Networks

INTRODUCTION

TRANSIT WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE

In 2020, COVID hit the transit industry hard. Thousands of train operators, bus drivers, mechanics, and other staff were infected; at the MTA in New York alone 136 transit employees died. With office employees working from home, restaurants, bars, and shops closed, events cancelled, and many of the ordinary parts of life paused, US transit ridership in April 2020 was 80% lower than April 2019. That triggered a financial crisis as fare revenue dropped and tax revenue decreased. COVID almost instantly, became another talking point for the regular cast of anti-transit pundits. But transit continued to prove its value. Essential workers such as nurses, grocery store employees, and distribution workers kept riding, and transit kept cities functioning.

COVID doesn’t change the fundamentals of transit. Over thousands years of history, epidemics have not killed cities. Our human urge to gather is not going away. There will surely be some changes, but the basic travel patterns will still be there. And what makes transit successful will still be the same.

I live in Houston, Texas, a famously car-oriented city. I work at an urban planning practice and teach at Rice University. During the pandemic I have been fortunate enough to be able to work from home. But in normal tmes, I would walk out my door, go three blocks down the street, and get on a train. It would take me to work, to meetings, to lunch with friends, to medical appointments, to lectures, to museums, to the park, dropping me off right in the middle of things at all those places. Transit makes my life better.

This is possible because the transit I live next to is high quality. The train runs every six minutes, so my wait is short. It has its own lane, so it’s not slowed down by congestion. It has nice stations that shelter me from the rain, and good passenger information.

But, most importantly, I can take the train for most of my travel because it goes to the right places. It runs by lots of apartments and condos and houses. It runs by lots of office buildings. It also runs by many of the other things I want to do in my life—socialize, learn, have fun. More people ought to have the choice to live like this. I’m on the train with lots of different people, who live in different places and work in different kinds of jobs. This transit line works for them, too. Good transit offers access, opportunity, and freedom.

People who don’t ride transit benefit from transit, too. People who use transit—be they downtown professionals or minimum-wage service workers—are essential to the economy. Everybody on a bus or a train represents one less car on the road. Public transit significantly reduces the environmental impacts of cities, reducing energy use and preventing sprawl that eats up natural habitat. All of these benefits scale with ridership—as people use transit more, its societal benefits increase.

Some cities have built transit that has transformed the experience of living there. Some have simply built a lot of transit. Some have built very little. It is worth comparing them and drawing lessons. That’s what this book is about. It looks at every metro area in the United States and Canada that has built rail or bus rapid transit (or currently has a line under construction), considers why they made the decisions that they did, and looks at how well those lines have worked.

This edition is expanded to include Canada, where there are many lessons for the US. Two new US cities have been added: Indianapolis and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The cities have been updated to include changes since 2018 and the introductory material has been revised and expanded. I hope this new edition will help anyone who is working to offer more people great transit.