Making Room for Public Transit

But this alone does not justify the agencies' plea for more funding, argues The Antiplanner:

"After decades of huge transit subsidies, per capita transit ridership today is no greater than it was in 1970–mainly because the subsidies have focused on extending transit service to those who don't need it rather than providing better service to those who do."

The solution, according to O'Toole? Spend more on increasing the current level of service in the central city areas where the demand for transit is consistently high instead of extending the routes en masse to the suburbs where public transit ridership is low.

Transportation for America has a blistering critique of O'Toole's analysis of their study, basically explaining that the report does not say what O'Toole claims it says.