Jonathan English: How to Fix American Mass Transit→

CityLab:

“The maps illustrate the vast swaths of urban areas untouched by full service bus routes. For those who do live near one, it’s quite likely that the bus wouldn’t get them where they need to go, unless their destination is downtown. A bus that comes once and hour, stops at 7 pm, and doesn’t run on Sundays—a typical service level in many American cities—restricts people’s lives so much that anyone who can drive, will drive. That keeps ridership per capita low.

What happened? Over the past hundred years the clearest cause is this: Transit providers in the U.S. have continually cut basic local service in a vain effort to improve their finances. But they only succeeded in driving riders and revenue away. When the transit service that cities provide is not attractive, the demand from passengers that might “justify” its improvement will never materialize.

Here’s how this has played out, era by era...”

Laurel Wamsley: Free Transit Considered for Germans→

NPR:

“Germany is considering free public transit in its cities in order to curb car use, as it hurries to meet the European Union’s requirements for air quality. That proposal is put forth in a letter to from the German government to the EU’s Environment Commissioner. The free transit plan is part of a range of measures suggested in the letter, including low emission zones, incentives for electric cars, and technically retrofitting existing vehicles, Reuters reports.

”We are considering public transport free of charge in order to reduce the number of private cars,” the letter says, according to Agence France Presse. “Effectively fighting air pollution without any further unnecessary delays is of the highest priority for Germany.””

Emily Nonko: The Roots of NYC Subway System Woes→

Curbed NY:

“New Yorkers now use a transit system in a state of emergency. The past few months have laid bare the enormity of the problems currently facing the century-old subways, from aging infrastructure to a lack of federal dollars available to help make things better.

Much has also been said about how the world’s largest public transportation system has gotten so bad—the lack of funding, of course, but also Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s penchant for prioritizing flashy projects over system maintenance, along with years of mismanagement within the MTA, an agency that’s admitted to misspent funding that doesn’t go toward maintenance.

But start looking at the decline of, and disinvestment in, New York’s rail lines—from the subway to commuter rails like the Long Island Rail Road—and you’ll find that those problems go back much, much further. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, they seem to lead to one man in particular: Robert Moses.”

T.R. Goldman: A Subdivision that Reduced Car-Dependency→

POLITICO:

“Evanston was failing as a suburb, so it reinvented itself as a mini city. Now the city of Chicago wants to follow its lead.

At first glance, downtown Evanston, Illinois, doesn’t look revolutionary—just another gentrifying urban core with the obligatory Whole Foods, the local organic sustainable restaurants serving $14 cocktails, the towering new, high-end luxury apartments filled with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The booming downtown feels increasingly hip; this summer it was featured as a “Surfacing” destination in the New York Times Travel Section. “I have everything here,” says Joanne McCall, pausing one evening on her way inside Sherman Plaza, a soaring, 26-story condominium building. “The post office, the dry cleaner, the movies, I work out upstairs, the Whole Foods is over there, the hair dresser over here. And the Uber thing is getting big here.”

It takes, in fact, a few extra minutes in the neighborhood to realize what’s different—and what’s missing. Downtown Evanston—a sturdy, tree-lined Victorian city wedged neatly between Lake Michigan and Chicago’s northern border—is missing cars. Or, more accurately, it’s missing a lot of cars. Thanks to concerted planning, these new developments are rising within a 10-minute walk of two rail lines and half-a-dozen bus routes. The local automobile ownership rate is nearly half that of the surrounding area.”

A thorough article on how a city was redesigned for the benefit of citizens rather than for box stores. The article speaks of transit-oriented development, and it should be noted that the term meant mass transit, less car parking spaces, allowance of beneficial high density, and a major zoning ordinance change allowing mixed use and a focus on public benefits,

Public Transit Support High, Use Not So Much→

Eric Jaffe, writing for CityLab:

Chris; Flickr

“Enthusiasm for public transportation far, far outweighs the actual use of it. Last week, for instance, the American Public Transportation Association reported that 74 percent of people support more mass transit spending. But only 5 percent of commuters travel by mass transit. This support, in other words, is largely for others.

What’s more striking about the support-usage gap is that it doesn’t just exist on paper. In addition to saying they support transit funding, Americans back up that support with their own pocketbooks. Time and again at the polls, people are willing to raise local taxes to maintain or expand the transit service that so few of them actually use. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, there were 62 transportation measures on ballots across the country in 2012—many with a considerable transit component—and nearly 80 percent of them succeeded.”

Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. Other forms of transportation. The future…the past. Old streetcars long gone.

Public Transit Rankings→

Reuben Fischer-Baum, reporting for FiveThirtyEight:

“New York is the only U.S. system to register on the international level. Most of New York’s trips were on the MTA subway (62 percent), followed by MTA buses (21 percent), NJ Transit buses (4 percent) and LIRR commuter trains (3 percent).

New York, Washington, Boston and Philadelphia — the urban centers of the “Northeast Corridor” — all fall into the top 10 in trips per resident. They also fall into the top 10 of urban population. Do certain regions tend to support better public transit, or is this just a product of city size and density?

Among all 290 cities, there’s a clear relationship between trips per resident and both total population (the r-squared is 0.41) and population density (r-squared = 0.21). ”

Brent Moore

Size matters, ... Look at New York and D.C. Judge them by size, do you?”