mass transit

a system of large-scale public transportation in a given metropolitan area, typically comprising buses, subways, and elevated trains. Cf. rapid transit.

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Transportation systems, usually publicly but sometimes privately owned and operated, designed to move large numbers of people in various types of vehicles in cities, suburbs, and large metropolitan areas.

Modern mass transit is an outgrowth of industrialization and urbanization. In the 1830s early mass transit in New York City included horse-drawn buses, which were soon replaced by fixed-rail horse-drawn trolleys. By 1900 motorized buses had appeared in Europe and America. With the advent of electricity, streetcars and subways were introduced in many large cities. In the 20th century the automobile's increasing popularity undermined mass transit development; fixed-rail streetcar systems were widely removed to provide space for cars. Concern over air pollution has revived interest in light-rail transit and has led to regional mass transit systems.

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Introduction

also called  mass transportation , or  public transportation 

      the movement of people within urban areas using group travel technologies such as buses and trains. The essential feature of mass transportation is that many people are carried in the same vehicle (e.g., buses) or collection of attached vehicles (trains). This makes it possible to move people in the same travel corridor with greater efficiency, which can lead to lower costs to carry each person or—because the costs are shared by many people—the opportunity to spend more money to provide better service, or both.

      Mass transit systems may be owned by private, profit-making companies or by governments or quasi-government agencies that may not operate for profit. Whether public or private, many mass transportation services are subsidized (subsidy) because they cannot cover all their costs from fares charged to their riders. Such subsidies assure the availability of mass transit, which contributes to making cities efficient and desirable places in which to live. The importance of mass transportation in supporting urban life differs among cities, depending largely on the role played by its chief competitor, the private automobile.

      People travel to meet their needs for subsistence (to go to work, to acquire food and essential services), for personal development (to go to school and cultural facilities), and for entertainment (to participate in or watch sporting events, to visit friends). The need for travel is a derived need, because people rarely travel for the sake of travel itself; they travel to meet the primary needs of daily life. Mobility is an essential feature of urban life, for it defines the ability to participate in modern society.

      Travelers make rational choices of the modes they use, each choosing the one that serves him or her best, although best may be viewed differently by each traveler. Transportation services in a city define the alternatives from which travelers must choose, the activities available to them, and the places to which they can go. The transportation available to an individual is the collective result of government policies, the overall demand for travel in the region, competition among different modes, and the resources available to each individual to buy services. Urban transportation services directly affect the character and quality of urban life, which can differ among individuals who have access to different kinds and amounts of transportation services.

Evolution of urban mass transportation

Growth (urbanization) in the 19th century

      The history of urban mass transportation is first a story of the evolution of technology, from walking, to riding animals, to riding in groups on vehicles pulled by animals, and eventually to cable cars, larger-capacity steam-powered trains, electric trains, and motor buses powered by internal-combustion engines. It is a story of gradually increasing speed, vehicle capacity, and range of travel that has shaped cities (city) and structured the lives of those who live in them.

      The horse-drawn omnibus (bus), first used in France in 1828, allowed as many as 25 or 50 people to share a ride across muddy urban streets. These were operated by private entrepreneurs who intended to profit by serving the busiest corridors in town. Starting in New York City in 1832, operators installed rails in the streets to provide a smooth roadbed both for the benefit of passengers and to minimize the energy required to pull the vehicles. The cable car, a rail vehicle (streetcar) dragged by a long cable pulled by steam power from a central station, was invented in 1873 to master the steep hills of San Francisco. This idea spread to Chicago and other cities in order to avoid the unpleasant side effects of horses in dense urban areas.

      The omnibus-on-rails, the cable car, and eventually steam and electric trains were limited to operations on fixed guideways (rails), and extending the service required installing more rails, a large and semipermanent investment. This inflexibility of a rail-based system was balanced by its low rolling resistance, which permitted the connection of several vehicles into trains where the demand for travel in the corridor was sufficiently high. Trains were efficient for carrying large numbers of travelers because a single guideway (track) could carry many trains each day, and the number of workers did not have to increase in proportion to the number of vehicles: one motorman or engineer could operate a train with many cars, perhaps with the help of one or two conductors to collect fares.

      In the middle of the 19th century, the motive power for urban mass transportation advanced to independent steam locomotives, which could pull many cars and thus serve busier routes. Steam locomotives operated over longer distances than cable cars, and they were more reliable and considerably faster because they did not depend on a single, fragile cable. Beginning in (subway) Berlin in 1879, steam was gradually replaced by electric power, which was cleaner and quieter and permitted operation in tunnels so that urban rail transit could be placed beneath streets and buildings. This allowed construction of new rail lines with minimal disruption to existing buildings, and it permitted mass transportation to operate free and clear of the congested streets of 19th-century cities, which were often filled with animal-drawn vehicles, pedestrians, and vendors' pushcarts. The idea of separating the right-of-way from other transportation modes and activities of the city was important to the early and continued success of mass transit. Vehicles operating on exclusive guideways do not face the delays and risks of collisions experienced by vehicles operating in mixed traffic, and therefore they can provide faster, more reliable transportation. This has become a particularly important competitive advantage of rail transit since the advent of the automobile.

      Some cities, starting with New York in 1868, constructed elevated rail transit (elevated transit line) lines to accomplish the same end. It was less costly and dangerous to build a rail line above the street on an iron and steel trestle at the second-story level, as compared with digging a tunnel. It soon became apparent, however, that the noise of trains rumbling by, the street obstructions of columns to support rail structures, and the dark areas created below these facilities were high prices to pay for rapid urban transit.

      Cities and means of travel grew together, with the shape and extent of cities determined largely by the available transport technology. Urban transportation services defined the geographic area in which people functioned, limiting how far one could travel to work, acquire food, exchange services, and visit friends. When walking or riding a horse was the primary mode of urban travel, cities were necessarily small. When larger animal-drawn vehicles became common, cities grew in extent.

      As technology advanced, the speed of travel increased from an average (including station stops) of 2 to 3 miles per hour (mile/h) for walking to 4 to 6 mile/h for animal-drawn vehicles to 15 to 20 mile/h for steam trains, and cities grew along the corridors served by urban mass transportation. Small, circular towns reached out along steam rail lines, which became increasingly common in urban service among European and American (United States) cities in the latter half of the 19th century. Residences and businesses were located close to these lines, and particularly close to the stations, to make the best use of available transportation.

      Just as transportation helped to define the geographic extent of the city by the arrangement of its lines and stations and its speed, the demand for travel by city residents determined which transportation technology could succeed in the marketplace. Higher-density developments, closely spaced houses and apartment buildings, multistoried office buildings, and large factories could support major investments in exclusive-guideway rail transit with frequent service. Lower-density communities could sustain only infrequent service, with transit vehicles operating in mixed traffic on city streets. In the late 1800s it was not uncommon for the land developer and the transit operator to be one and the same, using a street railway system to promote the sale of new housing and attracting the residents of that housing to ride the railway.

The automobile and mass transportation

      In the developed world and particularly the Western Hemisphere, the automobile entered the transportation market as a toy for the rich at the beginning of the 20th century. It became increasingly popular because it gave travelers important new freedoms: to visit many different places (while mass transportation served only fixed routes), to make trips at any convenient time (while mass transportation operated on a predetermined schedule), and to carry several people and their packages for one fixed price (while mass transportation charged fares for each person in a family or group). As a result, in Europe and North America the automobile became mass transportation's chief competitor.

      The automobile is an individual technology that does not rely on group riding and common travel patterns for its success. The convenience of the automobile freed people from the need to live near rail lines or stations; they could choose locations almost anywhere in an urban area, as long as roads were available to connect them to other places. Many states in the United States established motor fuel taxes that were used (use tax) only to build and maintain highways (roads and highways). Thus, the auto highway system became largely self-sustaining.

      Automobile ownership grew rapidly after World War II, particularly in the United States and western Europe. During the war, automobile motors, fuel, and tires were in short supply. There was an unsatisfied demand when the war ended and plenty of production capacity as factories turned off the war machine. Many people had saved money because there was little to buy, beyond necessities, in the war years. Workers relied heavily on mass transportation during the war and longed for the freedom and flexibility of the automobile.

      As automobiles became more widespread, there was political and economic pressure to expand the road network. A demand for housing, particularly single-family homes, was met in the United States with government loans and other incentives to expand housing in suburban areas. Life in the suburbs became feasible with the automobile, which provided mobility everywhere, anytime. Thus, after World War II, at least in the United States, the automobile, the auto industry, the urban road network, and the suburbs grew together. The result was a dispersed urban geography, often called sprawl, which characterized not only the suburbs of large cities but also whole cities that experienced the bulk of their growth after the automobile became popular, such as Phoenix (Ariz.), Los Angeles, Dallas (Texas), and Orlando (Fla.). This is a geography in which travel is less focused on nodes (more dense, centrally located city and suburban downtowns) and corridors. It is a dispersed market that is difficult to serve economically with mass transportation.

      In many western European countries, postwar automobile growth was constrained by government policies, which heavily taxed both cars and their fuels. Mass transportation systems were maintained and expanded with government subsidies, and public policies kept central areas strong or fostered suburban growth in carefully designed higher-density nodes, in some cases (particularly in Britain and Sweden) in the form of systematically designed new towns linked to older central cities by high-quality mass transit lines. In less-developed parts of the world, mass transportation was shielded from automobile competition by the inability of citizens to afford cars and by government policies that kept both automobile and gasoline prices high.

      The analogue to the automobile for the mass transportation industry was the motor bus, a self-propelled vehicle operating on the highway in mixed traffic (traffic control). Buses were introduced into mass transportation services in the 1920s. Like the automobile, they offered operating flexibility in the short term, to route around fires and other temporary street obstructions, and in the long term, to be shifted easily into new areas needing service. By the 1960s in the United States, the bulk of urban mass transportation services were operated with buses. Some busier lines serving downtown areas were operated as express services, picking up and discharging travelers at the ends of the routes and skipping intermediate stops to provide faster travel.

      While buses offered economy and flexibility to operators, they brought important disadvantages. Operating on city streets mixed with other traffic, they could not travel faster than cars, and, because they made frequent stops, they were usually slower. This problem can be avoided by operating express buses on freeways or special lanes and roadways reserved for high-occupancy vehicles. Unlike trains on exclusive guideways, when the demand for bus service increases, adding more vehicles requires additional drivers, which makes operating costs increase as fast as ridership. As a result there is less advantage to be gained from serving high-density corridors with buses compared with trains. This problem has been reduced by using larger buses—double-deck vehicles in Europe and longer, articulated buses in both Europe and the United States. Because bus routes are so flexible, builders do not have the same incentive to locate developments near bus lines, which may be rerouted on short notice, as they do to locate near rail lines.

      The 20th century began with rapid growth in transit service in the United States. Transit riding has consistently moved with the state of the economy, growing during the boom period after World War I and dropping precipitously during the Great Depression, when unemployment was high. World War II saw a large increase because employment was high and automobiles were scarce. The steady decline after the war shows the impact of growth in automobile travel and the migration to the suburbs. Since the 1970s, a considerable amount of federal and state money has been directed toward improving and extending mass transportation systems, and ridership has increased in response. The population of the United States has grown steadily over the 20th century, and the fraction of people living in urban areas increased to nearly 70 percent, and therefore the urban travel market as a whole has grown considerably. The mass transportation share of this travel market, however, has declined substantially during the latter half of the 20th century.

The benefits of urban mass transit

Advantages to individuals and communities

      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 1983) 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.

      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.

       Typical capacities of urban mass transportation modesTransit, 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 (Typical capacities of urban mass transportation modes)). 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.

      These 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.

Effects of public policy

      The benefits of mass transportation result from the utilization of these services: more utilization produces more benefits. Crowded buses and trains signify a smaller market share for the automobile, with its attendant air pollution, congestion, accidents, and excessive land consumption. Heavy utilization of mass transportation can produce a larger revenue stream from passenger fares, which can help support these systems, either by reducing subsidy requirements or, in a few very high-density travel corridors, actually covering all the costs of providing mass transportation.

      There are a number of ways to increase and maintain mass transit ridership. These differ by context and government policy, and none offers guaranteed results. Keeping transit utilization high is much easier where competition from the automobile is limited. In Third World cities, where the automobile has never taken hold, transit, bicycles, and walking remain dominant modes. Cities are more densely settled, and work, shopping, and residential activities are closely intermingled so that trip distances are short. This encourages walking and the use of bicycles, with their low energy requirements. Even if mass transportation is slow and crowded, it may be the dominant mechanized travel option in such settings.

      Cities in many developed countries in Europe and Asia have long-standing government policies that simultaneously controlled the growth of automobile ownership through high taxes on vehicles and their fuel; restricted land development to encourage high-density activity centres, including suburban new towns, as well as mixed land uses to keep trips short; and funneled a steady stream of public resources to subsidize mass transit operations and make capital investments to extend systems into new areas. These public investments in transit were generally not matched with similar investments in facilities for the automobile. Indeed, a number of cities around the world have restricted automobile travel to their downtown areas by defining auto-free zones (e.g., Göteborg, Swed.), prohibiting the growth of parking, or charging high entry tolls for vehicles carrying only one or two people (Singapore).

      In the United States the approach has been to allow the free market, for both travel and land development, to determine the role of competing modes. Mass transportation does attract high market shares where the automobile is inherently less competitive, as, for example, travel to dense downtown areas during the rush hours. In the central areas of larger cities such as New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, and even Los Angeles, street congestion can be intense and parking fees high. Where high-quality mass transportation is available (particularly rail service, which is as fast as or faster than the automobile), with frequent departures and high reliability, it can capture 50 to 80 percent of all travel to downtown in the rush hour. At other hours of the day, the mass transportation share of downtown travel may drop to 20 percent, and across the regions in which such cities are centred, the all-day transit share may be as little as 5 to 10 percent of trips.

      Mass transit is critically important to the economic and social health of these cities, and it is also important in other communities where its market share is lower but its contributions to peak-period congestion reduction and mobility assurance are significant. These effects provide the argument for public involvement in transit, through ownership, development, operation, and service subsidies. The key policy choices about mass transit in the United States concern how to spend public funds to produce these benefits, including decisions about capital investments for new and replacement technologies, the quantity and quality of services to offer, and how to pay for all of this.

Mass transit finance

Costs (cost)

      The costs (business finance) of providing mass transportation services are of two types, capital and operating. Capital costs include the costs of land, guideways, structures, stations, and rolling stock (vehicles); operating costs include labour to operate the vehicles, maintain the system, and manage the enterprise; energy; replacement parts; and liability costs (or insurance). The principal factors affecting the cost of providing mass transportation service are the type of technology used, particularly the nature of the guideway; the extent or size of the system, measured in terms of the length of the routes; and the peak passenger demand.

      The choice of technology affects both capital and operating costs. Bus systems are less costly to buy than fixed-guideway technologies using steel-wheeled cars on steel rails or rubber-tired cars on concrete beams. Buses require more operators (one driver per bus), and they do not benefit from automation, whereas only one or two operators can run a 10-car train carrying 1,000 passengers, and some rail systems are nearly fully automated.

      Mass transportation systems that operate on guideways separated from other traffic are more expensive because of guideway costs but are also faster, safer, and more reliable. Guideways can cost $10 million per mile at ground level in low-density areas with occasional street crossings or as much as $200 million per mile in bored tunnels under densely developed cities. light rail transit, designed to operate singly or in trains up to four units long, can be used on guideways separated from other traffic for high-speed sections and intermingled with street traffic in downtowns or near stations. This flexibility can make light rail less expensive, and service can be brought closer to the origins and destinations of travelers. Light rail stations can simply be stopping points marked with signs or separate stations with protected waiting areas. They may be a few blocks or as much as a mile apart.

      Rail rapid transit systems use heavier cars designed to operate in trains of up to 10 or 12 cars. They are used on exclusive guideways, often in tunnels or on elevated structures, and their average speeds (including station stops) may approach 30 mile/h. Rapid transit stations themselves can be costly structures, either off-street or underground, typically spaced at one-half- to one-mile intervals. Some communities have commuter rail systems, descendants of older intercity rail lines, which connect distant suburbs with downtown areas. The technology is identical or similar to intercity passenger trains, with diesel-electric locomotives pulling unpowered coaches. Speeds are high (35–40 mile/h average), stations are 2–5 miles apart, and guideways are separated from street traffic, with occasional street crossings at grade level.

      The size of the mass transportation operation during the peak period is also a major determinant of costs. For example, 4,800 people can be carried in one corridor during the rush hour with buses operating one minute apart (60 buses per hour), each carrying a standing load of 80 persons. To provide each traveler with a seat (offering better-quality service), each bus would carry only 50 persons, and 96 buses per hour would be needed.

      The actual number of buses to be purchased (and the number of drivers required) would depend on how long it would take a bus to make a round-trip. This depends on the length of the route (longer routes take more time and would require more buses), as well as the average speed (faster routes would allow buses to get back to the starting point sooner, requiring fewer buses). In the above example, if a route were 5 miles long (round-trip) and the bus made an average speed of 10 mile/h, it would take one-half hour to make a round-trip. If one bus were needed every minute, then 30 buses would be required, because the first bus would get back to the starting point one minute after the 30th bus left. To give each passenger a seat, one bus would be needed every 37.5 seconds (96 buses per hour), so 48 vehicles would be required.

      This illustrates the way both capital and operating costs are affected by the number of passengers to be carried in a given time period, the route length, the average operating speed, and policies on crowding (whether or not each passenger gets a seat). If the transit operator buys 48 buses to serve this route, many will be idle during the midday and evening, because travel volumes will be much lower in those periods. Yet the capital cost of the buses cannot be reduced if the rush hour demand is to be met. At least 48 drivers will be required, many of whom will not be occupied outside the peak travel periods. If the morning and evening rush periods are widely separated in time, it may be necessary to hire two sets of drivers or to ask drivers to work split shifts—for example, four hours during the morning rush and four more hours in the late afternoon. Workers may demand wage premiums if the spread between the start and finish of the workday is excessively long. This illustrates the inherent inefficiencies in transit services, because they must be designed to meet peak-period travel needs. Mass transportation services that have higher capacity (passengers per hour) and offer faster, more reliable service (e.g., rail rapid transit) are more costly, in terms of both capital and operating costs, than lower-capacity, slower services (e.g., buses). To make decisions about investing in new mass transportation services, it is useful to examine the cost per passenger carried as well as the total cost to implement and operate a system. Analyses show that fixed-guideway transit requires much higher corridor travel demands (perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 passengers per hour or more) to reduce the unit cost below that of light rail or bus systems. Such demand densities are found only in larger cities, and, as the trend toward suburban growth and the spreading of travel demand over regions continues, there are fewer locations where large investments in rail transit can be justified.

Revenues

      Transit costs are paid from passenger fares and, in most developed countries, public subsidies. The most common way to collect passenger fares is by cash payment on the vehicle (for bus and light rail systems without closed stations) or upon entry to the station (for systems requiring entry through closed stations). Normally, the driver collects fares, although some intensively used bus and light rail systems carry conductors on the vehicles to collect fares and make change. Because making change slows the boarding process, most American systems require prepaid tokens or exact fares. It is more common in European cities to use an honour fare system, in which the passenger purchases a ticket before entering the vehicle, cancels that ticket using an on-board machine, and presents the ticket to fare inspectors on request. While only 2 to 10 percent of the passengers may be checked for valid tickets, fare evasion is low because fines for improper tickets are high and are collected immediately.

      Monthly, semimonthly, and even daily passes are sold on many systems, which keeps fare purchase off the vehicle and makes the process of checking for prepayment fast. The monthly pass is particularly convenient for frequent riders, for it does not require having the correct change, and unlimited rides are allowed, so transit riding is encouraged. Many communities in the United States and Europe offer substantial discounts for monthly passes, because passes reduce fare collection costs and encourage transit use. Reduced-price fares are commonly offered to students, the elderly, and handicapped persons.

      To make prices more equitable, some transit operators vary charges for different trips. Distance-based fares, proportional to the length of the trip, are a better reflection of the cost of service, and travelers tend to accept the idea that they should pay more for longer trips. The disadvantage of distance-based fares is that the operator must distinguish travelers by their trip lengths, which is done by checking fares when passengers enter and leave the system. This makes fare collection more time-consuming and costly, particularly if the validation is done by conductors or fare clerks. Modern systems use magnetically encoded fare cards read by computer-controlled turnstiles when passengers enter and leave the transit system. When travelers buy fare cards, the amount of their purchase is encoded on the card, and this balance is decreased by an appropriate amount for each trip.

      Some transit operators charge differently by time of day, based on two concepts: first, the cost to provide transit service is higher during the rush-hours because equipment and personnel requirements are greater then; second, most rush-hour trips are for the purpose of going to and from work, and travelers are willing to pay more for these because of the monetary reward they get for the trip. Automated fare collection facilitates time-of-day pricing as well as distance-based fares.

Subsidies

      Mass transportation fares typically are set below the level necessary to cover full costs, and the difference is made up by government subsidy intended to create the social benefits produced when people use transit. In the United States, revenues from passenger fares typically pay from 10 to 70 percent of operating costs, the lower number representing lightly used suburban services and the higher number reflecting intensely used downtown corridor services. The other 30 to 90 percent comes from state, regional, and local subsidies. Limited federal operating subsidies were made available beginning in 1974, allocated in proportion to the scale of each city's transit operations. The federal role in providing operating subsidies has been declining, and state and regional governments, along with transit riders (through increased fares), have made up much of the difference.

      Commonly, capital costs for new transit investments in the United States are paid entirely through government subsidies. The federal government has offered capital grants for mass transportation since 1964. Decisions about investments in new fixed-guideway transit services have been made cautiously, and only a few such systems have been supported. Federal capital subsidies can cover up to three-quarters of the cost of the investment.

marketing mass transit

      The mass transportation market—its riders and potential riders—comprises two broad groups, captive riders and choice riders. Captive transit riders must rely on mass transit; they do not have an alternative way to travel for some or all of their trips because an automobile is required but none is available or because they cannot drive or cannot afford an automobile. Choice riders use transit if it provides service superior to that of their principal alternative, usually the automobile. Captive and choice riders have different needs and preferences, and different services can be designed to accommodate them. Captives may become choice riders over time if their circumstances change, particularly if poor mass transit gives them strong incentives to find other ways to travel.

      To attract and retain mass transportation riders in automobile-dominated cities, it is important to understand what factors influence travelers' choice of mode. Travel behaviour and market research studies have shown that mode choice is affected by three classes of factors: the quantity and relative quality of competing transportation services; characteristics of the trips people take; and attributes of the people themselves and their households.

Service quality and quantity

      The amount of service offered, especially the geographic and temporal extent of mass transportation, will determine which trips are served. To meet the needs of captive riders, broad coverage of the region, the day, and the week is desired. Choice riders are more likely to consider transit for work trips to dense employment centres during peak periods.

      The most important service quality attribute is travel time from origin to destination. Several factors contribute to travel time. The first is the average speed of the vehicles, determined in part by their rate of acceleration and maximum speed but strongly influenced by the distance between stops and the dwell time at stations. Electric-rail vehicles can accelerate rapidly and may have top speeds of 70 mile/h, but if stations are only one-half mile apart, the average speed may be less than 30 mile/h. While longer distances between stops mean higher speeds and shorter travel times, the time it takes for travelers to get to and from stations will increase. Thus, to the traveler, increasing station spacing may not decrease door-to-door travel time.

      Travel time also is affected by the frequency of service, the time interval between vehicles. If transit vehicles depart every five minutes, the travel time experienced by riders will generally be less than if vehicles are dispatched at 15-minute intervals. If the transit service operates reliably on a published schedule, travelers can reduce this waiting time by planning their arrival at the station to coincide with vehicle departures. Services that are slow or unreliable relative to the automobile will primarily attract captive riders, while those offering competitive travel times, usually those operating on exclusive guideways, are appealing to both markets but have the strongest prospects for attracting choice riders.

      The price of transit is less important than service quality to choice travelers, because under most circumstances mass transportation fares are lower than auto costs. Because captive riders tend to have lower incomes than choice riders, increasing the price of transit can be a special burden to them; yet their dependence on mass transportation makes them less likely to switch modes in the face of a fare increase than choice riders. Even captive riders find price to be less important in mode-choice decisions than service quality factors such as travel time and reliability. Field experiments show that improving other service factors, such as comfort, safety from crime, and cleanliness of vehicles and stations, contributes less to ridership increases than improvements to the basic service attributes of travel time, frequency, and reliability.

Trip characteristics

      Travelers making regular trips each day, particularly for work or school, are more likely to take transit. Repetitive trips can be planned in advance to coordinate with transit schedules; some transit services offer discounts for regular riding; transit service is usually better during the rush hours, when these trips tend to occur; and there is more competition for the use of family cars when work trips are made. Mass transportation is less likely to be used for shopping and recreational trips because of the difficulty of carrying packages, the requirement to pay separate fares for each person in the group, and long waiting times and walking distances. Thus, transit use is much lower at midday, on evenings, and on weekends than it is during peak weekday periods.

Traveler and household characteristics

      Among the most influential factors determining travel-mode choice are the characteristics of the travelers themselves and their households. These factors cannot be directly affected by public transportation policy, while service characteristics and even land-use patterns are subject to some control.

      The availability of automobiles has a powerful influence on the use of transit, because the quality of automobile service is commonly superior to that of transit. Auto availability is a household characteristic, reflecting the interaction between the number of cars in the household, the number of drivers, and the travel needs of those drivers. The use of mass transportation is quite low in households having a car for every driver, except where one or more travelers make regular trips to congested areas where good quality transit is available. It is much higher in households with fewer cars than drivers. These are often lower-income households, and so transit usage is often correlated with low income. To compete with the automobile, transit service must be very good, and, where it is, the relationship between income and transit use may be reversed—i.e., higher-income travelers may use transit more.

      Gender is an important determinant of transit use, with women traveling by transit more than men. Men may get priority use of the household car for work trips because they may be the primary wage earner and because women have traditionally been more involved in child care and household management. These gender roles are changing rapidly. Men may be the dominant users of some high-quality downtown-oriented transit services if their spouses work in suburbs where transit services are limited.

The future of mass transportation

      Mass transportation performs important economic, social, and environmental functions in cities, ranging from providing basic mobility services in developing countries, to securing the viability of dense business districts, to meeting all the transportation requirements for those unable to use automobiles, to reducing the negative impacts of automobile congestion. Decisions about what services to provide, and how to provide and pay for them, should be based on an understanding of the mission of mass transportation in a particular community. The diversity of missions, geographies, and market characteristics leads to a variety of transit service concepts.

      The main challenges facing mass transportation policymakers are the dispersal of development through suburban growth and increases in capital and operating costs, which require either higher fares, greater subsidies, or both. Responses to these challenges include alternative service concepts, new technology and automation, more efficient service delivery, and alternative sources of funding.

Alternative service concepts

      In low-density settings, traditional fixed-route, fixed-schedule bus or train operations cannot meet market needs. If the priority is to discourage travelers from driving alone in their automobiles, mass transportation services can include a variety of forms of individualized ride sharing that put 2, 4, or even 10 people in a single vehicle. Some agencies provide rider matching services and better parking arrangements to encourage carpooling, the sharing of auto rides by people who make similar or identical work trips. Car-pool vehicles are privately owned, the guideways (roads) are in place, drivers do not have to be compensated, and vehicle operating costs can be shared. On the other hand, carpoolers must coordinate their travel times, which can be a major inconvenience.

      Some agencies and employers have subsidized vanpooling, ride sharing in 8- to 15-passenger vans provided by the sponsor. One worker is recruited to drive the van to and from work in return for free transportation and limited personal use of the van. Passengers pay a monthly fee to the sponsor. Van pools are most successful for extremely long work trips (e.g., 30–50 miles each way).

      The uncertainty associated with putting a new transit service into the marketplace, particularly in low-density suburban settings, has been avoided by selling subscription services. Workers with common origins and destinations buy monthly bus tickets in advance, for which they receive guaranteed seating and a commitment to be delivered to work on time, usually without intermediate stops. The subscription operator normally requires a minimum ridership level to assure financial viability of the route.

      These unconventional transit services operate about as fast as a private automobile, but they allow many riders to share the cost, so the price to an individual is usually low. Their main disadvantage is that they do not give riders schedule flexibility. If there is a family need to go to work late or come home early, or a work need to stay after hours, the traveler may be stranded. Those who often require schedule flexibility avoid ride-sharing services. Some employers and transit operators reduce this obstacle by using backup vehicles to provide guaranteed rides home.

      Low-density trip needs, and particularly the needs of the handicapped and elderly, have been met with demand-responsive services, in which vehicles are dispatched to pick up travelers in response to a telephone call. This provides door-to-door service, but if a vehicle serves several travelers at once, trip times can be very long; if it serves only one person (or group) at a time, the operating costs can be as high as taxi fares or higher.

New technology

      Automatic (automation) train operation has been suggested as a way to increase capacity (by allowing closer vehicle spacing, since computers can react faster than humans to avoid collision), reduce travel time (by operating vehicles at higher speeds), and reduce costs. Some heavy rail transit (rapid transit) systems operating on separate guideways are now partially or fully automated—e.g., the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in San Francisco and the Metro system in Washington, D.C. The capital cost of automated systems is high, and promised reductions in operating costs have not always been achieved because of maintenance requirements.

      There have been many proposals, and some field implementations, of small (3–5-passenger), automated vehicles operating on separate, usually elevated, guideways. These personal rapid transit (PRT) systems function like “horizontal elevators,” coming to a station in response to a traveler's demand and moving directly from origin to destination. Because of this service pattern and the small size of the vehicles, PRT systems indeed offer personalized service much like an automobile, including the ability to control who rides in one's party, which provides privacy and security. PRT systems have low capacity in passengers carried per hour, and guideway and vehicle costs are high. They are best suited for short distribution trips around and within activity centres such as office complexes, airports, and shopping centres.

      When the PRT concept is extended to larger (15–25-passenger) vehicles, the term automated guideway transit (AGT) is sometimes applied. AGT systems have been built to provide circulation in downtown areas (e.g., Detroit, Mich., and Miami, Fla., both in the United States) and on a dispersed American college campus (West Virginia University, at Morgantown). The vehicles commonly have rubber tires and operate on twin concrete beams, elevated or at grade level. AGT is a scaled-down, modernized application of rail rapid transit—slower, with smaller, lighter cars, more easily fit into established communities. monorail systems are an AGT concept using a single guide and support beam, usually elevated, with a vehicle riding on top of, or suspended beneath, the beam. Monorail systems can be found at some activity centres in the United States (e.g., the downtown area of Seattle, Wash.; Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.; and Pearl City Shopping Center in Honolulu) and a system completed in 1901 continues to serve Wuppertal, Ger. There is no inherent advantage in monorail other than its novelty. Switching trains from track to track can be complex, and the lack of standardization makes acquisition and maintenance costly (cost).

Cost reduction through management and contracting

      Transit systems are shrinking because fare revenues cannot cover costs, and there are many other demands on government monies. Some of this shrinkage is to be expected, because as the market becomes smaller (because auto use expands, people move to the suburbs, and so forth), the service should get smaller. Mass transportation systems, particularly those in older cities, need to be rationalized by eliminating underutilized components and improving service on remaining lines.

      Costs can be controlled through administrative reorganization to increase efficiency. The trend toward public ownership of systems, nearly complete by the 1970s in the United States, has been redirected by contracting out many services to private operators through competitive bidding. This has been a successful cost-cutting strategy for services that can be broken into manageable work pieces, such as demand-responsive services for the handicapped. Competition in the bidding process, as well as incentive contracts that reward providers for efficiency, can keep costs down. In some cases, complete reprivatization of transportation services may provide cost reductions and service improvements as long as regulatory protections assure service for all markets.

Financing options

      There also is a need for a regular source of subsidies (subsidy), so that operators do not have to return annually to legislative bodies to fight for survival. Local sales taxes and special assessments within districts where the benefits of transit are focused are logical sources. It is also important to create incentives and restrictions to encourage service providers to be efficient and limit subsidy costs. Some communities require that some minimum share of operating costs be paid with passenger fares, which ensures that the primary beneficiaries (the riders) pay a reasonable share of costs. If there is one key to the survival and success of mass transportation, it is enlightened public policy that defines the evolving mission of transit in the community, implements economical ways to deliver quality service, and provides for stable financial support.

Joseph L. Schofer

Additional Reading

George E. Gray and Lester A. Hoel (eds.), Public Transportation, 2nd ed. (1992), is a collection of historical, economic, and technical readings about public transportation, its planning, management, operation, and finance. An analysis of the forces that shaped the urban transit system and the policies that direct it in the United States is presented in David W. Jones, Jr., Urban Transit Policy: An Economic and Political History (1985). Trends toward reprivatization of urban mass transportation services, with a history of developments that led to public ownership of the industry, are explored in Charles A. Lave (ed.), Urban Transit: The Private Challenge to Public Transportation (1985). J.R. Meyer, J.F. Kain, and M. Wohl, The Urban Transportation Problem (1965), by now a classic, provides an economic cost comparison of urban transportation modes, including the automobile and various forms of mass transit, to derive conditions under which these different modes are most economical. Michael D. Meyer and Eric J. Miller, Urban Transportation Planning: A Decision-Oriented Approach (1984), studies the political and technical processes through which urban transportation systems are planned in the United States. Harold M. Mayer and Richard C. Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (1969), is a pictorial history of this large city, with a heavy emphasis on the role of transportation in shaping its pattern and character. A study of transportation in 32 cities around the world, exploring the relationships between the automobile and mass transportation, is presented in Peter W.G. Newman and Jeffrey R. Kenworthy, Cities and Automobile Dependence: A Sourcebook (1989). Boris S. Pushkarev, Jeffrey M. Zupan, and Robert S. Cumella, Urban Rail in America: An Exploration of Criteria for Fixed-Guideway Transit (1982), describes factors contributing to the success of urban rail systems, with examples of land use and travel demand characteristics that make rail economically feasible. Vukan R. Vuchic, Urban Public Transportation: Systems and Technology (1981), is a short history of mass transportation technologies, with a comprehensive technical analysis and comparison of the performance and costs of alternative technologies. For a wealth of statistical and technical data on the scale, activities, performance, finance, and operations of mass transportation systems, see Transit Fact Book (annual); Jane's Urban Transport Systems (annual); and National Urban Mass Transportation Statistics (annual).Joseph L. Schofer

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