[Continuation of last week’s post examining the state of America’s transportation infrastructure and its future]
The second critical element that needs to be addressed in our transportation framework is mass transit. The majority of Americans already live in metropolitan areas, and that percentage will only increase in the foreseeable future. Efficient, affordable, and clean public transportation systems are essential for tackling the transit and spatial needs of cities. But mass transit in the United States has, except in a few cases, never reached the level of popularity and importance it holds in virtually every other industrial country.
Let’s look at criticisms leveled (often fairly) at public transportation in the United States:
Inconvenient/Inefficient/Impractical
1. Complaint #1 encompasses a range of issues and is the biggest barrier to uptake of transit. The physical reach of public transportation is critical to its success. A bare bones transit system will have a correspondingly minimal ridership while more extensive systems (NYC, DC) that cover many different locations (including residential, work, retail, and entertainment) will have proportionally large user bases, generally. However, even if systems cover a wide area they can have infrequent service, significantly lowering the usefulness of the system to its users.
2. Another often-cited reason for not using public transportation is unreliable service stemming from construction, poor scheduling, and delays. If people are going to seriously consider using transit, especially for getting to work, the service needs to have minimal unpredictable behavior.
3. Appearance is one of the most undervalued aspects affecting the public’s opinion (and usage) of transit. Public transportation systems in the United States – especially bus fleets – typically fail in outward appearance and cleanliness. Dirty, outdated trains and buses actively steer away users because they are constantly in the public eye and, in a sense, are their own rolling advertisements. This will reinforce the image of an unclean mode of transportation and the stigma that goes with that. Conversely, if fleets and facilities are updated, they enter into a virtuous cycle of promoting a safe and clean means of transport to the public.
4. Crowding is a similarly associated downside to public transportation. The good news is that with the correct scheduling, this problem can be solved fairly easily. If ridership is still overwhelming the system during peak hours, it may be time to invest in more capacity.
5. Cost may seem like an odd complaint when speaking about public transportation, as it’s estimated that using transit (as opposed to a car) saves you upwards of $9,000 a year. Here, I am referring to the cost in terms of value: what are you getting for your money? Transit systems in the United States often charge comparable fees, but not all of them provide equal levels of service. A subway ride in New York will get you far more places than a similarly priced ride in Atlanta. For public transportation to see major growth in US cities, it needs to be economically competitive with personal vehicles. People commuting into cities make rational transportation choices, largely based on costs.
6. Lastly, public transportation often suffers from unnecessarily complicated interfaces, to its own detriment. We’ve all seen (or been) the tourist fumbling with change at a metro kiosk while trying to decide which of the 12 fare-cards to purchase. People want convenience and will often avoid transit if it is not straight-forward to avoid the hassle. This concept is especially important when thinking about the various public transportation systems of a city. Interoperability among systems (metro, buses, bike shares, etc…) is key to gaining, and maintaining, users. If people are able to have one card that works for all modes of transportation in a city they are much more likely to use it. In a busy city full of busy people, an intuitive payment system can do wonders for transit.
With a few notable exceptions, public transit in the United States has largely failed to overcome the aforementioned negatives and, consequently, has not attained mainstream usage. The good news is that there are plenty of fantastic models around the world on which to base upgrades to US systems.
Extensive systems with many convenient stops are mainstays for good public transport. For example, although Madrid’s metro system extends well into the suburbs, it also has enough stops so that, within the city core, you will never be more than a 10 minute walk from a station, and often never out of view.
Frequency of service on these systems makes them incredibly practical for getting around their respective cities. From personal experience, I can attest to London’s Tube having an average weekday wait time of 5-7 minutes and Madrid’s Metro being closer to 3-5 minutes – at every station across the network.
Great public transit systems are easy-to-use, welcoming, clean, and efficient. These systems are used by all demographic segments of society.
Finally, cost and interoperability play a huge role in making these systems successful. Most of them operate on an affordable single-card system that allows integration with other modes of transit throughout the city. By doing this, transit agencies give users what they want most, choice, while also making it easy to compensate service for construction or delays.
A modern double-decker bus like this easily has capacity for 70-80 passengers
So if transit systems were built like this in the US, would we see the same uptake in public transportation use as other cities around the world have? In short, yes. The New York City subway system, by far the most expansive and used system in the States, doesn’t meet all of the criteria that most foreign systems have in place, and still maintains massive ridership. If its trains and stations were upgraded to be inline with the above systems, usage would certainly increase. Every other system in the US has even greater potential to grow and improve.
For decades, public funding has deprioritized public transit with the result being that US cities have, in general, sub-par public transportation systems. Critics of increased transit funding will point to low ridership on many systems as evidence for their collective failure. When you build bare bones systems with limited functionality in the first place, it should not be surprising they don’t become popular. The people who will ride these ineffective transit systems are those that cannot afford personal vehicles and so are forced to deal with the inefficiencies of the system because they have no choice.
There is a threshold level of effectiveness, practicality, reliability, and cleanliness that needs to be reached for transit to be self-sustaining. The European and Asian transit models above have reached and surpassed that threshold. It is important to note that, while the systems used here are notable examples, this level of service and continuity in urban mobility is common in most major, industrial cities around the world – except in the United States. In the US, cars are still given massive priority and personal vehicle ownership is, in large part, subsidized by cities.
When we look at our city landscapes, we’re unfazed by highways, overpasses, and parking structures because that’s what we’ve always known – at least for the past 50 years – but when you think about land use through a planner’s lens, it quickly becomes apparent how much cities have bent over backwards to accommodate personal cars during that same period. Disregarding vehicle-related pollution, the sheer space cars need makes them a nightmare to have in a city. Maintenance for roads also devours local transportation budgets while construction of new roads has been proven to be the least effective measure for combating congestion.
From spatial, environmental, and personal cost standpoints, high-quality public transportation systems are the only viable route for metropolitan areas to accommodate their increasing number of residents. These transit systems must offer effective, practical, reliable, clean, affordable, and interoperable service so residents and visitors alike can easily move around the city. As shown in the examples above (and countless other cities), there is great precedence for these types of systems already. On the part of cities, to not act on this issue begs the question, “What is the alternative solution?” With many of our cities projected to double in population over the next 20 years, what other transportation option is there? Even if there is a miracle explosion of clean electric cars in that time (which Elon Musk is skeptical about, which should tell you something), it doesn’t address the spatial problem of where you put all those personal vehicles in increasingly dense urban areas.
The only solution is great mass transit. If you don’t think such a thing exists, go to any of the countries mentioned above and see just how far behind most US cities are in their infrastructure. On the bright side, we have the opportunity to leap-frog to the front of the pack by learning from foreign cities and skipping the mistakes they had to discover by trial-and-error. US cities have the chance to create transit systems (and a lot of jobs in the process) that can handle their capacity needs in ways roads and personal cars could never accomplish. Still worried people won’t use transit? Look at major foreign capitals as a litmus test – build it right and they will come.
Thumbnail Image: DriveThruCafe – https://flic.kr/p/q8pagC – Creative Commons License
If You Build It, They Will Come The second critical element that needs to be addressed in our transportation framework is mass transit. The majority of Americans already live in metropolitan areas, and that percentage will only increase in the foreseeable future.