Are commuters shifting to public transport?
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The latest release of the American Community Survey provides a reminder of the enormity of the task of shifting commuters into more sustainable modes. Transit’s mode share barely moved over the last 11 years despite large investment in new systems.
New data drawn from the ongoing American Community Survey on what mode commuters use to get to work was released this week. Wendell Cox has summarised the numbers for the period from 2000 to 2011 (see exhibit).
The data indicates commuting habits in the US are changing at a glacial pace. Notwithstanding massive expenditure on new transit systems in many cities, driving still dominates the journey to work.
This data isn’t available for Australia yet, but we can learn a lot from North America. The usual caveats apply. Note also this data is only for the journey to work. It measures mode share by number of trips, not kilometres of travel.
The proportion of US commuters who drive fell 1.8 percentage points – from 87.9% to 86.1% – over the eleven years from 2000 to 2011, or by an average of just 0.16% per year (from hereon, all percentages are ‘points’). Worse, in the most recent year, 2011, the increase was much higher (0.76%), suggesting driving grew faster as the economy emerged from recession.
Notwithstanding the small annual decline in share, more Americans are driving to work. The absolute number of commutes by car increased 6.5 million over the period. In 2011 an extra 900,000 workers took to the roads.
Where did driving’s “lost share” go? Not a lot went to public transport. It increased its mode share from 4.6% to just 5% over the period, or by an average of 0.04% per annum (even lower, 0.03%, in the latest year). Patronage went up by a modest 1.1 million over the eleven years, considerably less than the increase in driving.
Cycling went from 0.4% to 0.6% over the period – impressive, but obviously from a small base. But the most significant improver was home-based workers, who increased their share of all commutes from 3.3% to 4.3%. Their numbers rose from 4.2 to 6.0 million i.e. by 1.8 million.
That’s significantly larger than the increase in transit commuters. A lot of it is probably a direct result of the recession, but nevertheless the comparison highlights the relatively small gains made by public transport.
Those small advances are in spite of massive investment in rail-based systems in US cities in recent years, especially over the last decade.
For example, there are now 33 cities in the US with light rail or streetcar systems either completed or under construction. There are a further 42 US cities proposing to build systems (excludes heritage streetcar systems e.g. San Francisco cable car).
Building a large market for public transport is extraordinarily difficult in a car-based culture. A key issue though is whether the hundreds of billions being spent on new rail-based systems represent the best way of winning travellers away from cars.
Back in 2006, Professor Peter Gordon from USC observed that “the $7.6 billion of rail added to LA County’s transit system over the last 15 years serves between one-quarter and one-half percent of all daily County trips.”
I noted something similar recently in the Australian context. The feasibility study for Melbourne’s proposed Rowville rail line, likely to cost in the order of $2 billion plus to construct, forecasts it would increase the share of all trips carried by public transport in Melbourne in 2046 from 12.6% to 12.7%, i.e. by 0.1%!
A big problem with public transport investment in the US is that the choice of projects is driven much more by political considerations than by good decision-making. As happens in Australia too, people are captured by the glamour and presumed worthiness of rail-based projects over more humble alternatives such as buses, or more difficult options like road pricing.
In a recent report, Game changers: economic reform priorities for Australia, the Grattan Institute noted the low benefit-cost ratios for many proposed transport projects in Australia. It sounded a warning about poor project selection:
Even if infrastructure is productive on average, it is only economically productive if it is “the right infrastructure, in the right place at the time and accessible at sensible prices”. Simply spending money on infrastructure is not enough to get a return if the cost benefit case is not there.
It will be extraordinarily hard to shift significant numbers of US (and Australian) workers out of their cars and into more sustainable modes. That however makes it all the more important to develop policies that deliver real mode shift.
As well as targeting spending on productive, cost-effective infrastructure, those policies should involve “soft” initiatives addressing, for example, issues like how travel is priced, how modes connect operationally to form a system, and how land uses reinforce and support desirable transport choices.
The numbers from the Community Survey also highlight the long time frames likely to be involved in significantly changing travel behaviour. Cars will very likely continue to be the dominant mode for a long time yet – both in Australia and the US – so they need to give much more towards the objective of a more sustainable, equitable and efficient transport system.
Of course it would be better to look at Australian data on commuting. The ABS won’t release 2011 Census data on the journey to work in Australia until the end of next month, so we have to wait.
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As well as PT infrastructure projects and reorganising the PT systems to run better with better integration, there needs to be some politically hard “stick” measures. Congestion pricing and parking pricing so the significant costs of both of these things is born by those who make individual decisions to make them and thus they make the choice to do so less.
I don’t know why anyone would be especially waiting on ABS figures. They can only show one thing with our road-based system and continuing road-based funding. All three east coast cities/states have transport plans totally dominated by road building.
The reality both in the US and here is that continued urban growth is all at the edges, ie. exurban, and is designed exclusively for car dependence. So naturally it would take a heroic effort in building PT to just stand still in the usage tables. And of course in both countries there is vastly more funding (and subsidy) of road transport versus PT. LA may be spending more on building (expensive) PT today than building NEW roads though one wonders if it is more than on road maintenance since the scale of the freeway network is so vast. (Equally lack of spending on maintenance is a well known crisis in the US as it will be in any country that puts such a huge amount of its transport budget into roads.) It doesn’t make much impact on transport share because 1. it is not yet a network and 2. LA is still expanding in places (San Fernando Valley, Orange County) where barely any PT reaches. Road building has had near total dibs on transport funds over the past 60 years in both countries (esp. since 1956 in the US when their interstate highway program began). So, you know, one can hardly expect PT usage to catch up in a few years..
None of this road dominance is surprising. Indeed it is hardly worth reporting or showing that graph. The question is what to do about it. You write as if prologue is destiny, ie. the past traps us into no alternative but to continue. You also often write as if all these stats that show dominant car use means people don’t want anything else though surveys have shown Australia has finally seen the writing on the wall.
So a graph of New York City data would be very different which shows that there are actual alternative scenarios even for Americans (indeed uber Americans as New Yorkers consider themselves.) I predict that in another ten years (and certainly 20) LA will have transformed–there will still be a lot of car usage of course but then there will be one of the country’s most used PT system plus one of their best cycle networks.
I am not as confident about Australia.
Well at least the percentage share hasnt gone down !
Many of the rail / light rail investments in the US generally serve densifying inner cities, so they dont have to drive, but just like here most residential growth by far is at the fringes – or even further (peri-urban I think its called) – in new housing estates, usually with access to freeways.
For example, there are now 33 cities in the US with light rail or streetcar systems either completed or under construction. There are a further 42 US cities proposing to build systems (excludes heritage streetcar systems e.g. San Francisco cable car).
How many cities are there in the US? And therefore what percentage of them now have a light rail system? How many of these 33 cities already had streetcar systems before the we started measuring this mode shift? How many commuters can you expect to shift to onto systems still under construction? What the hell do the 42 cities proposing to build systems have to do with a mode shift over the past decade?
I don’t think saying; look Cities X, Y and Z have built these expensive light rail systems, but as a nation of 314.5 million people living in well over 200 cities, they’ve barely started using public transport more is a very good argument.
You’ve put in quite a few important caveats, but not so many strong arguments. For example, these measurements are only for journey’s to work, yet many of these systems (LA especially) have been about serving people for all day journey’s, not just work commuting.
Continuing on the LA theme: what percentage of trips within the county does Highway 47 serve and how much did Highway 47 cost? (I’ve no idea if Highway 47 even exists, but without some comparative data Professor Gordon’s argument is pretty damn meaningless).
“issues like… how modes connect operationally to form a system“. Now there’s an issue I’d really like to see you dig in and do some research on. The network effect isn’t something I’ve seen you give a great deal of coverage to (a little, but not much), but there’s certainly a few places in the world that have used it to their advantage and have had very positive results. Certainly thinking about the network effect properly can provide some of the best ‘bang for buck’ in positive results.
IkaInk #4:
Commutes have a much larger PT share than other trips. The figures for other purposes would be much less flattering to PT than those I’ve shown.
I’ve cited the 44 proposed projects to illustrate this is a popular strategy and there’ll be a lot more. Add that to the existing 33 completed and under construction, and that’s a fair number of cities.
I’m out of town ATM and I’m not in a position to sift through the 33 but acknowledge they aren’t all completed yet and they weren’t all fully operational for the 11 year period. However if you look at just the last year, the share carried by transit was even lower than for the longer period.
The big picture I was seeking to paint though is that big rail-based infrastructure projects aren’t going to achieve a lot (especially in the US but here too)if governments aren’t strategic about picking ones that really make a difference and look at the wider policy context at the same time.
Here in Australia we don’t need boondoggles like the proposed Rowville rail line (and IMHO Doncaster too) any more than we need new boondoggle freeways. There’ll never be enough money for PT in the forseeable future so we need the very best projects and policies.
The USA is a big country with, I would guess, a much smaller proportion of its population in million-plus cities than in Australia (9 are listed at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html )
And probably a much smaller proportion even in 500,000-plus cities (24 ditto)
And it’s the 500,000 plus cities that the real action is in terms of serious roads vs transit investment choices.
Probably a large majority of the US population is living in places where nothing much is happening and no change should be expected.
You need to look at the effect transit investment is having *in the places where transit investment is happening*.
But agree generally on need for caution about things like Rowville and Doncaster rail. Unfortunately supporting these projects seems to be like a badge of membersship for many public transport supporters – for example see many references in the comment thread at http://www.theage.com.au/national/make-room-transport-survey-20120925-26jgm.html
But agree generally on need for caution about things like Rowville and Doncaster rail. Unfortunately supporting these projects seems to be like a badge of membersship for many public transport supporters – for example see many references in the comment thread at http://www.theage.com.au/national/make-room-transport-survey-20120925-26jgm.html
People like big projects they can visualise. It’s harder to make them think that things like ‘real time information’ or ‘more bus lanes’ or ‘step-free transfers’ are also big projects, and probably more important and more cost effective for promoting transit use.
As already commented, if the growth of our cities is at the edges, where public transport is so poor, then PT can’t increase much. But the other thing to remember is that cars give us the time, convenience and possibility to do things that PT can’t, so people would have to be forced on to it.
I’m generally in favour of building new roads, bridges and freeways, as well as PT, but the one thing I’ve seen on my travels that serves as a cautionary tale, is Nashville: a perfect example of how to wreck a city by putting up multi-storey parking everywhere right in the CBD. Great gaping stretches of nothing as you walk around the streets.
There’ll never be enough money for PT in the forseeable future so we need the very best projects and policies.
I don’t think you’ll ever see me disagreeing with that line Alan. This is precisely why I’m opposed to the stupidly wasteful RRL project and the Metro Tunnel. Its also why I believe that any investigation into Doncaster needs to consider the project with, and without a tunnel, to determine the best course of action, including not building any of it; instead of blindly claiming it either should definitely not be built, or that if it is to be built, it must with a tunnel that will make the cost at least double.
However you’ve missed most of the point of what I’ve said. Smith John has said it very clearly though: looking at the US mode share as a whole is a useless indicator. It’s a huge country with hundreds of cities and a lot of people living in rural areas. Can you really expect investment in even 20 of the biggest cities to create a big mode-shift nation wide? Of course not. Exactly the same is true of other options. Congestion charging in LA, NY, Chicago and Huston might produce a mode shift in those cities. On a national level though, the impact would barely be more than noise in the data.
As for the light rail systems, once you subtract the number that aren’t complete, then the number that were complete before the 11 year period I’m guessing you don’t have a number nearly as high as 33. Wikipedia indicates there have been 15 systems opened since 2000, I’ve no idea if they’re all complete. However looking at some of the lower-riderships “systems” I see that some are only single lines. Hilariously enough this one is called SLUT.
Your point on LA’s mode share capture is really the only pertinent point in your entire article, yet as I said it lacks for anything to compare it to and therefore again provides little helpful information.
Good points by commenters (quibble with Boscombe: you cannot be for roads AND for PT for the simple but awful truth in Australia: prioritization will always be given to roads, exactly as in Greiner’s new plan for NSW; if one sits on the fence the outcome is totally 100% clear: more roads, then after a while .. more roads to relieve the congestion created by building those earlier roads, oh and then more roads to ….).
I stick to my claim about LA: as their network approaches convergence there will be a sudden threshold effect and PT usage will skyrocket. Some Los Angelinos are predicting it will happen quite soon with completion of the ““Subway to the Sea” (the Purple Line from downtown thru Wilshire Bvd, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood to Santa Monica). While that line will pick up lots of users I suspect it is still too early to make the big jump. Still the reason is clear: LA is the most road congested city in the US and it is now almost 40 years since they stopped building roads.
In addition to this huge latent population of current car drivers looking for an alternative, is that in fact LA is rather well set-up for this evolution. As everyone knows it is really a set of towns (some say 100) connected by freeways: there is no reason why it cannot be a series of TOD connected by transit, especially as it is denser than people think. Look at the list of stops on the Purple Line and that is exactly what it is.
Alas, the real poster boys for sprawltown are places like Phoenix, Houston and Atlanta. But even they have potential IF they keep growing because some of this growth will naturally occur around TODs if they develop transit (among those lightrail projects are Houston and Atlanta), even if people don’t notice or plan for it. The property market will do the job for the planners.
Final quibble: AD and others talk of “expensive light rail”. Actually it is the most economic PT one can build (I don’t include stuffing an already crowded road system with more buses, that is counter-productive and uneconomic especially as it allows a NIMTOO* government to delay building serious PT thus making it vastly more expensive when it is finally done). This certainly explains why light-rail is having a renaissance in the US: it is cheap and their wide surface-road systems allow it often with surprisingly little negative effect on road traffic. Further, lightrail works usually incorporate improvements to the pedestrian (and increasingly bike) amenity of the road–greening up of the space etc. This too will become part of the threshold effect, especially in the US where people generally expect the worst of any road project–they will see that it actually calms traffic and greatly improves the usability for people.
*NIMTOO, Not In My Term Of Office; local examples include Campbell Newman, BOF, Baillieu.
I am for spending more on PT and roads. A few years ago the state government substantially increased the budget allocation for cycle ways, but the Department didn’t spend the money, so in the next year’s budget the allocation was reduced, rather than make the department actually spend the money. We could have had more money for cycle ways and more money for roads.
I’m not convinced that roads create congestion; in Perth congestion is created, over time, by the population growth of the city.
Anyway my other point about Alan’s post is that I think it is probably wrong that commuters just move between home and work. I think that commuters include doing other things (picking up children, taking a child to a music lesson, doing the shopping while the child is doing their music lessons, or swimming training, dropping of clothes at the dry cleaners, going to the gym etc etc) and that public transport will never allow people to do that stuff so easily. We’ve built our lives around personal car use and don’t want to trade the benefits that brings for the benefits that PT might bring.
A problem is the attention span of politicians which is not much more than four years. They would sacrifice everything for small short term gains. Look to the current plan to cut the Newcastle line to Wickham which is more about land development than public transport.
Also there is the white elephant which serves as an inititive sink. A big grandiose scheme is planned such as the tunnel from Footscray to The Domain (or Caulfield) which serves to soak up money leaving none for smaller ideas and maintence tasks. Possibly the Melbourne underground is another example if you visualise what was not done to railways to fund it.
In lieu we could have had the Doncaster line and the Airport line and the line to VFL park and Roweville.
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