Current Affairs Magazine: US Transit is Abysmal and Unacceptable

The article, "US Transit is Abysmal and Unacceptable," isn't particularly scintillating.  But it has tons of great links, so it's worth mentioning.

US land use development and planning after 1920 favors the car.  Transit is abysmal because after the era of the transit city (1890-1920, see "Transportation and Urban Form: Stages in the Spatial Evolution of the American Metropolis,") cities have been built to optimize and depend upon the automobile.  

There are many reasons for this, but mostly because at that time "planning" was done by the private sector for both residential development and transportation--by default private sector transit organizations were the planners for transit.  And people enjoyed the expansion of personal mobility through car ownership.  

Plus, the car and freedom were seen as "better" than mass transit.  Certainly, the automobile manufacturing industry including parts like tires, oil companies, and residential housing builders, financiers, etc., liked sprawl because it was more profitable that a more centralized land use paradigm that favored transit.

Homogeneous versus heterogenous mobility systems.  I call our mobility system homogeneous, because it was set up to optimize the car.  92% of all trips in the US involve a car.  But Germany shows us you can have an economy with a heterogeneous mobility system, promoting cars--they have a great automobile industry, and transit, because they recognized that transit was the best way to get around major cities.  Same with Japan.

Bahn (trains) and Autobahn (motor vehicles) in Germany.

In metropolitan areas, the reality is that there is only so much land that can be dedicated to roads.  The more you can shift trips to transit, biking, and walking, the better.

Streetcar conspiracy fact or fiction..  While lots of people blame "GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil." for the destruction of rail transit through their program of buying streetcar systems and converting them to buses, that's somewhat facile.  Even though a court case found them guilty of such, but awarded minimal fines.

Elevated terminal station, Dudley Square, Boston.

Without the boost from WW2's gasoline rationing, transit use--including passenger railroads, had been trending downward for decades.  Increasingly, cities began subsidizing transit, including passenger railroads, as the private firms said they were losing money providing the service--abetted by a refusal to raise fares.

Cities owning their own.  Some cities, like NYC had already been developing public transit services.  San Francisco started in 1912, with the MUNI-municipal system. In the 1890s, Boston was involved in subway planning, but still expected the private sector to carry it out.  

Cities buying/taking over declining systems.  Later, as private sector operations went bankrupt, cities like Chicago and Detroit stepped in and bought the systems, to be able to maintain service.

Interestingly, one of the few streetcar systems the GM group didn't totally eradicate was Philadelphia's, because it's set of underground tunnels serving downtown was unbeatable by surface transit (or automobiles).

By extension, that's the case too for transit cities in the US.  The big ones are NYC, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which are legacy cities with legacy transit systems that optimized mobility, in a manner analogous to Philly's Downtown streetcar tunnels.  

In fact, NYC especially for Manhattan, would be impossible to get around if it were motor vehicle dependent.  There just isn't enough road capacity.

Modern heavy rail transit (1950s-1990s).  And DC.  DC lost its streetcars gradually during the postwar period until 1962, when because Congress refused to renew the streetcar franchise in the mid-1950s, forced a shutdown and replacement with buses.  But the city still had the transit city urban form, which was perfect for the introduction of a subway system, starting with planning beginning in the 1960s. (Ephemera-wise, I just got a copy of the initial transit study for the city, published in 1965 during the Johnson Administration.)

DC's system is more a commuter rail, focused on moving commuters from the suburbs to their once held jobs in the city center.  The system wasn't designed to improve DC neighborhoods, but it did by default, although it took a few decades to see the results.

Other systems from this era: Atlanta MARTA, Baltimore's single line subway, BART in SF, and Miami didn't have the same impact.  Baltimore because they were late to the game, and could only build one line, even though its urban form is transit city, and Atlanta, Miami and SF not so much.  BART was good for extending the range of transit, especially in SF which already had a great city-serving system, but it's best ridership was about 5/8 of DC's.

Atlanta keeps trying to expand their system, but are stymied by suburban anti-transit interests.  Miami too, sort of, but the problem with that system is that it was designed "to help declining areas" and they didn't think to provide service to high in demand healthy areas as well, which would have led to a much greater ridership.  Its ridership pre-covid was less than 10% of DC.  Although Miami created a people mover system to complement the commuter rail like Metrorail, and that adds about 18,000 daily riders.

Light rail.  After this period, transit planning and funding shifted to light rail.  Generally, heavy rail subway service is for places that can deliver multiple hours of 30,000 or so riders.  So few if any light rail systems would be better as heavy rail.  People say Seattle, which is developing one of the more successful LR systems,, because it more compactly services the center city, should be heavy rail but they don't meet the criteria really.  LA has a mix of heavy and light rail.  Other cities like San Diego have pretty good systems, for the area's they cover.  Denver, Dallas, and Houston are pretty "sprawl-y.  

Portland was really the first modern LR system with a lot of forethought and complementary to land use planning which focused development on the central business district.

Other lines like Buffalo, Charlotte, Norfolk, New Jersey, etc., have pretty paltry ridership considering.

Light rail + bus.  Especially when complemented by bus.  E.g., Salt Lake City is small and has LR because of the 2002 Olympics.  The transit system isn't great overall, but in the primary catchment area of the TRAX system, complemented by bus service, it works pretty well.  Even though higher density TOD isn't really part of the equation.

True commuter rail.  Legacy systems.  Big systems in the Northeast centered around serving NYC, Boston and Philadelphia.  Chicago.  The DC area has old lines from B&O and Pennsylvania Railroad, and a new line in Virginia (transit service by train had diminished in that area long before more modern times).  Chicago has an extensive system.

New.  Many newer transit systems, like Seattle, Miami, and Salt Lake, have complementary commuter service.

California has three successful modern systems, Caltrain in the North, which has gone through a great deal of electrification, Metrolink in Greater LA, and Coaster in San Diego County (which really should be amalgamated into Metrolink).