, whatever...

Your first paragraph sounds like the sad trustafarian kids everyone who went to college recently knew a few of. You know, the perfectly well off upper-middle class+ kids who feel really cool snatching a few phrases from some 80 year old communist rant and smoking more pot than anyone else could afford. Unfortunately there are still a few who haven't grown out of it by graduation.

Posted by Matt L | March 11, 2008 4:06 PM

So, the population went up 1% and transit rides went up 2%, for a net increase of 1%. Whoo-hoo!

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 11, 2008 4:30 PM

DTM, I also dispute that our political culture would ever be able to provide decent bus services that ran frequently enough to make them useful.

We are a culture that insists that our kitchens have granite countertops and the newest, most expensive stainless steel appliances, but we're happy when our public infrastructure is crumbling and inefficient. Granted, there's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg issue here: because our workplaces and public spaces are so hard to exist in, we want our homes to be large, isolated, well-appointed sanctuaries. Nevertheless, the political will is not going to exist to force politicians to implement effective public transportation infrastructure.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 4:48 PM

1 percent is nothing to sneeze at when one considers the size of the base, but here is some more fine-grained information:

"The largest area of mass transit growth was in light rail use, which includes street cars and trolleys, with a 6 percent increase during 2007. Commuter rails were second with an increase of 5.5 percent in ridership and subway ridership had an increase of 3.1 percent. Cities with less than 100,000 people also saw a large increase -- 6.4 percent -- in public transportation use."

Those are extremely significant year-of-year increases, and I suspect we are beginning to see the first part of the longer-term elasticity of demand, since gas prices first really spiked in real terms back in 2005.

I also don't think it will come as a surprise to many people that rail would lead the way, since it is generally the most attractive public transit alternative. As I was noting above, however, you can make bus systems that can compete with rail for riders--they just take infrastructure, although generally less costly infrastructure than rail.

Finally, I personally find the small cities data interesting. As always, I think it is worth remembering that higher density housing and efficient public transit doesn't mean everyone has to pack into Manhattan. You can really do this with any size of city.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 4:49 PM

Tyro,

Well, high-end bus services are already being put into place in many American cities, such as the Silver Line in Boston, the Metro Orange Line in Los Angeles, and Seattle's "Bus Tunnel" system (which was just upgraded). And it happens that my wife takes an express bus to her job that travels a dedicated busway. Of course, entire American cities were once built around streetcar lines, which are basically the same idea.

That said, I agree that for whatever reason, we went through a long period in which expending money on public transit was generally not popular with American voters. I think that may be changing, but we shall see.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 5:06 PM

DTM, as someone who has himself ridden the silver line, I dispute that this is anything cities should be imitating.

In fact, I highly suspect that the silver line came about because Lyle Lanley dropped by the MBTA and gave a rousing musical presentation for why it would be a great idea.

Posted by Tyro | March 11, 2008 5:16 PM

Tyro,

I offered the Silver Line only for proof of the limited proposition that there is sufficient political will in some American cities for high-end buses. As for the merits of the Silver Line, I have no particular opinion. Indeed, I understand it has had a lot of problems in execution, including some perverse routing, and that the original planning for "Phase III" has been scrapped.

That said, as I understand it, the Silver Line has managed to get this far despite all the problems because the alternative would be a light rail line. And that is really the point about high-end buses: they give you a variety of intermediary options between normal bus service and light rail, at various cost points and with various trade-offs. Now, that does create the possibility of planners doing something that pleases no one. On the other hand, if done right, it may satisfy commuter demand for public transit at a more reasonable cost than light rail.

Posted by DTM | March 11, 2008 6:02 PM

It's all about the gas prices, my friends.

King County (surrounding Seattle) says bus ridership increased a record-setting 7 percent this year -- their vanpool program increased 18 percent. In fact, for buses, they're currently maxed out, and need to buy new ones, as all of the new riders are (uncomfortably) crowding current routes. Microsoft has given up trying to convince Metro to rearrange routes, and now has its own little bus company with free wifi and reserved seats. Seattle has voted stupidly on transit over and over and over, and yet give us 3.00+ gas, and suddenly the will is there.

Posted by shereld | March 11, 2008 7:37 PM

Meh. As I am reading this thread, I am wondering how well these car-favorable arguments hold up if gas prices were to, say, double to $6.00 a gallon. I think a lot of suburbs would be seeing a lot more car pools and private bus lines. The higher gas prices go, the more attractive public transport, etc., becomes. So the question is, how high do gas prices go, in say 5 years? I'd say $6 a gallon isn't out of the question in three...

Posted by Diablevert | March 11, 2008 10:47 PM

I offered the Silver Line only for proof of the limited proposition that there is sufficient political will in some American cities for high-end buses. As for the merits of the Silver Line, I have no particular opinion

To follow up on this, what's so bad about the Silver Line? I take it most days, connecting to the Red Line, and it's like the world's most reliable bus. If it could just go underground at NEMC, before getting hung up in Chinatown, it'd be perfect.

I'd rather ride the subway, certainly, and there's a real issue in that they decided to run a line to Dudley Sq but wouldn't spring for a subway, but it's a very nice option. Beats the crap out of the #1 bus for reliability, and the #1 is the most reliable line in the city.

Posted by DivGuy | March 11, 2008 11:46 PM

DivGuy,

Again without claiming to be an expert, that part of the Silver Line looks to me like a typical use of a high-end bus system as a cheaper alternative to a rail system.

A popular variation is where you have a dedicated busway with limited access points, and different commuter buses can circle through different neighborhoods before hopping on the busway for the express portion of their route. The nifty thing about that approach is that it can actually be more convenient for many riders than a rail system, insofar as it is basically like having a bus coming nearer to their home to take them over to their local station.

And it looks to me like Boston may have been going for this approach with the other part of the Silver Line (serving the Waterfront and Logan). But I gather that may have been the more controversial part (holding aside the people who would have preferred some sort of rail line on the other part). I can attest that approach can work, however, so I think the problem may have been in the execution.

Posted by DTM | March 12, 2008 6:19 AM