More Lies My Transit Lobbyist Told Me

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Light rail costs too much, does too little

2007

APTA has put out another report that misleadingly claims that transit saves money and energy. While it is not surprising that APTA would try to mislead the public, the sad thing is that many planners and planning advocates will believe, or pretend to believe, the report.

According to APTA’s press release, the report found that a household that uses public transit can save $6,200 per year and that public transit overall saves the country 1.4 billion of gasoline per year. A careful reading of the report itself, however, reveals many flaws in their reasoning.

Ninety percent of the calculated household savings from using transit is based on the assumption that a transit household can own one fewer automobile than non-transit households. The cost of auto ownership, in turn, is based on AAA’s calculations.

AAA’s calculations assume that everyone buys a car brand new, pays the maximum finance charges on the car, drives 10,000 miles per year, and then buys another brand-new car as soon as the first car is paid off. In fact, the average car lasts 16 years in America, long after the auto loans are paid off. People can save money by buying a used car, paying cash instead of finance charges, and/or driving more miles per year.

AAA estimates that auto ownership costs an average of 52.2 cents per mile. The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that actual expenditures are closer to 30 cents per mile. (Divide line 69 in table 2.5.5 by the number of miles driven in table VM1 of Highway Statistics for the same year.)

The other 10 percent of APTA’s $6,200 per year comes from the cost of fuel. But fuel costs are included in AAA’s numbers, so APTA is double counting them. Even if a transit household were willing to dispense with a car, then, the savings to that household would only average $3,000 per year, less than half of APTA’s claim.

The net savings is reduced by the transit fares, which APTA estimates would be $734. Transit fares average about 20 cents a mile, so this represents about 3,600 miles of transit riding. But how many people drive a car just 3,600 miles a year?

APTA claims that it assumes that “when public transportation travel is hypothetically replaced by automobile travel, passenger miles are replaced one for one.” Since Americans drive their cars an average of more than 10,000 miles per year, anyone substituting transit for one auto would end up paying about $2,000 in transit fares a year. The net savings is thus only about $1,000 per year.

Beyond that, it is disingenuous for APTA to talk about “savings” when it compares auto driving with transit. The average subsidy to auto drivers in the U.S. is under a half penny per passenger mile. The average subsidy to transit is more than 60 cents per passenger mile. That means that a household that shifts 10,000 miles per year from driving to transit imposes at least a $6,000 annual burden on other taxpayers — six times the (corrected) savings to the household.

APTA also claims that transit saves 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline per year. To calculate this, APTA compares the amount of petroleum used by various forms of transit with the amount used by cars. But this reasoning contains two serious flaws.

First, in most cities, most transit riders are “transit dependent” — they can’t drive due to age, disability, poverty, or some other factor. If the public stopped subsidizing transit, these people might suffer a loss in mobility or, more likely, turn to private forms of transit. But they would not suddenly start consuming more gasoline.

Second, most rail transit is electrically powered, and that electricity is mostly generated by burning coal. Since coal is not petroleum, APTA did not count this energy cost. Yet in reality, coal and petroleum are functional equivalents: if necessary, we can burn petroleum to generate electricity or convert coal to fuel burnable in automobiles.

According to table 2.11 of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Transportation Energy Data Book, the average car uses 3,549 BTUs per passenger mile while the average transit buses uses 4,160 BTUs. Table 2.12 says the average commuter rail line uses 2,751 BTUs while other rail transit uses 3,229 BTUs per passenger mile. Thus, rail does save a little energy, but buses don’t.

APTA’s public transportation fact book says that 46 percent of transit passenger miles are by bus, 21 percent by commuter rail, and 33 percent by other rail (I am leaving out demand response, ferries, and “other”). Apportioning it out, the average transit rider uses 3,543 BTUs per passenger mile — just 6 BTUs less than the average car. That is hardly enough to crow about.

In sum, APTA’s report dramatically overestimates the benefits and underestimates the costs of public transportation. The next time you hear planners claim that transit is superior to autos, you will know they are ignoring the real energy costs and costs to taxpayers.

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner