Public Transit Ridership in the United States

Trains Magazine Transit
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Over the past several decades much has been written about public transit development and use in the U.S. The APTA Public Transit Fact Book has some insightful statistics. Here are some that I found interesting.

Between 2011 and 1990 public transit ridership increased 16.2 per cent. The greatest year over year increase (7.3 per cent) occurred from 1997 to 1998; the smallest increase was between 1993 and 1994. The greatest year over year decrease was -6.6 per cent from 1995 to 1996. With the exception of 1995 - 1996, ridership has tended to increase moderately when the economy has been growing and decrease during recessions. Between 2008 and 2010 ridership declined approximately 4 per cent.

In 1990 27 per cent of passengers rode heavy rail, 1.6 per cent light rail, 3.7 per cent commuter rail, 64.1 per cent bus and 1.2 per cent demand response systems. By 2011 the mix was 35.1 per cent heavy rail, 4.7 per cent light rail, 4.5 per cent commuter rail, 1 per cent trolly-bus (down from 1.5 per cent in 1993), 50.9 per cent bus, and 1.9 per cent demand response.

Heavy rail includes Chicago Transit Authority, New York City MTA, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit, etc. Light rail includes Dallas Area Rapid Transit, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, etc. Commuter rail includes Austin’s Capitol Metro, Long Island Railroad, etc. Amtrak’s commuter operations are not included in the numbers.

Of course ridership numbers are not uniform across the United States. Public transit plays a larger role in major metropolitan areas than it does in smaller communities and rural areas. In addition, it plays a larger role in those cities that expanded along established rail lines, i.e. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, as opposed to cities that have grown out along highways, i.e. Dallas, Houston, Tucson, etc.

Over the same period of time the population of the United States increased from from 249.6 million to 311.6 million or 24.8 per cent. T

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You like opening cans of worms, don’t you Sam1. Well if you’ve been in New York City over the past ten or so years, then you know the traffic and parking problems and costs along with the air pollution. Chicago privatized their parking meters and a radio report I heard yesterday said it now cost $6.50 an hour there in some places.

And in discussing public transit lets keep inter city services like Amtrak separate from commuter rail and rapid transit.

I don’t live in a major metropolitan area buy about a dozen time a year we, my Ridewithmehenry group, will ride NJT, MNRR, LIRR, MTA, SEPTA, PATH, PATCO, plus area light rail lines and even Amtrak. Most of the time we watch out the window as we pass cars lined up in traffic rarely do they pass us. Yes, sometimes public transit means going out of the way to get where you must get or do it on a schedule that may not be totally efficient. Still, whether a commuter train from Port Jervis, NY or Hackettstown, NJ or Doylestown, PA to Montauk, Greenport, New Haven, Waterbury, Danbury, New Canaan, Wassaic, Poughkeepsie, Spring Valley, Gladstone, High Bridge, Princeton, Trenton, or Bay Head, or if riding a subway or light rail vehicle, there often is a crowd and a lot of getting on and off enroute. I can’t see metropolitan areas like NY or Phila. without such service, nor can I conceive other large metropolitan areas without, either. In it all I also see a need for regional passenger rail whereby there are tight, reliable connections maybe even with the same trainset but definitely with one ticket, on a ride that spreads over a hundred to maybe 200 miles like New Haven to Philadelphia or somewhere beyond…not an inter city Amtrak train but a train to handle needs from like New Haven to Newark or Philadelphia to Stamford. The market is there, it has to be surveyed and planned so as to be useful to the public and to those who would provide it.

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It’s not a fact that people will not use transit if they have a choice. Ride any commuter train in the New York area and you will see at station after station parking lots filled with cars that people chose to park, and take the train.

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It’s not a “fact” in Chicagoland, either!

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There are several types of riders in the NY and Phila areas which I have observed. First is the commuter who will jam parking lots full at railroad stations 40, 60, 90 miles away from Gotham by 7AM. Second is the riders…many commuters, students, etc…who will ride between intermittent stations and lines at virtually every hour of the day. Third…there is my Ridewithmehenry group who rides just for the fun of riding and seeing how railroading works, trains run, historical venues and routes, and whatever else; but note my group is not the only one doing that, there are individuals and other groups, too. And I should add a fourth type of rider: weekenders…be it individuals off to shop, theater, sporting events, etc. or in groups out for a day’s outing in the city. I am sure any city with seven day services at least 12 if not 18 or 24 hours a day , reflect the same types of riders. Again…don’t confuse these riders with inter city or long distance travelers.

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Here in Charlotte, lots of people who have a choice choose the light rail. The park and ride lots are full of their cars.

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Do they really have a choice?

Traffic congestion, high parking fees (if you can even find a lot or garage that has space) and in many cities “traffic calming” measures designed to make motor vehicle access difficult.

Public transit is necessary in cities. I used it when I lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles (even picked my residence locations based on the transit routes and schedules).

I currently live in a rural mountain area. The end of the bus route that serves the area is three miles down the mountain from my home. The bus is parked at the end of the line and makes two round trips a day to the “city” on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday only.

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IMHO the only measure that can count is the increase in total ridership of a system when some form of rail is instituted vs the increase of total population of an area.

I would bet that Phoeebe can provide us those figures for Charlotte. That would give us a real feeling for how in the last say 10 years the ridership has increased or decreased using ridership figures of CATS 10 years ago to today. measure that vs percentage of population using it 10 years ago to today.

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Hofstra U did an excellent analysis on the subject as a whole.

http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch7en/conc7en/ch7c1en.html

I believe that most new transit systems tend to be wealth producing vs wealth consuming as they increase economic mobility and the ability of labor to find sources of employment without the large investment of an automobile, decrease congestion, and decrease pollution.

I also believe that added transportation options and transportation mobility increases Economic activity and GDP. I have yet to see where exactly a transit system has bankrupted a city or caused a city’s decline. Maybe someone could enlighten me where such an event has happened in the past?

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Yes, they have a choice. Some people will put up with the hassles and pay breath-taking parking fees so they can commute by car. Until they start to exclude cars from center city, as apparently they do in some historical European cities, you will have a choice. I won’t judge if it’s a good choice or not.

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There are 300,000 commuters in the Chicago suburbs who ride Metra daily to and from downtown Chicago. They choose to do so because we have a long tradition of excellent suburban rail service, which for many people is superior to driving , not because they cannot afford a car or some other reason, such as inaccessibility as suggested by the OP…

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Thanks for Transportation and Economic Development by Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Theo Notteboom. Their broad analysis offers some impacts of diverse transportation systems that are too often ignored.

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I think so as well. Generally that’s NOT the public view in Dallas with the DART system. Most feel investments in DART Light Rail are investments in Dallas vs just an investment in transit. So I am at a loss to explain where exactly that opinion originates from. We had a Conservative President (Bush) throw over a Billion Dollars at the DART light rail system. He did that because he saw it as an engine of growth for the city he was about to live in. He didn’t do it because he felt it would make a profit.

Likewise the same person as Governor (Bush) invested in the Heartland Flyer to OKC because he saw a strong group that politically supported it AND the investment by the State of Texas in paying for rehab on the bilevels used was almost trivial vs the tourist income the train would generate for both states. Pragmatic approach vs Profit and Loss.

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It is not opinion but fact. There are piles of statistics at all DOT’s and public transportation and transit agencies. A rail line providing passenger service for commuters brings prosperity to the area served and the area loses some of the prosperity when the service is no longer there. There is even evidence that communities with rail passenger service are more prosperous than those without not just in the US but elsewhere around the world. The facts and statistics are there…check you library, departments of transportation, highway departments, FRA, STB, congressmaPostn’s office, state offices. If it weren’t true, planners and politicians wouldn’t pay so much attention.

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But there is a problem with that argument. While the area served becomes more prosperous a much wider area must be taxed to pay for the improvement and all of the people taxed will not share in the prosperity. Of course, this is a short run argument. Had we taken it seriously we never would have developed an transportation system of any kind and today we would all be a lot poorer for it. But still, we all live in the short run.

A good example of this is the Erie Canal which brought a lot of prosperity to the area along the canal and also to New York City. In fact it made New York City the financial capital of the nation. However, all people in New York did not share in that prosperity or at least they did not equally share. However, I think that today few people would argue that the canal should not have been dug.

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Suburban riders are a relatively small component of transit users. Clearly, more often than not, if my experiences in New York City, Dallas, and Melbourne are relevant indicators, the people who can afford to live in the suburbs and ride commuter trains tend to be cut from different cloth than town folks who ride transit.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, in 2010 Chicago area transit agencies had 627,669,100 passengers trips on all modes of transit. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will counties in Illinois and Lake County in Indiana was 10,055,638. OMB defines a slightly larger area with a somewhat smaller population. Approximately 77 per cent of the population was over 18. The numbers would vary somewhat between the suburbs and the city core.

If one assumes that everyone over 18 was a potential transit rider for every 2010 day, 17.1 per cent of the population have used transit. However, this probably is a bit unrealistic. The other end of the spectrum would be to assume that the population only used transit for work, in which case 24 per cent of the population would have used it. This number is also a bit unrealistic because it assumes that everyone is a potential rider, which is unrealistic, and it excludes everyone under 18, which is also unrealistic since some of the riders, especially in the city, probably are under 18. Moreover, if we assume that most of the riders made a round trip, the per cent of the population using public transit would

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These figures indicate that more than half of all bus riders have other transportation available and choose to ride the bus. Also, more than three quarters of all light rail riders have other transportation available to them and choose to ride the light rail.

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As noted in other posts regarding transit use in Dallas, which is the only area where I have delved seriously into the numbers, approximately four to five per cent of the Metroplex (Dallas, Fort Worth and surrounds) population uses public transit.

The point I was attempting to make is that of those numbers a significant percentage, albeit not a majority, have no other options. If they had another option, the overall percentage of people in the Metroplex who chose to use public transit could be even less.

Also as pointed out in another post. of the modes of transit supported by DART, the HOV lanes host more passenger trips for less cost to the taxpayers than the buses, light rail, and commuter train.

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First of all, if some of the no car transit riders were to get cars they may well choose to drive their cars. But is there any reason to believe that the proportion of people without cars is going to change? As long as the proportion of no car people is stable it should produce a stable number of transit riders.

Since the lightrail is relatively new and so many riders have other transportation perhaps over time the number of people using it will increase. One thing is clear: The large majority of light rail riders have cars but still choose to ride the light rail.