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How America Killed Transit
CITYLAB ^ | 31 August 2018 | Jonathan English

Posted on 09/01/2018 11:33:14 AM PDT by Publius

One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the US plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.

This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th Century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th Century, when transit companies’ only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every US transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.

(Excerpt) Read more at citylab.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; History
KEYWORDS: city; citylab; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; energy; globalwarminghoax; hydrocarbons; jonathanenglish; maga; mediawingofthednc; opec; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; smearmachine; transportation; urban
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A solid and even-handed history of how urban and suburban America got to be the way it is.
1 posted on 09/01/2018 11:33:14 AM PDT by Publius
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To: Publius

It’s not so much the transit.....it’s whose using the transit.


2 posted on 09/01/2018 11:41:47 AM PDT by ealgeone (SCRIPTURE DOES NOT CHANGE!)
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To: Publius

meh...

People who can afford it transport themselves at their own convenience. Wealth unprecedented in human history caused the decline of mass transit.


3 posted on 09/01/2018 11:43:32 AM PDT by jjotto (Next week, BOOM!, for sure!)
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To: ealgeone

Public transit is not so good for letting Fido accompany you on your errands nor for returning with The Goods.


4 posted on 09/01/2018 11:45:16 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Publius

The future may be premium private transport, like the shuttles that take Google, Apple, and Yahoo employees from San Francisco to Silicon Valley.


5 posted on 09/01/2018 11:45:45 AM PDT by x
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To: ealgeone

[ It’s not so much the transit.....it’s whose using the transit. ]

The same sort of people who use transit in this country are people who won’t take care of stuff given to them.... Another group is paying for the transit so they give no f**ks about not tossing their trash or taking a dump on the subway.

Mass transit works in Japan because there is deep cultural cohesion and shame for misbehavior.

Not so much in multicultural America, screw whitey America...


6 posted on 09/01/2018 11:46:48 AM PDT by GraceG ("Q is not a Cult, you can safely leave at any time, unlike Islam")
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To: Publius

Busses are way more flexible than fixed rail.

Who’s got the time to wait around for a ride anyway?


7 posted on 09/01/2018 11:46:59 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: Publius

Public unions killed it.


8 posted on 09/01/2018 11:47:06 AM PDT by 2banana (My common ground with terrorists - they want to die for islam and we want to kill them)
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To: Publius
Nope.

The "public transit" system dies every time you try to apply it outside of a few large cities. Or Europe which is basically a large city. Even then you have to get "public support" in other words, you have to steal money at gun point from the population who does not use their system to keep it going.

People like to be able to go places on their own schedule rather then having to wait for someone else to take them to where they think they should go.

Even in Chile where you had a nice public transit system people preferred to own cars and move around at their whim.

9 posted on 09/01/2018 11:53:55 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold.)
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To: 2banana

Unions, pols, white flight, taxes pushing industries out of cities thereby driving demand for both private vehicles and more flight...


10 posted on 09/01/2018 11:57:24 AM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...
One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support.
There was an urban public transportation system because there was not enough room for the horses, nor the cash or time for most people to maintain them. Long distance travel involved the use of passenger cars on a freight train, followed by a lot of walking, or horseback, or maybe wagon or carriage.

What happened? Henry Ford happened. He liberated America with self-directed long-distance high speed transport, singlehandedly mechanized agriculture thereby improving productivity, and juiced the growth of industrialization just in time to offset the decline in farm labor type jobs, oh, and win WWII (we had to help defeat Ford's idol Hitler, but no one seems to miind that). The countryside would look like medieval France if we didn't have autos. Instead, roads are mostly paved, there's a highway system that is -- you guessed it -- the envy of the world -- and most jobs are in cities, and most people who work those jobs get to work via the auto, even if they live out here in the sticks. And the population of the US is five or six times what it was prior to WWII.

BTW, the article above is just another Luddite piece of AGW agitprop.

11 posted on 09/01/2018 12:05:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
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To: Publius
It's an interesting piece, but some of the statements the author makes are flat-out wrong.

Perfect case in point:

Over the past hundred years the clearest cause is this: Transit providers in the U.S. have continually cut basic local service in a vain effort to improve their finances.

Over the past hundred years the clearest cause for declining transit ridership has been the migration of people to lower-density areas that simply aren't served well by mass transit. This began in earnest in the 1950s as a result of two landmark pieces of legislation: the G.I. Bill and the Federal Aid Highway Act (also known as the "Interstate Highway Act").

By the 1980s transit systems were under even more pressure because we started to see growth in a commuting pattern that is built entirely around a single-occupancy vehicle: suburb-to-suburb commuting. This is why some of the most God-awful congestion in the U.S. these days isn't in urban centers, but in suburban areas along circumferential highways like the D.C. Beltway.

12 posted on 09/01/2018 12:15:02 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them ... like Russians will.")
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To: Publius

We invented and now dominate in aviation public transportation because of our vast distances.

Ground transportation is better served by private autos or buses. Rail is generally slower because of stops and train changing.

However our airports are in awful shape, in general embarrassing. But they function.


13 posted on 09/01/2018 12:16:25 PM PDT by cicero2k
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To: Publius

Public transportation works IF the people who are most likely to use it have a destination to justify using in the first place. That means work or school, mostly. When public transportation seen as a way to spend money with no purpose no private sector wants to get involved in ownerzhip, just construction profits. Maybe the NFL can pay for public transportation to get their fans to taxpayer funded stadiums.

Or not.


14 posted on 09/01/2018 12:21:19 PM PDT by Bernard (We will stop calling you fake news when you stop being fake news.)
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To: Publius

SEPTA and DART First State bump for later


15 posted on 09/01/2018 12:28:50 PM PDT by foreverfree
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To: x

Private and public transportation are being replaced with electric scooters and electric bikes in cites where they make sense, but cities are run by liberals who do not understand, instead going back to the 19th and 20th centuries for fixed rail trains, trams and trolleys, totally disrupting the existing traffic routes.

Milwaukee has torn up its streets to make a fixed rail trolley running in a four block loop route where there is little to no economic activity, but they are free - free for the homeless and others to make their new traveling homes.

The stops are in the middle of the block on raised platforms considerably narrowing the streets, so that when the trolley stops all the cars behind have to stop, and then the light changes to green but the trolley is still stopped. NIGHTMARE

Worse, the annual traditional Christmas parade floats are too big to use on the now very narrow streets so the parade was canceled (funding was also an issue but has always been overcome). Alternate routes are too difficult for floats to negotiate and would be at some distance from parking if such a route could be found.

Shuttles are just glorified buses which already exist in the cities. Shuttles buses only work when going from one fixed place to another fixed place carrying at most a brief case and umbrella; groceries, shopping bags not so much. Just because some fancy tech is included does not change the fundamental use of the shuttle bus.Regular city buses are likely far more flexible.


16 posted on 09/01/2018 12:28:52 PM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Publius

I would add some more factors: (1) working parents where there needs to be at least one parent close enough and flexible enough to respond to family emergencies; (2) d-eurbanization where companies are increasingly decentralizing and locating in satellite offices or allowing work at home; (3) internet, where people are no longer having to go to the cities for shopping or entertainment. Maybe it’s time to let some of those old urban areas retire gracefully rather than spending billions of dollars to haul nonexistent people to the cities.


17 posted on 09/01/2018 12:29:08 PM PDT by caseinpoint (Don't get thickly involved in thin things.)
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To: GraceG

You nailed it.


18 posted on 09/01/2018 12:33:51 PM PDT by umgud
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To: ealgeone

They’re spending millions on choo choos here
Billions actually
Video killed the radio star
But didn’t kill
Talk radio
Public transit is for those without a car


19 posted on 09/01/2018 12:36:58 PM PDT by Truthoverpower (The guvmint you get is the Trump winning express !)
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To: Publius

About 50 years ago, when I was in a beginning Engineering Transportation course, the book we had had a chart in it. It showed different forms of public transportation and the population density that was required to support that kind of public transportation.

When my son took the same type of course (with a MUCH more expensive textbook) it did not mention population density. It looks like that standard of review has been abolished. That means that EVERY form of public transportation is destined to lose money nowadays. BTW, even back when I was taking the course, there were VERY few places in the US that had a population density that could support most types of public transportation. Population density has dropped (people per acre) since I went to school.


20 posted on 09/01/2018 12:37:57 PM PDT by jim_trent
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