The Virtues of Crowded Transit
Ryan Avent reads a Federal Transit Administration study on that compares emissions and energy use per passenger mile across different transportation modes. Not surprisingly, it shows that transit does better than personal automobiles in both a per-mile and lifecycle (i.e., thinking about the energy that goes into production and deployment) point of view:
But a couple of interesting things stand out. One is that increasing transit ridership has a dramatic effect on average emissions, especially for buses. The reason, of course, is that a lot of carbon is emitted setting up and running a train or a bus, but very little additional carbon is emitted as riders are added. The get the most emission savings out of the technology, then, you want to run transit pretty full. And the other thing that stands out is that, according to research cited by the FTA, the effect that transit has on land-use produces twice the reduction in emissions as the mode shift itself.
What this means is that if you’re interested in reducing the nation’s carbon emissions, you ought to be interested in building new transit. But what it also suggests is that just laying the tracks or buying the buses, and doing nothing else insitutionally, is leaving most of the potential carbon savings from transit on the table. You also need to work to maximize ridership, by eliminating silly automobile subsidies, for instance (like free parking and underpriced roads), or by making your system easier to use (by partnering with Google Transit). And you need to allow transit to shape development around stations, by changing zoning rules and street patterns (as Tysons Corner intends to do), and by facilitating density in other ways (like ensuring that NIMBYism doesn’t stand in the way of quality, dense, developments).
One thing to say about this is that it highlights why it would be a good idea to get our fare-setting policies right. Currently, pretty much every transit agency I’m aware of receives a public subsidy that leaves it dependent on using fare collection as a source of revenue. This is a mistake. The fixed costs of quality transit construction are high, but the marginal costs of carrying additional passengers are very low, and the public goods associated with transit use are higher when more people use transit. Ideally, then, fares on uncrowded bus or rail lines should be very low or even non-existent. Fares should come into play when an at-capacity transit line is in danger of becoming overcrowded. For example, the portion of downtown Washington DC where the Orange and Blue lines run on the same track is, during rush hour, extremely crowded even given the fairly high fare. Under the circumstances, reducing fares would be counterproductive and possibly dangerous. But when crowding isn’t an issue, use should be encouraged through fares that are as low as possible.
And of course much the same principle applies to roads. Roads that are prone to overcrowding ought to have fees associated with them that are designed to bring the congestion under control. And other roads — or the same roads at uncrowded times — ought to be free.
55 Responses to “The Virtues of Crowded Transit”
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December 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Running metro for an hour past bar closing time (with low or no fare) would encourage people who shouldn’t be driving to stay off the roads too.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Creating a situation where people are standing for long periods of a time seems like a bad idea. Standing on buses is terribly uncomfortable and difficult to enjoy reading and music that make mass transit attractive.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Look I can support more for under-priced roads but I will never, ever, ever go along with your mad, cruel desire to eliminate free parking.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Matthew is starting to think like an engineer, not a liberal arts wienie. An vast improvement, IMO.
I would note that highways and automobiles have historically had a big advantage over mass transit because their upfront capital requirements are much lower.
It’s much cheaper to build a road before an area develops than to install a subway AFTER the local population density has increased enough to support mass transit.
I.e., you can add capacity in small increments by having newcomers buy cars. It’s similar to the reason why businesses preferred to buy PCs over time rather than have to cough up a big sum upfront for an IBM Mainframe with terminals.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Plus Matthew is ducking an issue: What’s the fallback plan if avian flu turns pandemic? In that event, riding on crowded mass transit is a surefire trip to the grave.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
It’s a really nicely laid out post about priorities and funding. I’m not sure I totally agree about fare policies, where the post speaks most in the language of the market economy. I agree that riders shouldn’t be responsible for keeping the system viable. Still, first, I don’t entirely object to nonzero fares as long as they’re affordable to working people.
Much more important, I don’t agree with the idea of raising fares to discourage rush-hour use. That’s when kicking people back onto roads has its most adverse consequences in terms of emissions, urban planning, affordability to the working class, and so on. For that matter, New York subways are often crowded on weekends, too, and the same reasoning from market incentives would be telling us to get people to use the subways less.
Rather, we should be using the funds to make it possible for people to use the subways. Instead, while fair hikes are likely, the same budget constraints are forcing cutbacks in some lines, as well as no doubt dooming capital projects for new lines. Again, I don’t say my priority is keeping fairs near zero, especially as long as we can charge properly for highways, bridges, and parking. Just that funding for mass transit should be based on extending and encouraging use.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
One method we did here in Boulder was to run smaller buses more often. This may seem a little counter-intuitive. But the added convenience made the buses much more appealing. We used to have large buses with ten riders coming every thirty minutes. Now we have small buses with fifteen riders coming every ten minutes. We have more buses now, so emissions have gone up a little. But we have triple the ridership, and those people aren’t driving cars. And now, during busy periods, we use large buses every ten minutes (with 40 riders).
Another thing that has really helped is an annual bus pass that is organized through neighborhood organizations. If you never have to come up with bus fare, you are much likely to ride the bus. In order to get the passes, each neighborhood group must come up with enough buyers. That means your neighbor is shaming you into buying a pass. So you do it to help your neighbors. I pay $250 per year for regional service that includes Denver. That is my entire transportation costs for the year. I got rid of my car.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
What’s the fallback plan if avian flu turns pandemic? In that event, riding on crowded mass transit is a surefire trip to the grave.
Where would you drive to in a car in that case? Going to an office or school would also be certain death.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Re MikeJ’s comment “Where would you drive to in a car in that case? Going to an office or school would also be certain death.”
———–
Not if various quarantine measures were used — lower office density via having half of the employees working at home. N95 masks and goggles plus washing the hands after touching doorknobs, etc. Certainly you wouldn’t want critical personnel taking mass transit.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Fan tastic. I was waiting outside in the 15 degree weather this morning for my 7:30 bus. As I was all bundled up and shaking my hands to keep warm I got all exicted as I saw the lighted sign of the bus roll around the corner, then I saw it at the stoplight before me and got out my transit pass. After the bus started to accelerate as it neared my stop I was thinking f*ck. It just rolled right on by as the bus driver waved to me. I then proceeded to wait another 30 minutes in the cold until the next bus came, at which point I had to stand up in the middle of two fat people while the bus weaved around corners and bounced over potholes.
That is what full public transportation gets you: horrible service and dissatisfied customers. But hey we saved some carbon, so Lord Yglesias is all happy.
BTW: Public transportation (buses) have been shown to increase all criteria pollutants associated with transportation because of increased congestion caused by frequent bus stops which inhibit the free flow of traffic.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
JimboSlice, your experience is unfortunately fairly normal in the US. And it is why most people hate taking buses. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We in Boulder have solved the thirty minute wait issue, and riding the bus is actually pretty pleasant now. As for frequent stops interfering with traffic, we used to have that problem. Now, we have turnouts on the busy streets. And it is the buses that get impeded when they are trying to pull back into traffic (they don’t have the right of way).
December 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Waiting for the bus sucks. Riding the bus sucks. No policy will change these essential facts.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Heh. Good one, Jimbo. As I left for my morning commute, in the one of the passenger vehicles Matt Yglesias hates so much, and steered towards one of the highways Matt Yglesias hates so much, I saw some poor bastard waiting for the bus. At five in the morning. In the rain and cold (or “cold” by Los Angeles county standards). I felt bad for him, then I thought about this blog.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
The demand for mass transit is very price inelastic. What is drives demand for transit is service/convenience. The Google tool may be a service enhancement but in my estimation it is a very small improvement. The fact is once you know the line that will take you to where you want to go and know how often the bus/train runs the Google tool has little value. If you want more riders, make the transit system flexible (goes where I want to go) and reliable (on time).
I find it interesting that you jump from the capital costs of building a rail line to the marginal cost of an additional passenger. There is a very high fixed operating expense that for some reason you seem to overlook. As a matter of fact, it is the reason why fares don’t even come close to covering operating expenses.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
There is a huge difference between light rail/subway and buses. That this blog jumps from one to the other is pretty disturbing from both the service and capital/operating costs aspects.
Tom: great post. The main problem with public transport is NOT the price, it is the quality and reliability of service. Most public transport systems are run by union employees who have no threat of being fired – and no incentive to improve the quality of their service. Also most public transit systems serve to funnel people down town.
Picture a city as a circle, if you are on the border of the circle and want to get to another place on the border of the circle that if 15 degrees away (~.25 rad) you need to first travel through to the center, then back out to the point you want to get to, then back to the center, and back to where you live. Taking that very case you need to travel 2R to go a distance of .25R, basically 8 times the distance.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
One method we did here in Boulder was to run smaller buses more often. This may seem a little counter-intuitive
In fact, it’s often not helpful at all. The bus size isn’t where the cost is; the driver is where the cost is. Having more smaller vehicles means that many more vehicles to maintain, and possibly a more divergent fleet, which makes your maintenance more expensive.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
I can’t tell what the source of the data is from the slides, but it only provides data on single-occupancy vehicles and vanpools. But cars have an average occupancy of 1.57 people; since carbon emissions are pretty sensitive to occupancy, the emissions for cars as a whole is probably lower.
What’s the range of CO2 emissions per passenger mile for cars? How well do the best cars perform?
December 15th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
http://www.sightline.org/maps/charts/pollu_co2transp_ooh
If you take a look at this chart you can see the different emissions per passenger mile. Looks to me if you have an economy car (40 mpg) with 3 passengers, you would get 0.197 lb/passenger mile which is less than the 0.26 on a 3/4 full mass transit system.
Car-pooling seems like a great solution. But then again Lord Yglesias would probably get ticked off because the prols would then have freedom and options. Lord Yglesias wants a situation where only the rich have options and alternatives – see his postings on parking.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Jimbo: “Car-pooling seems like a great solution. But then again Lord Yglesias would probably get ticked off because the prols would then have freedom and options.”
How does depending on a single driver and single vehicle to get home from work deliver “freedom and options” when compared to mass transit?
December 15th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
So cities should antagonize residents by eliminating free parking and not increasing transit services?
Sounds like a wonderful idea.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Because you get to choose which driver it will be, or you could even be the driver. I don’t have the option to choose which driver or which transit authority I want to take. In my city, like most others, there is 1 option when it comes to mass transit.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Other consideration regarding fares:
1. If the fare is a stupid amount, like $1.35, it greatly adds to the inconvenience factor of riding transit. Fares should be easy-to-pay cash amounts, and convenient payment methods such as cash cards should be encouraged.
2. The existence of fares, as far as I can tell, is mainly to keep homeless people from riding transit all day to keep out the rain.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Jimbo: “Because you get to choose which driver it will be, or you could even be the driver. I don’t have the option to choose which driver or which transit authority I want to take.”
But a carpool is effectively a single-route transit system, which runs only once per day. It has the benefit of having a stop at your house, but if you need to stay late or leave early on a given day, you’re pretty much hosed. (Regardless if you’re a driver or a passenger.)
December 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
A carpool is customized single-route transit system. If you need to work late or leave early in a particular day you will notify your carpoolers, communicate with them like a rational human being, and either work something out or commute by yourself for that one day when you have an exceptional situation.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Interestingly enough, this is more or less what they do with MetroBus. For FY2008, 32% of MetroBus’ operating expenses are covered by user fees. Compare that with MetroRail, where 79% of operating expenses are covered by user fees.
The danger is that as you move towards something that’s more fully subsidized, you’re going to get something more like MetroBus (infrequent, awful) than MetroRail (frequent, good).
The percentage of the increased operating costs that WMATA is forced to eat is going to weigh heavily on whether or not they are going to be able to add more service. And if rail expansion came with a guarantee that in addition to the high capital costs, the actual operational costs would also be a huge money-suck, do you think that there would be an appetite for things like the Silver Line?
December 15th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Jimbo: “A carpool is customized single-route transit system. If you need to work late or leave early in a particular day you will notify your carpoolers, communicate with them like a rational human being, and either work something out or commute by yourself for that one day when you have an exceptional situation.”
Right, so either you have to modify your schedule to accommodate your fellow riders, or (on the flip side of the situation) your fellow poolers have to modify their schedules to accommodate your situation. “Freedom and options” don’t really seem that great here.
The only part of that situation which provides “freedom and options” is the “or commute by yourself for that one day” scenario. And that’s because mass transit offers more “freedom and options” than carpooling.
Don’t get me wrong, carpooling can be very good alternative to mass transit. (Complement to mass transit, actually.) But “freedom and options” aren’t among the benefits.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Just to add another aspect to the fare discussion, here in Japan most employers will pay for monthly public transit passes, while I believe they have to pay their own way if they drive (I don’t drive, so I don&t know for sure).
This would be another way to get more riders at all times (the commuter uses it during rush hour, but even outside the busiest hours, they’d be enticed by the fact that travel’s free to ride at non-peak hours as well).
As a bonus, it would be a potential job perk that could make up for health care perks if we move to a one-payer or nationalized system.
December 15th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Jeremy: “Just to add another aspect to the fare discussion, here in Japan most employers will pay for monthly public transit pass…”
Here in the US, employers can give transit perks to their employees in the form of untaxed transit vouchers. And, w.r.t. Jimbo, it covers private vanpools as well.
December 15th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
You have the freedom to pick who will be in your carpool, what times it will run at, and what stops it will make. You basically have the freedom to create your own mass transit system customized to your wants and needs. Incentive and facilitating that seems like a far more effective use of tax $$ than expanding mass transit.
December 15th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Jimbo: “You basically have the freedom to create your own mass transit system customized to your wants and needs.”
But you don’t. You have the freedom to join a committee to study the wants and needs of the committee, and to propose a single schedule which will fulfill the needs of the average member, all subject to individual veto power for each member of said committee. That’s great, so far as the standard deviation in needs between members is quite small, and that those needs and deviations are entirely static.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
“Having more smaller vehicles means that many more vehicles to maintain, and possibly a more divergent fleet, which makes your maintenance more expensive.”
That’s all true. But the real issue is the MORE OFTEN part. To do that, you need more buses, whatever size they may be. And they can be smaller, which may not save a lot of money, but it still saves some. The issue is this: nobody wants to wait 30 minutes for a bus, especially on a day like today (it was really cold). But people will wait in the cold for ten minutes, as the crowded buses today prove (it was SRO on every bus today). If you want to increase ridership, you need to make the buses convenient. Boulder did that and ridership increased. So much so, that many of the popular routes have to use larger buses now. Now obviously, Boulder pays more for drivers and maintenance than most towns, but they also have a lot more people paying into the system. And with more people using the system, the buses now go to more places. And that makes it even more convenient.
December 15th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Matt’s post totally ridiculous and an offense to anyone who is commuting. I’m certain he seldom uses public transport during peak times, you know, like when one has to be somewhere at a certain time every day – otherwise he would never make such statements. Instead he probably sits at home in his pajamas or lounges in a Starbucks with his MacBook.
Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein – I thought us liberals had made some headway in this regard, but apparently not.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Jer: “Here in the US, employers can give transit perks to their employees in the form of untaxed transit vouchers. And, w.r.t. Jimbo, it covers private vanpools as well.”
I did not know that. Having lived all of my US years in a small suburb of Indianapolis, IN, I didn’t even know Indy had a bus system for a long time let alone that companies would provide for mass transit use.
novakant: Matt’s post isn’t offensive. It just highlights some realities of the world that mass transit planners have to take into account. I’ve been shoehorned on all sorts of buses, subways and trains at peak periods (Tokyo with the white-gloved dudes PUSHING people in so the doors can close. Try holding that position for an hour). It sucks and I’d like to have a nice seat all to myself, but sometimes it just can’t happen. It may not be the most psychologically healthy way to travel, but that’s why Japan Railways has a green car where you are guaranteed a seat to relax (at about twice the ticket price).
December 16th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Matt’s post isn’t offensive. It just highlights some realities of the world that mass transit planners have to take into account.
Let’s have a look at what he’s actually saying:
- profitability is a major consideration for urban transport planning and commuters have to foot the bill
- the more people on a bus or train, the better
- those who have to travel at peak times should be doubly punished, firstly they are packed like sardines already and to add insult to injury they should be paying more for this privilege, than those able to travel at quieter times
The first point is stupid neo-liberalism, the second simply disregards the well-being of people and the third point is a combination of the first two with a bit of cruelty thrown in.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Anyone with any experience with systems with steep off-peak fare discounts knows that what they do is spread demand for the transport more widely across the day.
Which is, after all, one important way of increasing average ridership, since a packed peak hour service can only carry more people if some of the people already taking it are bribed into using it at a different time of day.
In Sydney’s Cityrail … which is probably a better example to use than European systems, since it is badly designed and badly run enough to be similar to a wide range of American public transport services … an off-peak return tick costs 1/5 more than an on-peak one-way fare.
I’ve been told that off-peak discounts are rare in the US, where rail systems tend to set prices like they are bus systems. However, for the ultimate in simplicity in off-peak fares, go on better than the above, and include a free return trip with on off-peak ticket. Easy to remember, easy to set-up … when the peak travel time passes, sell tickets at the same price, just sell round-trip tickets … easy to advertise and promote.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Comment 36 demonstrates a problem I see in a lot of anti-transit thinking: the idea that everybody will continue to do everything the same way, despite changes in incentives.
The idea that transit would remain just a crowded during peak hours if there was congestion pricing, for example.
Another favorite is people who respond to a proposal to expand transit service and promote transit-oriented development around it with “There’s no way I’d take a train from my cul-de-sac house to the industrial park!”
December 16th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
For god’s sake, I’m not anti-transit at all, I am for better transit. I can speak only for London, but there nobody in their right mind would go on the tube or take a bus between 7-9.30 am and 5-7 pm if they didn’t have to, they avoid it like the plague. I have commuted a lot at these times and, apart from the occasional tourists who didn’t know better, the vast majority of people on the tube was there because they had to be at the office or were leaving the office. These people have no choice and won’t go away no matter what you do. The circumstances under which they have to travel should be the foremost focus of our efforts to reform the transit system.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Flexible working hours are a good thing and are becoming more available.
Practically speaking all they do is extend the length of the rush hours by spreading people’s commute times out a bit more, but it’s still a huge benefit. In London and New York, you already have quite high usage at “off peak” hours — you just plain need more capacity. But where the peak is very concentrated, you can get major benefits by moving some of the commuters an hour earlier, some an hour later.
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