The real reason American public transportation is a disaster

This article is part of a series on the past, present, and future of mobility in America.

The United States spends a lot of money on public transportation. So why is it so terrible?

American buses, subways, and light rail lines consistently have lower ridership levels, shorter hours of service, and longer waits between trains than those in every relatively wealthy European and Asian country. Meanwhile, a much larger proportion of public transportation costs in the United States is supported by general tax dollars.

In other words, we pay more for transportation and get much less – which is basically the worst of all.

We pay more for transit and get much less

Many people try to explain this paradox by pointing to the history and geography of the United States: most of our cities and suburbs were built after the 1950s, when the automobile became the dominant mode of transportation. Hence, we have sprawling, car-centric megacities that are not easily accessible by public transportation.

But there is a problem with this explanation: Canada. This is also a sprawling country, largely designed for cars. However, public transportation systems in Canadian cities look very different.

“Canada has more public transportation,” says transportation consultant Garrett Walker. “Compare, for example, Portland to Vancouver, or Salt Lake City to Edmonton, or Des Moines to Winnipeg. They are very similar cities culturally and economically, but in each case, the Canadian city has two to five times as much transit service per capita. “Therefore, there are more passengers per capita.”

Larger cities generally have higher transit usage – but this chart shows that Canadian cities (in green) have significantly higher public transit (PT) trips per capita than U.S. cities (in purple) of the same size. (Ian Wallis Associates)

Although history and geography are partly to blame, there’s a deeper reason why American public transportation is so bad. European, Asian and Canadian cities treat it as a vital public good. Most American policymakers and voters view transportation as a social welfare program.

Suburban sprawl is only part of the problem

(George Rose/Getty Images)

If you visit a dense European city with excellent public transportation, the problem may seem obvious: America’s sprawling, car-dependent development.

There is some truth to that. Most American cities — especially those outside the Northeast and the Rust Belt — are relatively new, so they were built primarily with the automobile in mind. It’s spread out, with crowded suburbs rather than a tight grid.

All this makes the path of rapid and cost-effective transportation more difficult. After all, a rail line or bus costs more to serve the same number of people spread across a wider area. Highways, curved roads and dead ends also make it difficult to reach bus stops, metro stations and other destinations on foot:

The fact that older American cities with prewar street systems (such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago) have the highest levels of transit ridership in the United States seems to support this argument.

However, this is not the whole story. A closer look at the history of transportation in other countries challenges the idea that post-1950s development alone made poor transportation inevitable in the United States.

Historically, other countries have combined suburbs with better transportation

Toronto Express train. (Marcus Oleniuk/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

“If you look at the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia in the 1950s, they were all on the same path — they were all racing toward automobile dependence,” says David King, a professor of urban engineering. Planning at Columbia University. “But then in the 1960s, you started to see a difference.”

During this era, many cities in Europe did their best to preserve pre-existing transportation systems and expand them to the growing suburbs. Separately, many new cities in Western Canada have invested more in light rail lines and high-quality bus service, even when they were designed for cars. As a result, all of these places still have much higher levels of transit ridership today than American cities of similar size and density.

On the other hand, in the United States, newer cities in the West and South expanded without nearly the same level of corresponding investment in public transportation. Even some of the country’s largest cities—designed before the advent of the automobile—deliberately destroyed existing transportation systems, uprooting streetcar lines and building freeways to speed suburban commutes.

Downtown Detroit, in 1951, versus today. (Shane Hampton)

“In 1912, Boston had a great public transit system, with four subway lines and streetcars feeding into it,” says public transit blogger Alon Levy. “Then they spent the next 60 or 70 years destroying it.”

Big problem: American cities view transportation as a luxury

This difference between the United States and Europe can be traced back to the municipal takeover in the 1950s of private tram and bus companies in many American cities, which largely went bankrupt.

There were several different reasons for the decline of these transportation services. Companies were bound by contracts that prevented them from raising their prices and required them to maintain roads, while increasing levels of automobile traffic made trams painfully slow. “When only 10% or so of people were driving, the tracks were so crowded that (the streetcars) didn’t set their own schedules,” transportation historian Peter Norton told me in an article about streetcars.

Decommissioned streetcars await demolition in Los Angeles in 1956. (Los Angeles Times
photo archive)

When cities took over these companies (and converted their tramways into buses), it was with the idea that they would maintain these systems as a kind of welfare service—mostly for people who couldn’t afford to drive. With the exception of a few cities like New York and DC, this mentality has remained in place. Nowadays, many local politicians do not see transit as a vital transportation function – rather, they see it as a government aid program to help poor people who lack cars.

On the one hand, this mentality has led cities to heavily subsidize public transportation: in most cities, no more than 30 to 40 percent of operating costs are covered by fares, more than the vast majority of cities worldwide. But there’s a big downside to viewing public transportation as a luxury — it prevents local agencies from charging fares high enough to provide efficient service, effectively limiting transportation for those who are too poor to drive.

“Transit in the United States is in a vicious cycle,” King says. “We push for low fares for social reasons, but this starves the transit agency, resulting in reduced service.” In a sense, it’s the same dilemma that streetcar companies faced 70 years ago.

This is one of the root reasons why many American city bus and rail systems—even those with relatively extensive networks and many stations—have limited operating hours and frequency. “It’s OK for the bus to come every half hour if it’s a lifeline for people who can’t afford anything else,” Levy says.

(Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe via Getty Images)

It doesn’t have to be this way. In contrast, transit systems in cities like London and Toronto have higher fares and more frequent service, making them attractive options for people with cars. In theory, there’s no reason why this wouldn’t work in the United States. Witness the recent rise in microtransit, which includes startups like Chariot and Bridj charging $5 to $8 for more reliable express bus rides.

So, how can other cities get away with charging higher prices while making sure the poor have access to reliable transportation? Strategies vary, but they are not impossible. In Paris, for example, each municipality is legally obligated to pay the difference between its fares and operating costs to the transport agency, allowing it to strive for efficient service while keeping prices low. Other cities, such as Seattle, have experimented with charging cheaper rates to low-income people.

The American political system is also biased against public transportation

(Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

There are other quirks in American policy that have led us to not invest in transportation. Because it is often seen as a luxury, investing in mass transit has become a politically charged issue — with conservatives unwilling to spend on what they see as a social program for the urban poor.

This doesn’t really happen in other countries, at least not to the same extent. While there is some controversy over transportation spending in Canada and Europe, right-wing politicians are less hostile to the idea — it is more of a bipartisan issue, like, say, building roads in the United States. “Building public transportation elsewhere is not politically controversial,” Levy says. “The left tends to support transit more than the right, but both ultimately support it.”

On the other hand, some structural elements of American governance exacerbate anti-transit attitudes. On the one hand, the federal government plays a large role in driving transportation policy. Given the makeup of the Senate, federal policy is often heavily biased toward rural interests, rather than urban priorities. This manifests itself in several ways: the postwar directive to demolish urban neighborhoods to build highways came from the Department of Commerce, not from individual cities, and was implemented by the Department of Transportation. In Canada, by contrast, there is no corresponding national administration, and regional bodies have a greater role in transportation planning.

Even simple things like the location of state capitals can make a difference. In Australia, each state’s main city is also its capital – so state funding is often aligned with that city’s priorities. Compare that to New York or Illinois, where lawmakers reside in Albany and Springfield, and are far less familiar with the value of transit in their larger cities.

Is there any way to improve public transportation in the United States?

Metro Expo light rail line in Los Angeles. (Ambient Images/UIG via Getty Images)

“In attracting passengers to transit, frequency is the most important factor, followed very closely by reliability,” says King. “If you don’t have those things, people won’t trust the system.”

Other countries have often been able to improve on these two measures without spending more money — but in the United States, the idea that transit is a luxury has generally inhibited this kind of innovation.

For example, bus stops in the United States are located very close to each other, compared to other places. Deploying them would increase bus speed and frequency, but could be politically difficult because it is seen as harming elderly and disabled passengers. But in Europe, much more of them ride buses with longer stopping distances – because the buses come more often and are more reliable.

Other types of cost-neutral changes include routing buses to facilitate transfers from one part of the city to another, rather than forcing all passengers to commute downtown, and increasing bus service in more populated areas, while sacrificing the number of overall stops. .

However, after many years, there is still reason for optimism. Transit ridership in the United States has been gradually rising, even if it is not close to European or Canadian levels. Some experts are optimistic that transit agencies are becoming more willing to experiment. In February, for example, the city of Houston implemented a number of changes to bus routes suggested by Walker, making the system less downtown oriented and increasing the ease of transportation for getting from one suburb to another.

Correction: This article previously stated that the Department of Transportation designated routes for urban highways in the United States. It was designed by the Department of Commerce, and implemented by the Department of Transportation after it became its own agency.

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