But an analysis of the cost of private transportation also has to include road costs, so you'd have to prove public transportation somehow takes a larger share of that. Buses do cause more pavement damage than cars, but they demand fewer lanes and so contribute much less to new construction, as well as to pollution, congestion, policing and health and disability costs, compared to private transportation.

but for that portion of their commute they may be driving alongside people who drive all the way to work, so that portion of the commute is a wash and only the segment where they are using different modes needs to be compared

Source?


That’s your weakest argument since it ignores all the complexities of how transportation is funded, and in particular, totally ignore the immense personal investments of car commuting (even though you said you were referring to total costs, not just government costs), that obviously aren’t available to municipalities that want to offer drivers an alternative.

I wonder if myrridin is comparing the costs of building a mostly new public transit system with the costs of maintaining an existing automobile system?

As a thought experiment, I wonder what it would be like if half the country magically had a system where only public transit was subsidized by the government, and the other half of the country had a system where only automobiles were subsidized. Which system would be cheaper, more efficient, more pleasing to the citizens, and more conducive to commerce?

Here are a couple links that discuss transportation costs in great detail:

http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm12.htm
http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm66.htm
http://www.planetizen.com/node/35075
http://www.transact.org/library/deco...ican_dream.pdf
http://www.ti.org/vaupdate41.html

The last one seems to support what myrridin is saying and is a rebuttal to the link preceding it. The first two seem to have a more balanced approach. However, I haven't had tome to do more than skim them over, so don't take my word for it.

We continue to see fare increases and depressed ridership and it has become a nasty cycle... also included in this is the mis-perception that transit use is for people without the means to drive / afford a car when many users do so because they can see the environmental benefits.

So the city continues to expand roads and freeways for motorists and increase transit fares and monthly passes are reaching a point where they are above the means of low income users.

I feel that if the city lowered fares from the nearly $3.00 they charge now to $1.00 and reduced the cost of monthly passes they would see increased ridership as more people would see this is an affordable and viable mode of transport and a lot of promotion would have to be done to encourage new users.

Our city is about to see some major changes and expansion in our light rail and cycling facilities which should connect some of the dots and increase ridership from a number of areas and may also encourage multi modal use if the city would allow bicycles on the trains during peak hours.

Our city planners do not seem to understand that if they want to encourage multi modal use they need to change their light rail policies and make provisions for cyclists to use the train during peak hours.

Now that you mention it, it does seem like one of the biggest problems with transit is that the companies are very conservative and risk averse. The car companies are coming up with new stuff all the time, but buses and trains haven't changed significantly in many years.

The city of Logan, Utah (pop. 40,000) has free bus transportation for all. Even includes free, but less frequent, runs intio the rest of the county.
Yes, free to the riders, but paid for by taxes.
If they can do it, why can't your city?

That last one is part of a series of publications by Randal O'Toole opposing public transit - expecially light rail - and "smart growth". I've seen critiques of his work and wil look for some.

Not specific to that link, there are a few points that are often overlooked in comparison of costs. One is that private and public transportation don't occur in separate universes, they interact. Part of the money spent on public transportation benefits private drivers. For example, one reason it's possible to drive a car into Manhattan in rush hour at all, is because so many people take the subway. If it was shut down and all those people tried to drive (if they even had cars) traffic would be frozen. So the money spent on the subway benefits people who still choose to drive.

It seem obvious that public transport works best in high density cities and not so well in low density regions (a point Robert Foster and I have often discussed here) but what is often not discussed is that the means of transportation available shapes the city. If you build a freeway from downtown 10 miles out to the rural fringe of the city, many people will settle out there and drive long distances to work and malls will appear at the exits. If you build a subway 5 miles out to the inner 'burbs, high density housing and streetfront shopping will spring up all along the route and especially clustered around the stations. Those people will have a shorter commute to work and may do some of their other errands on foot. So when people want to compare the costs of private car driving to public transit on a "per mile" basis, they are ignoring the realiy that it is the nature of car driving that it generally involves more mileage than public transit, and that is one of the reasons it is more expensive.

No. I am comparing new costs. The key is on a per rider basis. As I have said, I believe that transit serves a valuable purpose; however, it is not the complete solution that many folks seem to believe. Transit has many significant draw backs, not the least of which is the greater per rider cost, that prevents it from replacing the personal vehicle. Indeed, most transit requires the same infrastructure, as the personal vehicle. That is part of the reason that it costs more per rider/person transported.

And given that transit ridership fares are already well below the actual costs of such transportation, I see no reason to further subsidize such transport. At least on a general basis. It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to means test free passes, like we do with other forms of welfare, after all why should we subsidize transport for people who can afford to pay their own way?

And I don't believe environmental benefits are a good reason for such subsidies. Folks who care about the environment, as opposed to those who simply want to sponge off of their neighbors, will make choices without regard to cost. Indeed we have many examples of products that sell for a premium because of the perceived environmental benefits. Things like hybrids, recycled products, those annoying compact fluorescents...

If public transit is too pricey, most people won't be able to use it, no matter how motivated they are to benefit the environment. Even more to the point, if transit is never built in an area (because some people don't want to help pay for it) it will be unavailable to even the staunchest environmentalists.

I believe you are taking me out of context. It is a given that transit needs to be subsidized in order to have any chance of viability. I was referring to the additional subsidy of making it free. I think the imposed costs need to be reasonable, and that always means a subsidy, since no transit system can be self sufficient.

While transit has a place, it is not the miracle cure to our transportation woes that some believe. In particular, fixed guideway transit (rail) is of very limited functionality. In those places with the right conditions it can work fairly well, but those conditions are relatively rare.

I agree with the basics of what you say here, but I imagine you and I would disagree sharply on the share of transportation dollars that should go to cars vs. transit.

Also I see transit becoming more valuable when more money is invested in it, while I think we've about reached the margin on cars.

Not sure we would disagree. I believe all road funding should come from the users of the roads (user fees) with none coming from the general fund. I believe that transit funding (with a few exceptions) should come solely from the general fund. While I will agree that roads (with current technologies) are near the limit in a few places in the US, In most places, there is more than sufficient room for growth. Which is good, since a community either grows or it dies... (Now that is something we would probably disagree on).

What we have here in Utah.
My Son cannot afford to ride the bus so he drives a car.
My ex parts guy could not afford to ride the train so he drives a 1 ton truck getting 8mpg
The State keeps saying,,,"Ride the train,,,Ride the bus" but and they just keep building more roads for cars.

I wish they would quit building all the roads and cut the public a deal on Public Transportation.
Folks would ride but not when it is cheaper to drive.

Ding Ding Ding
I think you hit the nail on the head. Here in Boston, it's so expensive to park downtown that it seems that only the really well off people do it and lots of people take the train from all walks of life. When the costs of private transit exceed those of public transit by enough to cover the inconvenience (or public transit just becomes more convenient) then and only then will you see more people taking it. Even if it's free, if it's not convenient, people will just not use it. I say a low, nonzero fee to keep people feeling some ownership to it (and not entitlement) is good, but also making it convenient (enough routes to enough locations and high enough frequency) are ideal, but only then in high density areas. Low density areas, it just doesn't work except as a connector to those high population density areas (spokes with few stops in suburbs to city hubs).

That is what my Senator said to me last Thursday, that "people will drive as long as they can park." So the key to reducing driving is reducing parking.

at my last university (michigan state) there used to be a lot of parking on campus (well relatively a lot). When I was involved in the student government many years ago, the university planners had plans for moving all parking to the extreme edges of campus and getting rid of a few roads to force everyone into using the mass transit system. As far as I knew they never went through with that as it would be so unpopular to get rid of the parking (and there I thought parking was expensive when I had to pay $250 a year to park at work), but that's really what needs to be done if they want to get more people to use mass transit. Not sure if there are environmental gains if people have to drive more to park at the edges of campus it causes them to go an indirect route followed by riding a bus in, but maybe that's the first step in getting them to take a bus the whole way in from home.

Anyone who believes that driving a personally owned car is cheaper than what we charge (as opposed to what it costs) for mass transit simply can't do the math (which frankly isn't surprising considering the state of education in this country)... Mass transit is cheaper for the riders than the driving. It just takes more time, ie. it is less convenient... What people want is for the transit system to pick them up at their front door, drop them off at their destination, and not bother them by making them wait for anyone else. In short that want a personal driver with no cost to themselves...

They already cut the public a deal on public transit. If the transit riders were charged just enough to cover operating costs (not even counting capitol costs) most transit systems would see a 5-10 fold increase in ridership fees.

Maybe, or maybe since they are going to use a car for recreation, they are already committed to the fixed costs. Under that scenario, the relevant cost comparison would be the marginal per mile costs of driving versus taking transit. I'm sure nearly all Americans would factor in a "cost" for the inconvenience of public transit that would always be just big enough to justify driving, but some may not need to do that to make the math work out.

On a separate note, many posts have mentioned environmental issues related to transit choices. There was a paper published in fall, 2007 (or was it 2008?) that looked at the impact of particulates in the air in Boston (I think), almost all of which were from what was going on in the roadways. The conclusion of the study was that the impact of this pollution on the I.Q.s of the children was on the same order of magnitude as ingesting lead paint chips. Of course, this "cost" of driving (and buses, for that matter) is entirely externalized.

I wonder how many other costs of cars are externalized. For instance, the acreage required to operate and store all these cars causes much longer transport distances for food and fiber, since it can no longer be grown near the cities.

Why can't transit be used for recreational purpose? If someone chooses to purchase a car, they have assumed the largest component related to vehicle based transportation costs and therefore done much to insure that transit would "cost" them more than driving, since they are not counting the costs of the vehicle. If you want an apples to apples comparison, then the costs associated with a vehicle must be included, which is why the minimal transit fees we charge are always going to be less... There is no good reason to eliminate even those minimal costs.

While there are undoubtably externalized costs in almost any human activity, such "studies" are notorious for cooking the numbers to serve the agenda of the folks doing the study. This is the reason that all such "soft" cost estimates vary so widely...

It isn't the acreage required to operate and store those cars which cause the food to be grown so far from the cities, its the number of people in the city. Indeed any large city has always required extensive transport distances for food stuffs, simply because the population densities associated with cities require tremendous acreage to simply feed the city...

Your statement might be true for today's global economy that many economists falsely assume is the only possible economy. But there are villages all over the world that have been home to stable numbers of people for thousands of years. All of the cities of Europe had population shrinkage during the Black Plague of the 13th century. In fact, Europe is losing population now but the cities remain vibrant. My own home state loses population every time there's a major recession but always bounces back.

I have been watching them tear down a city block worth of houses about five minutes from here... a new light rail expansion will end a few minutes walk from my house and join the north central side of the city with the far south east side and more points farther north.

Alongside this will be improved cycling and walking infrastructure and some reduction of road lanes and all in all it should bring a little more vitality to this neighbourhood without encroaching on it too much.

Not sure what you mean by stable, but I am unaware of any human population that remains constant. Like most animals, the populations go through boom/bust cycles. However, I was mostly referring to economic growth. The problem with slow/no growth is that it leads to job loss. Since you allude to it, can you point to an example of an economic system that works over the long term without growth?

BTW, the occasional and periodic crash/die off is actually pretty healthy overall for the survivors, and society in general since they seem to come back stronger than ever. The Black Death was one of the best things to happen to a human population in recorded memory...

It would be great if it was FREE but I'd just be happy to even, Pay More and have them re-instate Late Night Service here!! If you miss the 6PM Bus, it's a LOOOOOONG walk home!! We "just" got back bus service on Saturdays after a year of NONE, not sure where the funds came from, sure hope it's going to be around from now on.

If the transit people employ bean counters,I'm sure they do,they run the world,it's NEVER going to happen....I'll vote for free whiskey and hookers for my workers.....

That's not really true. The Tube in London is mostly unsubsidized (it gets some special funding and has had to be bailed out in the past, but its normal day to day business is not subsidized). Much of the public transit in Asia is run for, and generates, substantial profit and gets no subsidizes aside from the government mandating and paying for reduced fares for students and such. It's really a question of whether public transit is perceived as a welfare benefit the poor are entitled to or as what the name implies. In America we mostly treat it as a welfare benefit. Rather than concentrating a few buses on the routes that make sense we spread them out. The result is it takes so damn long to get anywhere on public transit that generally no one with the means to get there another way will use it.

You have a bunch of impediments to public transit. One is that it's expensive. The diesel-electric buses that are popular cost well in excess of half a million dollars each, require paid drivers (typically costs $40-50/hour with benefits), and drink fuel (4-5 mpg). In and of itself, that isn't a problem. Transportation IS expensive. Period. The problem is what we're getting for all the money we're paying is so bad nobody with money wants to fund it because they never see themselves using it. There are simply lot of other not-personally-useful things to fund. Aside from a few major cities public transit is an easy place to go looking for cuts.

The second is that as expensive as transportation is, real estate is much, much more expensive. Development has revolved around the automobile. Land use in automobile centric areas is very different than land use in public transit centric areas. Acre upon acre house farms and a giant Wally's World five miles away may work well if everyone drives everywhere but its not public transit friendly.