Comprehensive Evaluation Of Rail Transit Benefits

This report from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute finds that cities with large, well-establishedrail systems have significantly higher per capita transit ridership, loweraverage per capita vehicle ownership and annual mileage, less traffic congestion, lowertraffic death rates, lower consumer expenditures on transportation, and higher transitservice cost recovery than otherwise comparable cities with less or no rail transit service.This indicates that rail transit systems provide economic, social and environmentalbenefits, and these benefits tend to increase as a system expands and matures. Thisreport discusses best practices for evaluating transit benefits. It examines criticisms ofrail transit investments, finding that many are based on inaccurate analysis.

[Editor's note: The link below is to a 200KB PDF.]