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The Marriage of Autos & Transit
How To Make Transit Popular Again
Melvin M. Webber is professor emeritus of planning at the University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-1720 and director of the University of California Transportation
Center.
Cars have become the overwhelmingly favorite transportation mode in all the developed
countries, and they're rapidly taking over in the rest of the world, as well. They've
been one of the most powerful forces for economic and social change wherever they've
been adopted, changing the ways we do business, the ways we live out our daily lives,
and probably the ways we think. Like telephones, autos have the fantastic capacity
to shrink geographic distance, permitting people to maintain close contact with each
other, even though they live miles apart.
They've made it possible for most of us to leave the old urban centers and move into
decent houses in the spacious suburbs. They permit most of us to live where we choose
and then to accept jobs located at any compass point from our homes. We're free to
go wherever we wish and whenever we wish, freed from the rigid schedules of common
carriers.
These freedoms have mixed consequences. During this, the century of the automobile,
the high-density downtowns of most cities have stabilized or declined and, with them,
proportions of downtown jobs, radial patterns of travel, and use of public transit.
Declining transit riding must be the most tragic of those effects. Transit patronage
has been falling during most of this century, except for that brief period during
World War II when gasoline was rationed and there were no new cars to buy. In the
years since the War, transit riding has fallen steadily-from 114 trips per capita
in 1950, to 37 in 1970, to 31 in 1990. Since 1964 the federal government has spent
more than $100 billion to improve and expand transit service, and yet trips to and
from work in urbanized areas, the ones widely believed to be most amenable to transit,
have been falling even more dramatically: from 25 percent of work trips in 1960,
to 14 percent in 1970, to 10 percent in 1980, down to perhaps 5 percent today. In
the suburbs, transit use is down to about 2.5 percent of trips to work.
Nationwide, people use transit for only 2 percent of their urban trips. With the
exception of walking and bicycle trips, virtually all the rest are by private car.
Journalists keep telling us that "Americans have a love affair with the automobile,"
as though some irrational infatuation has seized us. But they're wrong. Americans
-- and Europeans and Asians and Africans -- have simply discovered that the automobile
is the most effective surface-transportation system yet devised. Unlike all other
modes, it provides no-wait, no-transfer service and, owing to substantial subsidies,
it does so at tolerable cost. Where parking is available, as in most suburban settings,
it provides door-to-door accessibility. It's no wonder that Americans, and everyone
else who can do so, have adopted cars as their primary mode of travel.
Moreover, travel times for automobile commuters have been falling-falling slightly
but falling nevertheless. Between 1983 and 1990, the national average commute trip
by car ebbed from 20.4 minutes to 19.7 minutes. During the same period, commuting
times via public transit increased-from 46.1 minutes to 49.9 minutes. (That's roughly
20 minutes by car and 50 minutes by transit.) During that same period, average mileage
distances increased for auto commuters (from 9.9 to 10.6 miles) and decreased for
transit commuters (from 15.1 to 12.6 miles). For most automobile users the trends
are toward fewer minutes and greater access. For most transit riders, it's just the
opposite-more minutes and less access. The time savings are surely one reason commuters
chose cars over buses and trains.
Even in America, all adults do not yet have discretionary use of cars. About 11 percent
of U.S. households still don't own one. About 10 percent of the driving-age population
aren't licensed to drive; they're either too old or too disabled-or they live in
New York City where they can scarcely use a car, even if they've got one. Perhaps
a fourth of unlicensed adults can't afford cars. About a third of U.S. households
still have only one car that all family members share. Thus, even though automobiles
dominate our transportation system, even though there are more cars than licensed
drivers, many Americans still don't have access to them.
That inequality poses a central issue for transportation policy. It compels us to
ask, How can we bring the advantages of automobile accessibility to everyone? One
way, of course, is to expand car ownership -but that might increase congestion, pollution,
and energy consumption. Alternatively we might invent a kind of public transit offering
accessibility for the carless, comparable to what car owners enjoy.
It's important to remind ourselves of two value-laden facts:
First, automobiles were a major force behind the geographic explosion of metropolitan
areas, extending a long-term historical trend. Autos, like telephones, permit direct
connection from everywhere to everywhere, and that's what allows our contemporary
suburbs to thrive economically and socially. It would be a great loss if that widespread
connectivity were to be weakened by anti-auto mandates constricting free use of cars.
Second, and equally important, the auto's popularity and the expanding suburbs have
caused the decline and, in some places, the virtual demise of mass transit services.
Trips between dispersed origins and dispersed destinations of contemporary suburbs
are not readily served by conventional mass transit's large vehicles; instead, they
inevitably get served by small, individualized vehicles-that is, by automobiles.
Most often by automobiles carrying only the driver. As a result, carless persons
who remain dependent on transit are made worse-off. In something akin to a national
social disaster, the rise of the automobile and the decline of transit have meant
that many citizens are deprived of access to suburban jobs and advantages of modern
urban life. To be sure the plight of the jobless can't be blamed solely on the transportation
system; but, just as surely, automobile transportation is implicated in the tragedy.
So, what can be done to reverse that decline of public transit service?
RIDESHARING AS PUBLIC TRANSIT
Bryan Clymer, the former administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, redefined
transit to include all passenger vehicles carrying more than a solo driver. He was
declaring in effect that modern public transit includes carpools and other small
vehicles having multiple passengers. If we're willing to accept his concept, my question
can be modified to ask: What incentives might induce solo drivers to share their
cars with others? Or. What's needed to turn solo-driven cars into transit vehicles?
Or: How can we turn more drivers into riders?
It's something of a paradox that, despite all the complaints about highway congestion,
we enjoy a tremendous excess of capacity. As Wilfred Owen of Brookings once observed,
because most American cars are carrying only the driver, at least three seats remain
empty -- enough empty front seats to carry the rest of the U.S. population and enough
back seats for the entire population of the former Soviet Union. That fact has led
to many efforts to encourage carpooling, but the sad part of that story is that ridesharing
has been on the decline. Nationwide, carpooling fell from about 20 percent of work
trips in 1980 to about 13 percent in 1990. Can we now reverse that trend?
High-occupancy vehicles-lanes (HOV lanes) have proved somewhat successful in encouraging
ridesharing in places like Virginia's Shirley Highway. The San Francisco Bay Bridge's
toll-free HOV lanes for vehicles with three or more persons triggered a telling unplanned
response: solo drivers now stop at BART stations and bus stops to pick up two passengers-strangers
who've been waiting in polite queues. With three persons in the car, the former solo-drivers
now save up to 20 minutes by avoiding the toll gates, and the $1.00 toll besides.
That bit of casual, one-directional carpooling has raised car occupancy on the bridge
from the regional average of 1.1 to 1.9 persons in the westbound morning peak-- a
73 percent improvement. It's an instructive clue for transit-system redesign.
In addition to creating incentives for voluntary ridesharing, improvements must be
made in more formal public transit systems. Because the contemporary suburban pattern
consists of dispersed origins and destinations, the most promising strategies for
public transit are those that use small vehicles, such as cars and vans-vehicles
sized for the few persons making the same trip at the same time.
A merger of automobiles, telephones, cellular phones, radios, satellite locators,
and computers could support new transit systems that are compatible with modern suburbs.
Following Robert Behnke's lead we envision computer-based dating systems that, in
real time, would match drivers and potential passengers having the same origins,
destinations, and schedules. A phone call to "Multi-Mode Transport Central" would
permit residential neighbors with common destinations to fill some of those empty
seats on any given day and hour, even though they're total strangers. The incentive
to the passenger is a convenient trip by car at tolerable cost. The incentive to
the driver is reduced travel cost and perhaps even supplemental income.
The Federal Transit Administration is now exploring the idea, as are increasing numbers
of state and local transportation agencies. Under the banner of APTS (Advanced Public
Transportation Systems), they're conducting experimental field tests of potentially
integrated communication-transportation transit systems. We can now foresee metropolitan-wide
transit systems, each focused on Transport Central's computer. A person wishing to
go from here to there at a specified time phones the transport help line, say 711,
and places a request by punching the phone buttons. The computer then searches for
a neighbor traveling at that time to that place and willing to share an empty seat
for a fee. If none is found, it searches for the nearest publicly or privately owned
bus, or van, or taxi which it then sends to the caller's front door.
Being virtually guaranteed a ride at an acceptable price and at the right time, many
who are now solo drivers might be enticed into becoming carpoolers-i.e., transit
riders. Whether the vehicle that arrives is a neighbor's car, van, small bus, or
taxi, is probably inconsequential; whatever the small-vehicle type, the operational
service characteristics are approximately the same. Any of these interchangeable
paratransit vehicles can provide door-to-door, short-wait, no-transfer service, comparable
to the level of service that a private car provides and, for some, without the hassle
and costs of parking.
The utility of auto-based transit service need not be reserved to suburbanites. By
far, the largest number of transit-dependent adults today have low incomes, live
in central cities, and lack discretionary use of cars. Because most new jobs are
opening in the suburbs and because many center-city residents cannot live near those
jobs, the decline of conventional public transit continues to worsen their predicament.
Where no bus routes run from nearby inner-city locations to specific suburban job
sites, some fortunate job holders use gypsy cabs and other informal, perhaps illegal,
paratransit services. But these may be expensive and unreliable. A great many other
persons simply remain unemployed. Far better that everyone be able to dial 711 and
be assured a ride to work and a ride home at an acceptable price or, for would-be
drivers, a new source of income.
Other countries long ago demonstrated the viability of automobile-based transit services.
Jitneys are the main components of transit systems in many Third World countries.
Some jitneys ply fixed routes while others operate like collective taxis and take
passengers directly to their destinations. They offer employment opportunities for
a great many otherwise unemployed or underemployed persons. They furnish low-cost
transportation service that, in some places, approximates that of private autos.
In virtually all places -- in sharp contrast to the heavily subsidized transit systems
in the United States - they operate at a profit for their private operators.
Although jitneys have largely disappeared from this country, we still hold onto the
memories of their effectiveness and profitability. The new door-to-door airport shuttles
in Los Angeles and San Francisco suggest we may have a rebirth of privately owned,
profitable, small-vehicle systems operating in public-transit modes. However, a high
barrier stands in the way of expanding paratransit service in the United States.
Strict regulations in many cities severely constrain entry into the taxi-jitney business,
largely through limits on the numbers of licenses they allow --no doubt a direct
response to the wishes of the taxi industry. However, if that oligopolistic constraint
can somehow be overcome -- if the jitney-taxi business can be opened to new entrants
and if the attributes of high-tech communications can be merged with the attributes
of low-tech Third World jitneys -- we might generate a new high-quality transit service.
Any such paratransit system will have to deal with passengers' potential fear of
strangers. Recent experience with Shirley Highway and Bay Bridge carpools and with
rideshare benches in retirement villages suggest that persons living in the same
neighborhood are likely to be fairly trusting-and safe. Nevertheless, a formalized
transit system must provide reasonable assurance of safety, at least comparable to
that of municipal bus operators.
Of course, no transit system can become a panacea. Real-time carpools might never
attract more than 10 percent of potential commuters. But, by serving only that niche
within the commuter market, it will go a long way toward reversing transit's long-term
decline.
SMALL VEHICLES, BIG RETURNS
If it's true that the automobile owes its tremendous success to its door-to-door,
no-wait, no-transfer service, and if it's true that the structure of the modern metropolis
is incompatible with large-vehicle transit systems like trains, trolleys, or even
50-passenger buses, then it must also be true that workable transit systems in low-density
sections of the metropolis must be those using automobile-like vehicles. I suggest
that the ideal suburban transit system will take its passengers from door to door
with no transfers, with little waiting -- and that it will fit the small numbers
of persons having the same origin, the
same destination, and the same schedule. Only such a system can compete with the
private car on its own grounds.
So, if you're looking for a high-odds investment, just dial 711, talk to the computer,
and place your bets on transit systems that rely on automobiles.
