Too often, public transportation in the United States has endured a reputation as slow, unreliable, and unpleasant. The nation&#;s largest cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington DC, have fared slightly better, with enough urban density to justify major investments in comprehensive bus and light rail systems.
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While public transportation networks in smaller and emerging cities may not yet be comprehensive, leading cities have decades of experience managing and developing systems that transport 36 million Americans to and from their places of school or work each weekday.
So, for city dwellers, what are the public transportation benefits? And for those just visiting The Big Apple or Windy City, why should they consider hoping on a bus or taking the subway as part of a city tour?
How much will gas cost tomorrow? No one knows the answer, and it&#;s one of the public transportation benefits that daily users enjoy. Insulation from the fluctuations of oil prices (which inform gas prices) means that budgeting is easier, whether you&#;re just starting out in your career, juggling the financial responsibilities of middle age and parenthood, or managing a fixed retirement income.
Estimates from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), an organization that supports the expansion of public transportation, state that a two-person household can save more than $10,174 annually by exchanging one of their two cars for a public transportation option. (That&#;s to say nothing of the anxiety you&#;ll avoid by not worrying about your vehicle breaking down in the middle of winter.)
Owning an operating a vehicle is about more than just gas prices and repairs. For those working in big cities, parking fees can easily exceed $100 per month, too.
Office dwellers in big cities may not have many opportunities to get out and get some fresh air on a quick walk. Public transportation, though it offers convenient boarding areas throughout major cities, assures at least a few minutes of active time each day.
A joint study by the Victoria Policy Institute and APTA revealed that regular users of public transportation got an average of 19 minutes of exercise each day, more than three times the amount of nonusers, who got an average of just 6 minutes of daily exercise. Those 19 minutes approach the baseline recommended by the Centers for Disease Control of at least 22 minutes of daily exercise.
If you&#;re looking to kick start a new exercise regimen, choosing public transportation guarantees regular exercise. Beyond an opportunity to get your heart rate up, public transportation also trades the stressful experience of bumper-to-bumper traffic for the freedom of a subway or bus ride. Spend that time preparing for your day, relaxing from a long one, or whatever else you love to do&#;reading, writing, playing games, even watching videos or television on your smartphone.
Big cities have abundant&#;and never-ceasing&#;nightlife. If you&#;re a night owl, you&#;ll have your pick of live music, dancing, or simply opting for that 11:00 p.m. dinner reservation at a fashionable restaurant. Public transportation means you have a safe, sober driver until the early hours. It means everyone in your group can toast a meal with champagne and not put anyone at risk. Uber and taxi services provide another alternative, but the price point of public transportation ensures your trip home is affordable, as well as safe.
Even for those who prefer a quieter night in, public transportation can come to the rescue when you&#;re traveling across the city to see the dentist or doctor. Even minor tests and procedures, like a simple eye test, may prohibit you from driving for several hours.
With public transportation, however, you can save time and avoid the hassle of asking a friend or family member to take time off or wait around during a checkup.
The APTA reports that public transportation reduces U.S. carbon emissions by 37 million metric tons each year. Environmental Protection Agency data reveals that that number is roughly equivalent to the total fossil fuel emissions from all U.S. territories (non-states).
Calculated on an individual level, this means that you can reduce your daily carbon footprint by 20 pounds if you transition your 10-mile commute from private to public transportation. And that adds up to nearly 5,000 pounds of carbon emissions each year, or from 10 to 30% of your total carbon emissions.
Though the benefits of public transportation aren&#;t available in the vast rural expanses of the United States, there&#;s no reason not to take advantage of them in the nation&#;s leading cities. It&#;s an immediate way to become a healthier, wealthier version of yourself while also helping the environment and reducing your daily stress. At the very least, it&#;s something to think about the next time you&#;re stuck in traffic.
Where the automobile is a major competitor to mass transportation, the use of transit has declined, reducing revenues available to pay the costs of these systems and services, and&#;in a setting where government subsidies are essential for sustaining mass transit&#;political support has eroded as well. As more people rely on the automobile, their interest in directing public resources to improving the highway system dominates their concern for subsidizing transit.
For those who can use the automobile for quick and reliable transportation, this trend simply represents the evolution of urban transport from collective riding to individual riding, from the economies of sharing a relatively high-speed service in a corridor where travel patterns are similar or the same, to the privacy of one&#;s own &#;steel cocoon,&#; which can go anywhere, anytime, without the need to coordinate travel plans with the schedule and routes of a transit operator attempting to serve large groups of people. The automobile has captured a large share (more than 95 percent by ) of urban trips in the United States, and only in some cities of more than two million people does the mass transportation share reach or exceed 10 percent of the trips.
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If the automobile provides superior service for the majority of riders, why not let the market operate without government intervention, perhaps leading to the demise of transit? While this has happened in some medium-size and small American cities, mass transportation can be important for a number of reasons.
First, some portion of the urban travel market is made up of people who cannot use the automobile to travel because they are handicapped, elderly, or too young to drive. Some people cannot afford to own and operate a car, and the young, the old, and the handicapped often fall into this category. If these people are to have the mobility essential for subsistence and satisfaction in their lives, some form of public transportation is necessary.
Second, transit provides a community with a way to move potentially large numbers of people while consuming fewer resources. A single bus, if it is full (50 to 80 passengers), can carry as many people as 50 or 60 cars, which normally operate with fewer than 2 occupants. The bus requires less street space, equivalent to 2 or 3 automobiles, and, when it is full, it requires much less energy to move each person. Because emissions from internal-combustion engines are proportional to fuel consumption, a full bus will produce less pollution per person-trip than an automobile. Finally, because they are operated by professional drivers, buses have a lower accident rate than automobiles. Electric rail rapid transit trains produce even less air pollution and are far safer per person-trip than either automobiles or buses.
Transit, when it is well utilized, then, produces important benefits for the community: air-quality improvements, less land consumption than an auto-dependent transportation system, lower energy requirements, and lower accident costs. A single lane of an urban freeway may carry 5,000 persons per hour (see Table). A light rail transit line (electric trolley cars) on a separate guideway taking the same space as the highway lane might carry as many as 14,000 persons per hour. High-quality mass transportation serving dense employment and shopping areas, such as the central business district of a city or the downtown area of a suburban community, can help ensure the economic success of those areas by making it easier and less costly for large numbers of workers and shoppers to enter and leave. A successful transit system also reduces the need for downtown parking, making land available for more productive uses. Thus public transportation provides support for particular land development patterns, such as downtowns, and higher-density employment, educational, cultural, and retail activity centres.
Typical capacities of urban mass transportation modes vehicle type guideway type persons per vehicle "train" length "trains" per hour average speed passengers per hour seated crowded low high low high auto streets 1.2 3 1 450 900 20 540 2,700 auto freeways 1.2 3 1 900 1,800 30 1,080 5,400 bus streets 50 80 1 1 60 8 50 4,800 bus separate 50 80 1 1 30 20 50 2,400 light rail streets 80 100 3 6 30 10 1,440 9,000 light rail separate 90 120 4 4 30 25 1,440 14,400 heavy rail separate 100 120 8 4 40 30 3,200 38,400 commuter rail separate 100 150 10 1 12 35 1,000 18,000These benefits accrue not only to transit travelers but also to other residents and to the owners of land and businesses. Indeed, a major benefit of mass transportation services goes to automobile travelers, who experience less congestion and shorter travel times. There is no monetary market for these broadly distributed public goods produced by mass transportation. There is no practical way to sell clean air or lower accident rates to city dwellers to raise funds to subsidize and expand mass transit or to restrict access to these benefits only to those who pay for them. Some communities do raise revenues for transit and other purposes by levying special fees on properties particularly well-served by fixed-guideway transit (for example, in downtown areas or near rail stations) to capture some of the increased value produced by raising their accessibility with public transportation.
These public transportation benefits provide the justification for government subsidies. Their generation is strongly dependent on the utilization of mass transportation. The heavier the use of public transit, the larger will be the benefits produced. Yet even if only a small portion (5&#;10 percent) of the travel market uses transit in the rush hours, a major reduction in congestion can result. On the other hand, buses and trains running nearly empty in the middle of the day, during the evening, or on weekends do not produce sufficient benefits to the community to justify the high costs to provide these services.
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