From Bloomberg: A Commuting Resolution for 2025: Ride Your Local Subway or Bus Regularly

 -- article

Only 3.1% of US adults use public transportation to get to work, according to 2022 data from the Census Bureau, down from 5% in 2019. That year, almost 76% of Americans said they drove alone to work, a number that fell to 68.7% in 2022 as more people reported working from home. Among those who take transit, 70% were located in one of seven metropolitan areas — Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

A bicyclist in a sea of motor vehicle traffic.  Photo: Kevin Clark, Seattle Times.

This heavy reliance on private vehicles comes with a steep cost — both personally and to the environment (not to mention the fiscal health of your local transit agency). The average US household spends $13,174 per year on transportation, more than 85% of which go to car payments, gas and other automotive expenses. Driving costs help make transportation the second-largest expenditure for Americans after housing, representing roughly 17% of household income. In the European Union, it’s only 11%.

1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville

Transportation also accounts for 28% of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, with nearly 60% coming from cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. And while electric vehicles can help reduce that figure, research from the California Air Resources Board and others have found that switching to battery-power alone is not enough. To stave off the worst effects of climate change, fewer people need to be driving.  

1929 Chevrolet ad promoting driving kids to school.

And yet getting more people in the US out of their cars has been difficult. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, transit ridership was falling in most US cities, with success stories such as Seattle’s expanding bus ridership standing out as a rare exception. Even nudges such as offering free fares have not substantially moved people from behind the steering wheel and onto trains, buses and light rail. A big part of that problem is structural — lots of US communities simply don’t have good enough transit service. 

But even in cities with bus and train networks that are adequate for commuting, many people still opt to drive. For some of them, driving to work is just a habit, and habits are hard to break. Research has found that people will only change their commuting habits “when they’re starting a new job or when they’re moving,” says Ariella Kristal, a behavioral scientist and postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. “But they’re not just going to, in the middle of daily life, change an entrenched habit.”

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Transportation Demand Management.  Like with biking, people need assistance/help to make the transition from one mode to another.  The US has spent the last 100 years prioritizing automobile dependence.  

While it shouldn't take that long to increase the use of transit and bicycling as legitimate modes of transportation, the reality is that most places aren't built to make either mode efficient.

TDM works to shift people to other modes in directed ways, focusing more on people throughput than motor vehicle throughput.

In the US, Arlington County, Virginia and Whatcom County, Washington are some of the most active adherents to TDM.  Although plenty of places have created transportation associations to promote mode shift and have created Transportation Management Districts.  

This entry, ""What should the program for a Transportation Management District look like?," (2024)," outlines what I think an ideal TDM program should be.  FWIW, TDM was created in Victoria State, Australia, when an advocate realized that by shifting people to other modes, they could stop freeway expansion.

I've suggested DC create TMDs since about 2006.  They have these odd districts called "performance parking management districts" that are designed to do some of that but there isn't an overall standard of operations, they are more idiosyncratic, creatures of whoever did the plan.

Routes 10/12 of Capital Transit ran on H Street NE and Benning Road, to Rosslyn.  The lines were "abandoned" in 1949 in favor of bus service.

An ad we made for the H Street Main Street program, showing the 8th and H Streets NE intersection.

Traditional center cities offer the best opportunity, in particular those built primarily in the Walking City (1800-1890) and Streetcar/Transit City eras (1890-1920) ("Transportation and Urban Form: Stages in the Spatial Evolution of the American Metropolis," Geography of Urban Transportation). 

First, they have the street grid, which is an efficient way to move people around in multiple directions.  Second, the invention of the radial avenue (was it L'Enfant?) made connections between neighborhoods faster than traveling exclusively in right angles.  This was key for bicycling and transit especially.  Third, the urban form is compact, so work, home, shopping, school etc. are close together. 

From Ch. 2: Urban Form as Predictors

"Association of Travel and Urban form" by Shen Qu

According to the Seattle Times, DC has the second highest rate of non-car ownership ("Car-ownership rate hits record low in Seattle, census data shows").  As the Bloomberg article makes clear, relying on a car is extremely expensive.  

For some reason the Center for Neighborhood Technology's rating of places in terms of Housing and Transportation Affordability, which was aimed at coordinating mortgage pricing with transportation costs, has never really caught on as a way to justify lower interest rates on home purchases in those areas.

I consider it a privilege to have lived in DC, where albeit with compromises, you can get around reasonably efficiently without having to be dependent on a car.  And not owning a car supported at least $100,000 of our mortgage.

Note that yes, some car-less households don't own a car because they can't afford one, significant numbers of households have made the choice to not own a car.  Plus, car sharing services also reduce demand for car ownership, as many as 10-15 households can be supported by one car, leading to reduced car ownership ("A bit about car sharing").

Plus, when DC transit usage was high--pre-covid the number of transit riders for WMATA was double than that of today--the way I measured success of mode shift was my ability to run red lights on my bicycle during rush periods, because there was no significant traffic or significant breaks in traffic.

Transit agencies and TDM programs should use the concept of a New Year's Resolution every year to work to shift people to other modes.