Testimony
before the
Senate
Committee on Banking,
Housing and
Urban Affairs
Reasonable Expectations for
Transit in the Modern Urban
Area
8 October 2002
Wendell Cox
Visiting Fellow
The Heritage Foundation
&
Principal,
Wendell Cox Consultancy
Reasonable
Expectations for
Transit in the Modern
Urban Area
Testimony by Wendell
Cox
Before the
Senate Committee on Banking,
Housing and Urban Affairs
Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee Hearing Notice
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
My name is Wendell Cox. I am an independent consultant
headquartered in Belleville, Illinois,
in the St. Louis area. I am also a
visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. I must stress, however, that the
views I express are entirely my own, and should not be construed as
representing the position of The Heritage Foundation.
I was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles Country
Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley and was appointed to the Amtrak
Reform Council by Speaker Gingrich. Earlier this year I served an assignment as
a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts ET Metiers (CNAM),
a French national university in Paris,
conducting seminars and research on urban planning and transport.
I will share perspectives that you may not have heard before
--- about how transit has little or no potential to address traffic congestion
and how so-called “smart growth” promises to worsen traffic congestion while
making housing less affordable especially for the nation’s lower income
households who are disproportionately minority. These views are held by other
professionals and academics as well, and they challenge what is considered to
be the conventional wisdom in both transport and urban planning. I will, of
course, be pleased to supply the Committee with additional details as
requested.
Increasing Traffic
Congestion, Declining Transit Market Share
It is painfully obvious to commuters in virtually all US
urban areas that traffic is getting worse. This has been going on for some
time, but has become much more critical in recent years. For example, the US
Census Bureau reports that average work trip travel time increased 3.1 minutes
nationally from 1990 to 2000, a rate four times that of 1980 to 1990. And,
things are likely to get much worse (Figure #1).
For some time there has been a widely held view that transit
has the potential to reduce urban traffic congestion. Indeed, that sentiment
was part of the rationale behind making highway user fees available to transit
in the 1982 reauthorization.
Yet, despite spending nearly $500 billion in subsidies at
the federal, state and local level since 1960, transit’s share of urban trips
has continued to trend downward. This is confirmed by the 2000 Census, which
shows that transit’s share of work trips has reached a new low --- 4.6 percent
(Figure #2), down more than 10 percent from 1990 (Table #1). While employment
was increasing 13.2 million, transit work trip use declined nearly 23,000. Only
two metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population maintain a transit
work trip market share of more than 10 percent (Table A-1).
|
Table #1
Work Trip Market Share by Mode: 1990 & 2000
|
|
Mode
|
1990
|
Share
|
2000
|
Share
|
Change
|
Change in Share
|
|
Car, Truck or Van
|
99,592,932
|
86.5%
|
112,736,101
|
87.9%
|
13,143,169
|
1.5%
|
|
Drove Alone
|
84,215,298
|
73.2%
|
97,102,050
|
75.7%
|
12,886,752
|
3.4%
|
|
Car Pool
|
15,377,634
|
13.4%
|
15,634,051
|
12.2%
|
256,417
|
-8.8%
|
|
Public Transit*
|
6,069,589
|
5.3%
|
6,067,703
|
4.7%
|
(1,886)
|
-10.3%
|
|
Public Transit
|
5,890,155
|
5.1%
|
5,867,559
|
4.6%
|
(22,596)
|
-10.6%
|
|
Taxicab
|
179,434
|
0.2%
|
200,144
|
0.2%
|
20,710
|
0.1%
|
|
Motorcycle
|
237,404
|
0.2%
|
142,424
|
0.1%
|
(94,980)
|
-46.2%
|
|
Bicycle
|
466,856
|
0.4%
|
488,497
|
0.4%
|
21,641
|
-6.1%
|
|
Walk only
|
4,488,886
|
3.9%
|
3,758,982
|
2.9%
|
(729,904)
|
-24.9%
|
|
Other
|
808,582
|
0.7%
|
901,298
|
0.7%
|
92,716
|
-0.0%
|
|
Work at Home
|
3,406,025
|
3.0%
|
4,184,223
|
3.3%
|
778,198
|
10.2%
|
|
Workers 16 Years &
Over
|
115,070,274
|
100.0%
|
128,279,228
|
100.0%
|
13,208,954
|
0.0%
|
|
Source: Data from US
Census Bureau
*With Taxicab
|
Figure 1
Figure 2
The Transit Dilemma:
Little Auto Competitive Service
This is not to suggest that transit does not play an
important role. Make no mistake about it --- where transit provides
auto-competitive service, people use it. To be auto-competitive, transit must
be, at a minimum, time competitive with the automobile. The 2000 Census data
indicates that transit work trips take considerably longer than auto work
trips. The average transit work trip was 43 minutes, which compares to other
modes (mainly auto) at 24.8 minutes. Transit work trips take longer than auto
trips in all metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population (Table
A-2).
But where transit is auto-competitive, it is very
successful. For example:
- In the
Tokyo area, nearly 60 percent
of travel is on transit. Why? The reason is that transit is generally
faster than the automobile, with the dense network of urban rail services
and frequent connecting bus service making transit service attractive
throughout the urban area. This is illustrated by the fact that Tokyo,
with approximately 1.5 times the population of the New
York urban area, carries approximately 4.5 times
as many riders annually, and 60 percent more riders than all of the
transit systems in the United States
combined. Nonetheless, the automobile is making significant inroads in the
Tokyo area. In suburban areas,
where the auto is more competitive, transit market share is nearly 40
percent below that of the central city. And, throughout the area, transit
market share has fallen nearly 30 percent since 1970.
- In the
Paris area, 24 percent of
travel is by transit. There, the commuter rail and metro systems provide
generally faster travel than the automobile, with more than 60 percent of
central city oriented travel on transit. But the situation is much
different in the suburbs, where 80 percent of Parisians live and work.
There, only 15 percent of travel is on transit, because transit provides
little suburb to suburb service that is auto-competitive. As in Tokyo,
transit’s market share has fallen in the Paris
area, approximately 40 percent since 1970. The situation and experience in
Paris is typical of other
urban areas in Western Europe.
- In the
New York area, approximately
10 percent of travel is on public transit. Much of this travel is focused
in the city of New York, and
especially to the Manhattan central
business district (below 59th Street).
In 1990, approximately 75 percent of work trips to this area were on
transit. In fact, approximately 22 percent of the nation’s transit work
trips were to the Manhattancentral business district, an area of less than
10 square miles. Nearly 73 percent of work trips to locations within the
city of New York were on
transit, representing more than one-third of the nation’s transit work trips.
Yet, in the vast sprawling suburbs of New York,
only four percent of work trips were by transit. The difference is that
substantial levels of auto-competitive service is provided to Manhattan
and within the city of New York.
It is possible to provide auto-competitive service because of the city’s
high population and density, and the slower automobile operating speeds
that result from the intense traffic congestion. Other than travel in and
to the city, however, few trips can be made by auto-competitive transit.
- Transit
accounts for more than 50 percent of work trip travel to the Chicago
central business district, the nation’s second largest downtown. Again,
the key is auto-competitive service available to this concentrated area
from most locations in the urban area. Within the city itself, transit’s
work trip market share is nearly one-third. But in the suburbs, transit’s
work trip market share is barely three percent. Travel by transit from
suburban residence to suburban employment locations can average more than
two hours, in an urban area where automobile work trips average less than
30 minutes.
- In
most other major metropolitan areas, transit competitive service is
largely limited to downtown locations, and often only during peak
commuting hours. Outside the New York
and Chicago metropolitan
areas, overall transit market shares tend to be approximately one percent
(Figure #3)
Figure 3
What all of this says is that transit is largely about downtown
and to a lesser degree a small number of urban cores (Figure #4). Overall, only
the New York and Chicago
metropolitan areas maintain a transit work trip market share of more than 10
percent, with most of that concentrated in the core areas. In fact, more than
one-half of the nations’ transit work trips are to locations within the central
cities of New York, Chicago
and the ten next largest central business districts. Thus, 3.1 million of the
nation’s transit work trips are to a gross area of less than 600 square miles,
while the balance of 2.8 million transit work trips are to the other more than
86,000 square miles of urbanized land. Thus, outside trips to downtown, transit
is able to make little or no difference with respect to traffic congestion.
In most major metropolitan areas, auto-competitive transit
service is limited to downtown service. This is illustrated by Portland
(Oregon), which has the nation’s
most aggressive smart growth policies and has nearly doubled transit service in
the last decade. Transit competitive service is provided from approximately 70
percent of the urban area to downtown (where transit competitive is defined as
1.5 times auto travel times). Outside downtown employment locations are
accessible to only five percent of the urban area by transit competitive
service. People are not going to forsake their cars for transit service that
takes too long, or transit service that doesn’t even exist.
Figure 4
It is not surprising, therefore, that people who use transit
to non-downtown locations have much lower incomes than those able to access the
auto-competitive services to downtown. In 1990, downtown transit commuters had
an average household income within six percent of the national average.
Non-downtown transit commuters had an average household income 40 percent below
average. It would appear that transit is used for non-downtown work trips only
by those who don’t have a choice (those who have no automobile available).
The key to getting people out of their cars is to provide
automobile competitive service --- service that is competitive in travel time.
But, as noted above, there is little auto-competitive service in the United
States and little more planned to areas
other than downtowns. And, despite their vertical impressiveness, downtowns
represent a small and declining share of metropolitan employment in the United
States. In 1990, the average downtown area
accounted for barely 10 percent of metropolitan employment (Figure #5). Even Manhattan’s
central business district, the second largest in the world, accounted for
barely 20 percent of metropolitan New York’s
employment.
Figure 5
The Union of International Public Transport is hardly the
type of organization that would be expected to make critical comments about
public transit. But this organization, the international equivalent of the
American Public Transportation Association (APTA) put it this way:
In the United States, with the exception of New
York, public transport is unable to compete with the automobile: its speed is
half as fast, which means that door-to-door travel times, incorporating
terminal distance times, waiting and transfer times, are 3 to 4 times longer on
public transport.”
Actually, this is
something of an overstatement. Transit plays an indispensable role in providing
auto-competitive service to a few much focused areas of the nation. But outside
these areas, the potential for transit to attract people out of cars is nearly
non-existent.
This is illustrated by the record of metropolitan areas that
have built new rail systems.
- Between
1990 and 2000, Dallas opened a
commuter rail line and three branches of a light rail system. Yet, overall
transit work trip ridership decreased (Table #2).
- Between
1990 and 2000, St. Louis
opened a new light rail line. Yet, transit work trip ridership decreased
(Table #3).
- Between
1970 and 2000, Washington
opened approximately 100 miles of its Metro system. Yet, transit’s work
trip market share dropped 29 percent.
- Transit’s
work trip market share continues to trail pre-light rail levels in Portland,
though minor gains were made in the 1990s. Street and highway traffic has
grown faster than transit use since 1985, the year before the first of two
light rail lines was opened. Traffic delays, as measured by the Travel
Time Index have grown 31 percent, the second largest increase in the
nation (Figure #6).
The problem is further illustrated by the case of
Minneapolis-St. Paul, which is currently building a light rail line (the
“Hiawatha Line”) and seeks to build a commuter rail line (the “Northstar
Line”). There, the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that it would take
an addition of 84,000 annual transit one-way
peak period riders just to stop to growth of traffic congestion. The two lines
would add fewer than 9,000 one-way transit riders over a period of 20 years or
more. During the 1990s, transit work trip use increased approximately 200
annually, a small fraction of what would be required to materially impact traffic
congestion (Figure #7).
Urban rail systems
are exceedingly expensive. Often the annual cost per commuter attracted from
the automobile exceeds the recurring lease cost for a new automobile.
|
Table #2
Work Trip Market Share in Dallas County: 1990-2000
|
|
Mode
|
1990
|
Market Share
|
2000
|
Market Share
|
Change
|
Change in Market Share
|
|
Drive Alone
|
718,709
|
76.2%
|
777,372
|
74.8%
|
58,663
|
-1.8%
|
|
Car Pool
|
135,776
|
14.4%
|
167,270
|
16.1%
|
31,494
|
11.9%
|
|
Transit
|
38,150
|
4.0%
|
35,261
|
3.4%
|
(2,889)
|
-16.1%
|
|
Walk
|
19,027
|
2.0%
|
17,390
|
1.7%
|
(1,637)
|
-17.0%
|
|
Other
|
11,004
|
1.2%
|
13,108
|
1.3%
|
2,104
|
8.2%
|
|
Work at Home
|
20,480
|
2.2%
|
28,378
|
2.7%
|
7,898
|
25.8%
|
|
Total
|
943,146
|
100.0%
|
1,038,779
|
100.0%
|
95,633
|
0.0%
|
|
Taxicab included in "Other"
Calculated from US Census Bureau data.
|
|
Table #3
Work Trip Market Share in Metropolitan St. Louis: 1990-2000l
|
|
Mode
|
1990
|
Market Share
|
2000
|
Market Share
|
Change
|
Change in Market Share
|
|
Drive Alone
|
|