#public transit ridership

[writing-with-olive]

So i'm working on a project that involves looking at people's opinions on public transportation, and something that keeps coming up is that a lot of people like the idea of public transportation but ridership is at the same time low, so I wanna figure out what stops people from riding.

If you could reblog this for bigger sample size that would be so so appreciated

[amtrak-official]

A bill has been proposed by Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson to have the federal government increase subsidies of Public transit by 80 billion dollars in major US cities to help systems recover from the post Covid decline in service and ridership. Allowing for an increase in frequency, and additional funding for passes for low income residents. The bill is called the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act

[1tbls]

here's something i'm curious about

tag your city and the names of your transit agency! for example, i'm from SF, MUNI is my friend and cute, BART is my beloathed and a cop shill.

[mariacallous]

On Wednesday, New York governor Kathy Hochul shocked the state and the country when she announced she would indefinitely shelve New York City’s long-in-development congestion pricing scheme. The policy, in the works since 2007 and set to begin in just three weeks, was designed to relieve car traffic, curb road deaths, and send a billion dollars in annual funding to the city’s transit system by charging drivers up to $15 a day to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan, with rates highest at “peak hours.” (Truck drivers and some bus drivers could have paid more than $36 daily.) At heart, the idea is straightforward, if controversial: Make people pay for the roads they use.

But congestion pricing was also set to become one of the most ambitious American climate projects, maybe ever. It was meant to coax people out of their gas-guzzling vehicles, which are alone responsible for some 22 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and onto subways, buses, bicycles, and their feet. Policymakers, researchers, and environment nerds the world over have concluded that, even if the transition to electric vehicles were to happen at lightning speed, avoiding the worst of climate change is going to require fewer cars overall.

Now, the movement has seen a serious setback, in a country where decades of car-centric planning decisions mean many can only imagine getting around in one very specific way. Just a few years ago, cities from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Chicago began to study what pricing roads might look like. “Cities were watching to see what would happen in New York,” says Sarah Kaufman, who directs the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation. “Now they can call it a ‘failure’ because it didn't go through.”

On Wednesday, Hochul said her about-face had to do with concerns about the city’s post-pandemic recovery. The congestion pricing plan faced lawsuits from New Jersey, where commuters argue they would face unfair financial burdens. Cameras and gantries, acquired and positioned to charge drivers while entering the zone, have already been installed in Manhattan, to the tune of some $500 million.

Kaufman, who says she was “flabbergasted” by Governor Hochul’s sudden announcement, says she is not sure where the policy goes from here. “If we can’t make courageous, and potentially less popular, moves in a city that has transit readily accessible, then I’m wondering where this can happen,” she says.

Other global cities have seen success with congestion schemes. London’s program, implemented in 2003, is still controversial among residents, but the government reports it has cut traffic in the targeted zone by a third. One 2020 study suggests the program has reduced pollutants, though exemptions for diesel buses have blunted its emissions effects. Stockholm’s program, launched in 2006, upped the city’s transit ridership, reduced the number of total miles locals traveled by car, and decreased emissions between 10 and 14 percent.

But in New York, the future of the program is unclear, and local politicians are currently scrambling to figure out how to cover the transit budget hole that would result from a last-minute nixing of the fee scheme. The city’s transit system is huge and sprawling: Five million people ride the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s buses and subways, almost double the number that fly every day in the US.

In New York, drivers entering the zone below Manhattan’s 60th Street would have been charged peak pricing of $15, but would have only faced the charge once a day. They would have paid $3.75 for off-peak hours. Taxi and ride-hail trips in the zone would have seen extra fees. After years of controversy and public debate, the state had carved out some congestion charge exemptions: some vehicles carrying people with disabilities would not have been charged, lower-income residents of the zone would have received a tax credit for their tolls; and low-income drivers would have been eligible for a 50 percent discount.

[state-of-connecticut-official]

Public transit should be free for everyone. Over covid, ct city bus fares were free and the bus system experienced an increase in ridership. We literally ran an unintentional experiment and it showed positive results, yet Gov. Lamont flat out refuses to implement free bus fares in the future. It's genuinely despicable. public transit should be free.

[lewis-mumfords-ghost]

I hate how with my friends that don't use public transit, I feel like I can never complain about it being bad without them writing it off completely. Like yes the buses are always running late and come infrequently (15 minutes) in our area. But the city government is working to improve it, they've been adding new routes and increasing the frequency around the city. We should fight for them to make it even better than it's become, and part of that is riding! They collect numbers on ridership to see how well these improvements are received by the community. You can't just write it off and say you'll never take the bus! That's what got it underfunded in the first place.

Please just work with your city transit department, I promise you they're trying to improve things but to get the funding they need to be able to show something for it. Please take transit.

[threadatl]

Better urbanism = more riders for MARTA = better maintenance and staffing for transit

Darin Givens | April 18, 2024

Whenever you see problems on MARTA that are related to operations spending (maintenance or staffing or frequency of service) -- please think about an image like this one, where massive amounts of dead space or low-density developments surround our major investments in transit. In this case, Oakland City Station.

The two things are intrinsically connected.

A big portion of MARTA's annual operations budget comes from fare collections. More riders = more annual spending for MARTA's maintenance and staffing needs.

Unfortunately ridership stats for MARTA have not been impressive in recent years.

Folks, we have to build rail-supportive density around our transit stations, and we have to include progressively-low parking ratios (high parking ratios within developments are correlated with low transit ridership in cities), and design exceedingly walkable streets all around. Add in some public-funded deep affordability as well.

Unless we accomplish all of that near our transit stations, plus some stuff I've undoubtedly forgotten, we will not have a great system -- one with digital signs and various machines that are well maintained, and bus/rail lines that are well staffed.

And the more people fight against those needed improvements in density, parking reform, walkability, affordability, and more...the more we'll see a transit system that fails to be as well maintained as it could be.

[brostateexam]

One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.

This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies’ only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.

Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations—the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative—are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers.

[blurban-form]

Transit fares reduced

Transit news in Queensland; fares reduced to 50 cents to encourage ridership.

[the-city-in-mind]

Chicagoans! Sign this letter asking for two things:

Get your alderpeople to vote to remove Dorval Carter as head of the CTA. Under his leadership, staffing is down, service is down, and hence, ridership, and he's acted like he's an untouchable prince rather than a public servant.

Get your people to vote no on Ira Acree, someone who knows nothing about transit, and doesn't even use it, from being appointed to the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) board.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Some Calgary students enjoyed a free ride to school on Monday, their first day back in class following the holiday break.

For students 12 and younger, they were able to ride city buses and CTrains for free, thanks to funding approved in the city's latest budget plan.

The new transit policy went into effect Jan. 1, but as public and Catholic students returned to the classroom this week, many more preteens might be riding transit for free.

"We are trying to encourage ridership among children," said Stephen Tauro, a spokesperson with Calgary Transit. "I think starting the habit of riding transit is really key to growing ridership in the future." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada, @abpoli

[nutntubear]

fuck it, transit card tier list

you can make one here:

[amtrak-official]

You fools, if you hate public transit because it's slow and under funded, then you are the one making it slow and under funded because you never use it causing it to have less funding and ridership. It's one of those vicious cycles you hear about

[arizonaconservativegal]

You said something about buses being better than trains a while ago because you can change the routes as the needs of the public change.

I agree they are better than trains, but in my city they never close a route. We've got a couple that just run empty around their circuit each day. Basically it looks really bad if a politician lets a bus route close during their term and if that happens they never get reelected.

Also our (Seattle) bus system has the same wonderful collection of needles and unwashed homeless assaulting people and etc...

I'm not trying to say that buses are a perfect solution but they are a much cheaper way to get potentially a much better product. Obviously the added benefits are going to depend a lot on the people running your city's public transit systems. And keeping the buses clean and safe would be kind of critical if you want anyone to actually ride them, so maybe some basic law enforcement would be helpful too? But Seattle doesn't seem keen on that idea lately lol.

Transit policy is a beast and it's not my personal area of expertise, despite having spent an unreasonable amount of time on transit tax issues. But from my time working in the system, I can tell you there are a lot of factors that government takes into consideration before making changes to things like transit routes, and most of it boils down to bureaucracy, not politics - federal grants come with a lot of strings attached and even just mentioning ADA will stop a local government in its tracks nine times out of ten.

I should probably clarify that when I said we could change the routes as needs change, I meant more along the lines of increasing frequency or adding service areas because yeah, government is always reluctant to kill routes. But I also see this as being a bit like the post office servicing rural areas - yes, we could save a lot of money and improve efficiency if we stopped spending so much time delivering mail to one or two people who live out in the middle of nowhere, but that isn't the point of the post office. The point is to make sure that everyone has access to the service. I see more flexibility in buses but that is still factor and one that I think is a valid consideration.

We could potentially solve the low usage service question pretty easily with something like vouchers for on demand rideshare service. Or even just find the two or three people who actually use the route and just ask them what times they actually need the bus and schedule service at just those times. Or swap out for a neighborhood circulator that would get people from the low usage stop to a connection on a more travelled route. The first two would almost certainly be a better product for those riders at a lower cost to the city. The third might be less of a benefit to the original riders if you're not careful but if you do it right, it could be much more helpful for them and might even increase ridership in that neighborhood if you plan it right.

Oh what I would give to live in a world where we could scrap the whole system and start over instead of having to navigate piecemeal fixes to the existing system... Even just not having to rely on federal dollars and accept their strings would give us so many more options.

[mariacallous]

In an apocalyptic vision of Bay Area public transit, BART cancels its weekend service and shutters nine stations just to keep the lights on elsewhere. Trains run once an hour, instead of every 15 minutes. San Francisco’s Muni buses crawl around on life-support, and the East Bay’s AC Transit eliminates “numerous local lines.” Ferry service across the bay is halved.

This is not a doomsday fantasy, conjured up on a paper napkin. These are real scenarios drafted by the region’s transit agencies in a series of federally mandated planning documents obtained through a public records request by the Bay Area News Group. The grim projections come as the region’s commuter trains, buses and boats struggle to recover from massive ridership declines during the COVID pandemic and burn through the remaining federal relief funds that have helped keep them operating.

“People don’t understand the transit system is so close to collapse,” said Ian Griffiths, who heads Seamless Bay Area, a transit advocacy group. “They’re on the brink.”

How bad could it get? A closer look at the documents sent by each agency to the region’s umbrella transit group, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, provide a rare regionwide accounting of what service cuts could look like under dire fiscal outlooks. This is what is possible, they say, unless Bay Area taxpayers and state leaders in Sacramento pony up more money to revive the ailing system.

BART: Terminating two of five train lines – Red and Green – meaning no more direct trains from Richmond and Berryessa to San Francisco.

Caltrain: Slashing service amid a $50 million deficit, even as its $2.4 billion electrified trains hit the rails.

AC Transit: “Numerous local lines” reduced or fully discontinued.

Ferries: Major midday and weekend services slashed across the bay. Service expansions to Berkeley, Redwood City and Mission Bay halted.

Muni: Entire network returns to pandemic-era levels with frequency reductions starting on bus lines 2, 6 and 21

The scenarios – akin to transit planning war games – also provide a window into alternative versions of the Bay Area’s post-pandemic future.

In the most optimistic scenario, Bay Area commuters return to pack trains and buses every day. Connections are fast and reliable as city centers and tech campuses hum with life. But a darker picture is emerging as downtown San Francisco and Silicon Valley slog through growing tech layoffs and warning signs flash of an impending recession.

Service cuts could dwarf those seen during the Great Recession and the dot-com bubble. Canceled trains leave people stranded. Car owners flee transit and pack highways. Only the Bay Area’s most desperate residents rely on the crumbling network.

Bobbie Barlet would be among those stuck riding a curtailed BART. She relies on the train every workday to commute from Antioch to Oakland International Airport. “People have no other option. This makes a huge difference,” said Barlet. Her request to agencies who may soon be eyeing service cuts: “Please don’t.”

At the heart of these transit planning scenarios is a clarion call from the region’s transportation planners: They need more money – a lot of it – not to build shiny new stations, or fashion a second tunnel under the bay, but just to keep their systems running. In the coming five years, the Bay Area’s seven largest operators face a cumulative $2 billion operating deficit, according to the MTC, which oversees regional transit financing.

What is driving the crisis? One of the nation’s worst ridership collapses. Agencies like Caltrain, BART and Golden Gate Ferry built their existence on funneling commuters in and out of downtown San Francisco, but now many of us are comfortably working at home. “It’s not just a potential recession. This is a real change in behavior and ridership,” said Jason Baker of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Transit as we know it is in serious jeopardy.”

But pandemic-era ridership losses, while significant, are just one part of the problem. There are issues that have long plagued transit budgets, including rising labor costs, inflationary pressures and a history of overspending and inefficiencies. Prior to the pandemic, taxpayers subsidized operating costs for Bay Area transit systems by roughly 50% to 85% depending on the transit agency in charge, sending billions each year through sales and property taxes, bridge tolls and even parking tickets.

“You add up all these problems, and for them to step forward and say ‘there is a doomsday scenario, give us your taxes’ – it’s a hard pill to swallow,” said state Sen. Steve Glazer from Orinda. “Now they want to basically ignore the meal and have taxpayers pay the check.”

At San Francisco’s Muni for instance, even in the best-case scenario – where riders pack buses and will soon crowd the Central Subway, the $1.95 billion light rail project that opened on Saturday – the agency is projecting long-term service cuts of 21% across bus and rail, compared to pre-pandemic levels.

“The cost of the service has increased,” said Jonathan Rewer, the chief financial officer at SFMTA, which runs Muni. He cited a labor contract that increased wages by 11% over three years starting in 2019, rising fuel costs and other inflationary pressures.

Each agency now faces its own financial deadline, known as a fiscal cliff, when the billions of dollars in federal assistance they received over the pandemic run dry. Their cliffs differ in time and size depending on how efficiently the agencies stretched relief dollars, along with their own unique budgetary puzzles and the impact of byzantine federal funding formulas.

First comes Caltrain, which is projected to open up a $25 million budget hole as soon as next year, followed by Muni and the Golden Gate bus and ferry district. BART’s fiscal cliff is likely in 2025. The VTA’s is pushed to 2027 due to healthy sales tax revenue, according to their financials, but funding for the Santa Clara County agency could be upended by recessionary pressures.

Officials are quick to emphasize that their doomsday projections are a “paper exercise,” not a policy decision and did not account for the prospect of fare hikes. There are often budgetary moves transit operators can make to stave off the worst cuts. Still, officials said the trends summarized in the exercises hold true.

Potential cuts are biggest at BART, the regional rail spine, where service could plummet by 80% in what transit planners refer to as a “death spiral.”  The severity is caused by the high fixed costs of running a train system, the agency said. In order to cut its way out of a budget crisis, BART would need to slash service so deep that riders would flee causing even deeper budgetary wounds and a cycle of ridership losses.

“You’re cutting service until people can’t get on the train,” said Michael Eiseman, BART’s financial planning director.

Buses, which are more readily able to scale service, could see cuts ranging from 15% at AC Transit, the East Bay’s biggest bus operator, to 25% for San Francisco’s Muni, compared to pre-pandemic levels. “Ten percent cuts have happened before and even they were pretty grim,” said Peter Straus, a former service planner for SFMTA, which runs Muni. “There’s no way that San Francisco could swallow a 20% cut in service without some pretty drastic impacts on people’s lives.”

The future of the Bay Area’s transportation network – one that forms a vital social safety net, and reduces traffic and carbon emissions – is at stake, according to transit advocates. But there’s also a key tension to agencies’ calls for more money: Will the state and local taxpayers be willing to invest more dollars in a lagging transit system that is moving fewer people and taking fewer cars off the road?

State Sen. Scott Wiener is among the lawmakers pushing to rescue transit as budget negotiations restart in January. Regional transit officials are hoping the state will provide a bridge over the fiscal cliff for the next five years as they prepare a multibillion-dollar local ballot measure for 2026 or 2028. But they face headwinds. The state of California is now facing a projected $25 billion budget shortfall.

The loss in transit service would “completely explode congestion on our roads, it would undermine our economic recovery and it would deeply harm low-income workers,” said Wiener. “We can’t let that happen.”

[state-of-connecticut-official]

A while ago I made a post about how bus fares used to be free in Connecticut. I recently discovered that the Transit Riders Union of CT exists and if you live here I urge you to join and spread the word.

I was also reading this article by the CT Mirror which described how ridership decreased by nearly a third in major cities after the bus fees were reinstated.

A lot of people rely on public transit to commute and the fees are a heavy burden. A lot of people drive to work and gas is a heavy burden. Ned Lamont still refuses to do anything about it despite the fact he knows it worked during covid.