The Transit Field of Dreams: If You Operate It, Will They Come?

It is often claimed that the magnitude of the “transit riding habit” in a given city or urban region depends primarily on factors outside the control of political decision-makers and transit providers. ...[but] until a “neo-conservative” government came to power in Ontario in the early 1990’s and drastically cut transit funding, Toronto, Canada, was able to maintain from 1950 to 1990 a transit riding habit in the range of 300 annual rides per capita, comparable to New York City proper, Munich, or Zurich.

Toronto accomplished this feat because transit was often as much a political and funding priority as roadway expansion. Toronto’s European-level transit riding habit was nearly as high in 1990 as in 1950, despite typical levels of auto ownership, similar rapid auto-based suburban growth and decentralization, low gasoline prices, and development densities closer to the North American than European norm. ...The [Dr. Paul] Mees point of viewâ€"that the level of transit patronage is primarily a function of the quality and quantity of service than any other factor, economic or demographicâ€"is supported by the examples uncovered by the authors.

These include patronage increases experienced by Indiana electric interurban railways in the mid-1930’s...a demonstration that “long-run” service elasticities in Britain accurately predicts patronage changes...the near perfect (r-squared = 0.96) relationship between service levles and transit riding habits in a random set of U.S. (Neuzil, 1975)...and an almost perfect relationship (R2=0.96) between annual transit capacity and annual per capita transit passenger miles consumed, building on a 2001 data-set developed by transit critic Wendell Cox....

Population density, size of urban area, regional per capita income, local tradition, and similar factors, have some influence on transportation usage, whether by transit or motor vehicle. But the authors are confident that the primary influence on per-capita consumption of transit service is the per capita level of transit capacity provided, which is an outcome of public policy choices...

Thanks to Michael D. Setty