The bad news about transit success

It's underfunded. Providing more service costs money. Gasoline prices are driving more riders to transit systems. At the same time fuel for buses cost more. (And electricity isn't cheap either.)

See "Mass Transit Systems Have a Hard Time Paying the Bills: The good news, ridership is up; the bad news, ridership is up," from US News and World Report. From the article:

With gas at $4 per gallon and highway congestion soaring, ridership on the nation's subways and buses has jumped dramatically. Between 1995 and 2006, use of public transportation increased by 30 percent, a rate far outstripping both population growth and increased highway usage. Last year, that meant Americans took some 10.3 billion trips on mass transit. And therein lies the problem. "There's a transportation finance crisis writ large across the country," says Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's metropolitan policy program.

Because mass transit systems are so expensive to operate, they rely heavily on subsidies from federal, state, and local coffers. But the flow of money has not kept pace with the ridership growth. And when demand is coupled with capital costs or deferred maintenance and bonds coming due, many transit systems now find themselves in a financial bind that promises to only get worse.