Understanding US transit ridership trends

An article in the New York Times looks at the recent announcements that transit (PT) ridership in the USA in 2013 was the highest since the 1950s – much the same as in Auckland. What’s perhaps most interesting in the 2013 numbers is that petrol prices doesn’t seem to have featured as much in the reasoning behind the increase:

The trade group said in its annual report that 10.65 billion passenger trips were taken on transit systems during the year, surpassing the post-1950s peak of 10.59 billion in 2008, when gas prices rose to $4 to $5 a gallon.

The ridership in 2013, when gas prices were lower than in 2008, undermines the conventional wisdom that transit use rises when those prices exceed a certain threshold, and suggests that other forces are bolstering enthusiasm for public transportation, said Michael Melaniphy, the president of the association.

“Now gas is averaging well under $4 a gallon, the economy is coming back and people are riding transit in record numbers,” Mr. Melaniphy said in an interview. “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how people are moving about their communities.”

New Zealand has been different in regards to petrol with prices hovering around or even above the peaks of 2008 for the last few years. Here’s the graph of our average weekly petrol price up to 7th March.

Furthermore, the article notes how over the last 18 years, PT ridership has grown faster than the rate of population growth, whereas the level of driving per capita has fallen:

From 1995 to 2013, transit ridership rose 37 percent, well ahead of a 20 percent growth in population and a 23 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled, according to the association’s data.

Stronger economic growth is playing an important role in the increased use of public transit, as more people are using the systems to get to an increasing number of jobs, the association reported, and transit agencies are nurturing growth by expanding their systems or improving services.

“We’re seeing that where cities have invested in transit, their unemployment rates have dropped, and employment is going up because people can get there,” Mr. Melaniphy said.

Overall public transit ridership increased by 1.1 percent from 2012, with the biggest gains in rail service and in bus service for smaller cities.

Here’s what Auckland’s vehicle kilometres travelled per capita looks like compared to the number of trips per capita. Note: we won’t have VKT data for 2013 till later this year, also the latest PT trips per capita has started climbing again.

There’s often debate about whether the levelling off of traffic growth and the fairly dramatic increase in PT use over the past few years is a “blip” – caused by the global financial crisis and the fairly long recession that followed it, plus highly fluctuating oil prices in the past few years – or whether the changes are a longer term trend. With US ridership booming despite lower oil prices and at a time of growing economic success, the “blip” argument seems to be getting weaker and weaker. The longer term trends are well summarised in the article’s final two paragraphs:

Todd Litman, an analyst at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Victoria, British Columbia, said the new data were the latest indication of changing consumer preferences as a result of increasing urbanization, an aging population, and environmental and health concerns.

“A lot of people would prefer to drive less and rely more on walking, cycling and public transit, provided that those are high-quality options,” Mr. Litman said.

Time to change those traffic projections NZTA.

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