No Light Rail in Vancouver!
Transit Ridership Grows by 2.1%
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reports that 2007 transit ridership reached “10.3 billion trips . . . the highest level in 50 years, representing a 2.1% increase over the previous year.” APTA’s press release quotes its president, William Millar, saying, “Now with gas prices predicted to rise to $4 a gallon, there is a greater urgency for higher federal funding to expand U.S. public transportation systems so Americans have an affordable transportation choice.”
The Antiplanner is willing to admit that 2.1 percent is not miniscule. But let’s put APTA’s numbers into context. I’ll try not to repeat the points I made in response to APTA’s press release about 2006 transit ridership, most if not all of which are still valid.
APTA admits that high gas prices, not federal investments into transit infrastructure, are playing a large role in boosting ridership. The federal government has invested billions of dollars in transit every year since before 1990, yet transit ridership actually dropped every year from 1990 through 1995 (when gas prices were low), so more federal investments are not going to make much difference.
Yet high gas prices are not having as big an effect on American’s travel habits as they did in previous decades. According to this table of California gasoline prices, after adjusting for inflation, gas prices grew by 22.2 percent in 2006, yet APTA says transit ridership grew by only 2.5 percent that year. By comparison, when gas prices grew by 25.6 percent in 1974, transit ridership grew by 4.4 percent, and when gas prices grew by 26.7 percent in 1979, transit ridership grew by 6.6 percent. So growth rates of 2 to 2.5 percent are not spectacular by historic standards.
Even with recent growth, transit is still a mere blip on the totality of American urban mobility. According to the Federal Highway Administration, American’s drove 1.97 trillion miles in urban areas in 2007. Assuming an average of 1.6 occupants per car, that’s 3.15 trillion passenger miles. Transit, by comparison, carried about 50 billion passenger miles, or about 1.6 percent as many as autos.
Let’s say transit continues to grow by 2.1 percent per year and driving grows only at the rate of population growth, or 1.0 percent per year. Then transit will grow to 10 percent of total urban motorized travel after a mere 178 years. I can hardly wait. Until then, transit is pretty irrelevant in any cities not named New York.
In all fairness, I have to point out that urban driving actually declined by 0.39
percent between 2006 and 2007. The growth in American driving has historically hiccuped
when gas prices go up. Then Americans buy more fuel-
The APTA press release claims that, since 1995, transit has grown faster than driving. As the Antiplanner has previously pointed out, transit serves only urban areas, and transit ridership has not grown faster than urban driving since 1995. According to US DOT data, urban driving grew by 32 percent between 1995 and 2007, while transit passenger miles (a better measure of mobility than trips) grew by only 27 percent.
Finally, it is worth noting that APTA’s recently released numbers are only estimates, and those estimates are often later revised downwards. For example, in 2007 APTA breathlessly reported that 2006 ridership had increased by 2.9 percent over 2005. But it has since revised its 2006 numbers down to a 2.5 percent increase over 2005.
APTA is a giant lobby (2005 budget: $21.5 million) that cares only about getting more money for its members (which include railcar manufacturers, engineering firms, and construction companies as well as transit agencies). While it does a pretty honest job of reporting transit numbers, any interpretation it makes of those numbers should be viewed with total skepticism.
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Reprinted from The Antiplanner