Abstract
In the United States, cars have increased their dominance over public transit. Overall, transit accounts for only about 2 percent of passenger trips in the United States and about 1 percent of passenger miles. Even in the developing world, transit has lost market share to cars. Public transit is struggling. As the world changes, public transit needs to reinvent itself.
Urban transit has struggled for decades. The oncoming disruptions could invigorate public transportation and transit agencies—or lead to their decline.
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Notes
- 1.
Adella Santos et al., Summary of Travel Trends: 2009 National Household Travel Survey (Washington, DC: Federal Highway Administration, 2011), Table 9.
- 2.
US Department of Transportation, National Transportation Statistics, Table 1-40, updated April 2017.
- 3.
Michael Manville, David A. King, and Michael J. Smart, “The Driving Downturn: A Preliminary Assessment,” Journal of the American Planning Association 83 (2017): 49.
- 4.
Robert Poole, “Autonomous Vehicles’ Disruptive Potential for Transit,” Surface Transportation News, 7 January 2016.
- 5.
Chris Martin and Joe Ryan, “Super-Cheap Driverless Cabs to Kick Mass Transit to the Curb,” Bloomberg Technology, 24 October 2016.
- 6.
Henry Grabar, “Is Uber Killing the Public Bus, or Helping It?,” Slate, 12 September 2016.
- 7.
Sharon Feigon and Colin Murphy, “Shared Mobility and the Transformation of Public Transit,” Transportation Research Board, TCRP Research Report 188, 2016.
- 8.
John Neff and Matthew Dickens, 2015 Public Transportation Fact Book, Appendix A: Historical Tables (Washington, DC: American Public Transportation Association, June 2015), Tables 1 and 8.
- 9.
David W. Jones, Urban Transit Policy: An Economic and Political History (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985).
- 10.
Steven Polzin and Alan E. Pisarski, “Brief 10: Commuting Mode Choice,” Commuting in America 2013 (Washington, DC: AASHTO, October 2013).
- 11.
John Neff and Matthew Dickens, 2012 Public Transportation Fact Book, Appendix A: Historical Tables (Washington, DC: American Public Transportation Association, March 2012), Table 71.
- 12.
In 2013, the average fare for both urban and suburban bus and rail transit in the United States was $0.28 per mile. The total operating plus capital cost for all metropolitan transit service was $1.13 per mile ($0.78 for operating costs plus $0.35 for capital costs). For buses (a category that includes aerial tram, bus, bus rapid transit, commuter bus, demand-response paratransit, ferry, jitney, trolley bus, and vanpool, with buses representing all but a tiny percent of the category), the costs were $1.36 per mile ($1.12 for operating costs plus $0.24 for capital costs). These costs per mile varied greatly from one location to another and by time of day, mostly related to ridership. Office of Budget and Policy, 2015 National Transit Summary and Trends (Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration, October 2016); John Neff and Matthew Dickens, 2015 Public Transportation Fact Book (Washington, DC: American Public Transportation Association, November 2015).
- 13.
Manville, King, and Smart, “Driving Downturn.”
- 14.
Office of Budget and Policy, Transit Profiles: 2015 Report Year Summary (Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration, September 2016).
- 15.
Lisa Rayle et al., “Just a Better Taxi? A Survey-Based Comparison of Taxis, Transit, and Ridesourcing Services in San Francisco,” Transport Policy 45 (January 2016): 168–78; Feigon and Murphy, “Shared Mobility”; Bruce Schaller, “Unsustainable? The Growth of App-Based Ride Services and Traffic, Travel and the Future of New York City,” Schaller Consulting, 27 February 2017.
- 16.
Promoted by transit agencies such as MARTA: http://www.itsmarta.com/tod-overview.aspx.
- 17.
Bill Conerly, “Self-Driving Cars Will Kill Transit-Oriented Development,” Forbes, 8 August 2016.
- 18.
American Public Transportation Association, “Public Transportation Benefits,” 2017.
- 19.
In 2012, cars used 3,193 Btu of energy per passenger mile compared to 4,030 for urban transit buses. Light-duty trucks used 6,674 Btu per vehicle mile. Assuming the light trucks have the same average vehicle occupancy as cars, their energy use would be slightly higher than buses per passenger mile. Stacy C. Davis, Susan W. Diegel, and Robert G. Boundy, Transportation Energy Data Book, 33rd ed. (Washington, DC: US Department of Energy, July 2014), Table 2.13.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Melvin M. Webber, “The Marriage of Transit and Autos: How to Make Transit Popular Again,” Access 5 (Fall 1994): 26–31.
- 22.
Jeff Spross, “Why Replacing the Bus with Uber Is Actually Pretty Smart,” The Week, 16 August 2016.
- 23.
“Autonomous Vehicles: A Potential Game Changer for Urban Mobility,” Combined Mobility Platform, International Association of Public Transport (UITP) policy brief, January 2017; Emily Badger, “What Will Happen to Public Transit in a World Full of Autonomous Cars?,” CityLab, 17 January 2014; Carlo Sessa et al., “Results of the On-line DELPHI Survey,” CityMobil2, European Union Seventh Framework Programme, 2015.
- 24.
Joshua Brustein, “Uber and Lyft Want to Replace Public Buses,” Bloomberg Technology, 15 August 2016.
- 25.
Craig S. Smith, “A Canadian Town Wanted a Transit System. It Hired Uber,” New York Times, 16 May 2017.
- 26.
Spencer Woodman, “Welcome to Uberville,” The Verge, 2 September 2016; Eric Jaffe, “Uber and Public Transit Are Trying to Get Along,” CityLab, 3 August 2015.
- 27.
Robert A. Cronkleton, “Kansas City’s Microtransit Experiment RideKC: Bridj Launches Monday,” Kansas City Star, 3 March 2016.
- 28.
“A for Effort, but So Far, a Bridj to Nowhere,” Transit Center, 24 February 2017.
- 29.
Susan Shaheen et al., “RideKC: Bridj Pilot Evaluation: Impact, Operational, and Institutional Analysis,” Transportation Sustainability Research Center, UC Berkeley, October 2016.
- 30.
Internal memorandum prepared for an LA Metro advisory board, April 2017.
- 31.
Joseph Kane, Adie Tomer, and Robert Puentes, “How Lyft and Uber Can Improve Transit Agency Budgets,” Brookings Institution report, 8 March 2016. Another report suggests the costs could be even higher, $27 to $38 on average. See Greg Sullivan, “What If ‘The Ride’ Operated Like the Best Big Paratransit Systems in the US?,” Pioneer Institute, 7 April 2015.
- 32.
Kane, Tomer, and Puentes, “How Lyft and Uber Can Improve.”
- 33.
Nidhi Subbaraman and Dan Adams, “Uber Boston Announces Partnership with Disability Advocates,” Boston Globe, 4 February 2016; Nicole Dungca, “MBTA to Subsidize Uber, Lyft Rides for Customers with Disabilities,” Boston Globe, 16 September 2016.
- 34.
Waylen Miki, “How Will the Sharing Economy Affect Public Transit?,” Metro Transit Dispatches, 2 August 2016.
- 35.
Andrew Longeteig, “TriMet Tickets App Now Helps Riders Connect to Other Transportation Options,” TriMet News, 5 May 2016.
- 36.
“Uber + DART Means More Complete Transit Trips,” DART Daily, 14 April 2015.
- 37.
“MARTA On the Go,” itsmarta.com, accessed 4 September 2017.
- 38.
Rahul Kumar, “How the Uber Effect Will Reinvent Public Transit,” American City & County Viewpoints, 15 February 2017.
- 39.
Hanjiro Ambrose, Nick Pappas, and Alissa Kendall, “Electric Transit Buses: Transition Costs for California Transit Agencies,” Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, June 2017.
- 40.
James Ayre, “China 100% Electric Bus Sales Grew to ~115,700 in 2016,” CleanTechnica, 3 February 2017.
- 41.
Alissa Walker, “Can Self-Driving Technology Save the Bus?,” Curbed, 28 July 2016.
- 42.
Jerome M. Lutin and Alain L. Kornhauser, “Application of Autonomous Driving Technology to Transit: Functional Capabilities for Safety and Capacity,” Table 4, Princeton University research paper, Operations Research and Financial Engineering website, 22 July 2013.
- 43.
Danielle Muoio, “This Self-Driving Bus Could Radically Change Public Transportation,” Business Insider, 22 August 2016.
- 44.
Bryan Mistele, “Sound Transit’s Expansion Will Be Obsolete before It’s Built,” Seattle Times, 9 July 2016.
- 45.
American Public Transportation Association, “APTA’s Policy Framework on Integrated Mobility, Transformative Technologies,” 3 October 2015. This was adopted by APTA’s board of directors.
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Polzin, S.E., Sperling, D. (2018). Upgrading Transit for the Twenty-First Century. In: Sperling, D. (eds) Three Revolutions. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-906-7_5
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