Report: USA Must Triple its Transit Vehicles to Offer ‘World-class’ Transit

For all American cities with populations over 50,000 to achieve “world-class” transit systems, the United States would need to nearly triple its transit vehicle fleet and invest $4.6 trillion over a twenty-year period, a new Transportation for America (T4A) report claims. “That sounds costly, but the U.S. is projected to spend an additional $6.3 trillion on highways in that time, and since 1956, we have spent $9.6 trillion more on highways than transit,” the T4A writes. 

The report defines “world-class” as “Transit that operates with extensive coverage and predictable, frequent service that grants people a high level of mobility, where they can reach nearly everything they need.” To set the benchmark, T4A evaluated global cities using International Association of Public Transport data, finding that the cities had, on average, 130 transit vehicles in service for every 100k residents – a level that would cost $229 billion annually for the United States to achieve. But, the report notes, that number obscures a larger savings: “$5.4 trillion just from the costs of car ownership that could be avoided.”

Read the full report at the link below.