Transit in the Nation's Capital: What Lies Ahead? A Study of Projected Transit Service, Costs, and Financial Impacts on the Region Through the Year 2000. Final Report (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rail Transit in America: A comprehensive evaluation of benefits
2009
This study evaluates rail transit benefits based on a comprehensive analysis of transportation system performance in major U.S. cities. It finds that cities with large, wellestablished rail systems have significantly higher per capita transit ridership, lower average per capita vehicle ownership and annual mileage, less traffic congestion, lower traffic death rates, lower consumer expenditures on transportation, and higher transit service cost recovery than otherwise comparable cities with less or no rail transit service. This indicates that rail transit systems provide economic, social and environmental benefits, and these benefits tend to increase as a system expands and matures. This report discusses best practices for evaluating transit benefits. It examines criticisms of rail transit investments, finding that many are based on inaccurate analysis.
Evaluating rail transit benefits: A comment
Transport Policy, 2007
Several recent articles criticize urban rail transit investments on grounds that they are ineffective at reducing traffic congestion and financially wasteful. This commentary challenges that view. It summarizes some of the findings of more detailed analyses of transit benefits and suggests that there is abundant evidence that high quality, grade-separated transit does reduce urban traffic congestion, and that urban transit improvements can be cost effective investments when all economic impacts are considered. r
Quantifying the Value of Transit Station and Access Improvements for Chicago's Rapid Transit System
The goal of the Congestion Management and Air Quality (CMAQ) program is to improve air quality by reducing auto use and highway congestion. Rapid transit station and pedestrian system improvements are important to Chicago's strategy to meet this goal for its CMAQ funding. The effects of improving transit service by traditional means are generally well understood and are represented in conventional travel forecasting models. Much less understood are how more general improvements in transit stations and transit access affect transit ridership and, ultimately, air quality. This paper describes work to quantify the effects of potential changes to the Chicago rapid transit system's stations and pedestrian access and to measure the impacts of these changes on rapid transit system ridership, revenue, and auto emissions. The study was based on an in-depth computer-based survey of a sample of people who either currently use rapid transit or who make trips that could reasonably be served. Preference information was collected using hybrid conjoint methods.
Paying for Transit in an Era of Federal Policy Change
Journal of Public Transportation, 2005
Public transit agencies rely on a combination of local, state, and federal subsidies to provide their services. However, federal policy changes have introduced uncertainty into the public subsidy picture. In 1998, Congress passed TEA-21, which eliminated federal operating assistance to agencies in U.S. urbanized areas with populations of 200,000 or more persons. This policy change came at the end of a more than decadelong decline in the share of federal operating support for agencies in larger urban areas. This article examines how agencies in different parts of the country and in different-sized urban areas have responded to federal policy changes by posing a simple question: Where have agencies turned to make up the operating fund shortfall? The investigation reveals that agencies in different parts of the country have followed different financial paths.
Valuing Rail Transit: Comparing Capital and Operating Costs to Consumer Benefits
Institute of Urban Regional Development, 2010
A certain acrimony pervades the longstanding debate over the costs and benefits of public rail transportation in the United States. Some seem opposed to all rail transit all the time, while others support any and every rail project, despite sometimes high costs and low ridership. With much of the debate focused on pricing automobile externalities, transportation choice, and the rail's external benefits, surprisingly few studies assess which rail transit systems create net positive social welfare. If consumer benefits alone do not justify the high cost of a transit investment, what would the external value of a passenger trip have to be to do so? Combining fare, ridership, operating, and capital cost data for 24 transit agencies' heavy and/or light rail systems, this paper makes back-of-the-envelope estimates of how transit systems' rider benefits compare to operating deficits. Urban rail systems may not be optimal from a transportation systems or economic cost-benefit perspective, but they clearly create value for consumers and society. Given a low, but commonly applied, elasticity of-0.3 and a linear demand curve, two transit systems create net social welfare gains based solely on consumer surplus. At least ten others likely provide net benefits when accounting for economic externalities. At an elasticity of-0.6, no system provides net social welfare gains without accounting for externalities. At least five systems are unlikely to provide net economic benefits, even given generous assumptions about external and rider benefits.
Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs Best Practices Guidebook
This guidebook describes how to create a comprehensive framework for evaluating the full impacts (benefits and costs) of a particular transit service or improvement. It identifies various categories of impacts and how to measure them. It discusses best practices for transit evaluation and identifies common errors that distort results. It discusses the travel impacts of various types of transit system changes and incentives. It describes ways to optimize transit benefits by increasing system efficiency, increasing ridership and creating more transit oriented land use patterns. It compares automobile and transit costs, and the advantages and disadvantages of bus and rail transit. It includes examples of transit evaluation, and provides extensive references. Many of the techniques in this guide can be used to evaluate other modes, such as ridesharing, cycling and walking.
Evaluating new start transit program performance: Comparing rail and bus
2006
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.
Urban Studies, 2014
MTI works to provide policy-oriented research for all levels of government and the private sector to foster the development of optimum surface transportation systems. Research areas include: transportation security; planning and policy development; interrelationships among transportation, land use, and the environment; transportation finance; and collaborative labormanagement relations. Certified Research Associates conduct the research. Certification requires an advanced degree, generally a Ph.D., a record of academic publications, and professional references. Research projects culminate in a peer-reviewed publication, available both in hardcopy and on TransWeb, the MTI website (http://transweb.sjsu.edu).
Trends Affecting Public Transit's Effectiveness: A Review and Proposed Actions
2004
This paper reviews a wide range of information, including demographic and socio-economic trends, changes in land use and mobility patterns, societal changes and concerns, emerging professional practices in urban planning, etc. The objectives of the study are to distill from these medium-to-longer trends, the challenges they create for transit system effectiveness and for the industry as a whole, and to identify some questions, opportunities, and potential actions for consideration in the formulation of future strategic directions for transit in the community. The study also provides in the Appendices, a discussion of concepts, and a listing of many accessible resources on various specific topics.