Evaluating New Start Transit Program Performance

There is ongoing debate over the relative advantages of rail and bus transit investments. Rail critics assert that cities which expand their bus transit systems exhibit better performance than those that expand rail systems. This study examines those claims. It compares public transport performance in U.S. urban areas that expanded rail transit with urban areas that expanded bus transit from the mid-1990s through 2003, using Federal Transit Administration data. This analysis indicates that cities that expanded their rail systems significantly outperformed cities that only expanded bus systems in terms of transit ridership, passenger-mileage, and operating cost efficiency. This indicates that rail transit investments are often economically justified due to benefits from improved transit performance and increased transit ridership. Originally presented as Comparative Performance of Public Transport in The US: New-Start Rail Cities vs. Bus-Only Cities presented at the Joint International Light Rail Conference, April 2006, St. Louis, Missouri, sponsored by the Transportation Research Board, the International Union of Public Transport, and the American Public Transportation Association Evaluating New Start Program Performance Victoria Transport Policy Institute 2 Introduction During recent decades several American cities developed new rail transit systems, hoping to achieve various benefits including increased transit ridership, enhanced transit system attractiveness, and improved cost efficiency. Have these objectives been achieved? How do these projects compare with alternative transit investments? Some critics assert that rail investments are wasteful and even a “disaster,” and cities can achieve greater ridership gains and cost efficiency with bus transit improvements. For example, one recent publication contrasts ridership trends from 1983 to 2003 in 23 urban areas operating both rail and bus services with eight urban areas that only operate bus transit (O’Toole 2005). The bus-only areas selected (Austin, Charlotte, Eugene, Houston, Las Vegas, Louisville, Phoenix, and Raleigh-Durham) experienced large growth in rider-trips (boardings) and passenger-miles (p-m), which the author claims demonstrates that bus service performs better than rail. In the case of Austin, for example, transit trips increased by over 522% and passenger-miles by nearly 640% during the two-decade period. In Las Vegas, the area with the greatest growth, trips increased 1,239% and passenger-miles increased 1,161%. However, some of these results reflect analysis bias favoring bus transit (LRN 2005; Litman 2006). The cities selected to represent bus transit were growing rapidly, with transit systems that expanded from small to medium size, and so experienced high ridership growth rates during the analysis period, while most rail cities were large and mature and experienced slow or negative population growth (although many have since gained population). The study highlighted the bus cities’ proportionately large ridership growth, although rail city ridership actually increased much more in absolute terms, as illustrated in Figure 1. In addition, several of the newer rail systems in the study did not exist during much of the analysis period. Recent rail transit expansions have met or exceeded their ridership targets (Henry and Dobbs 2013). Figure 1 Total Transit Ridership Growth (Litman, 2006) 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,00