Governance

US and Canadian transit, 1980-1989 US and Canadian transit, 1990-1999

NEW TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION (miles)

commuter rail bus rapid transit streetcar light rail peoplemover heavy rail

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In the 1980s, new technologies and funding sources allowed rail transit to spread beyond a few big cities.

In 1964, the US Congress and President Johnson created the Urban Mass Transit Administration, today’s FTA. Federal laws enacted in 1979 and 1983 established long-term funding for transit projects and formalized the program for awarding grants, today known as “New Starts.” By covering up to 50% of the cost of transit projects, it put rail within the reach of more cities, but it also set up funding requirements and processes that extend the planning process and sometimes lead to odd choices. The federal government also created “formula” funds that would go to every metropolitan area, paying for new buses and transit centers and greatly improving the experience of riding transit, and promoted the development of new transit technologies like peoplemovers. In Canada, similar eff orts happened on a provincial level. Ontario funded development of new transit technologies through the Urban Transportation Development Corporation.

The federal governments rescued what was left of longdistance trains with the creation of Amtrak in the US in 1971 and VIA Rail in Canada 1997, but neither provided for local trains. Thus states and provinces were forced to take over the remaining commuter-rail service or let it disappear. New equipment began appearing on the service that remained, sometimes replacing 50-year-old trains.

Light-rail systems in Edmonton (1978), Calgary (1981), San Diego (1981), Portland (1986), and Sacramento (1987) became a new model for rail transit. Cheaper than heavy rail, but still attractive enough for the desired “choice riders,” light rail was an appealing option for many places. The new transit systems of the 1980s largely continued the 1970s planning philosophy, building lines far into the suburbs, with widely spaced stations. Sacramento (right) was typical in using railroad lines combined with short street-running segments in downtown. In the 1990s, rail transit once again became a normal part of American cities. Transit advocates, agency staff , and consultants worked to spread expertise, technology, ideas, and political strategies from city to city.

Increasingly, transit became a tool for livability. Cities tried to revitalize downtowns with convention centers and boutique hotels, museums, ballparks, restaurants, lofts, and condos. Meanwhile, inner-city neighborhoods gentrifi ed as the children of suburbia looked for shorter commutes and places with character. Even suburbs wanted walkable places and saw rail as a way to get them; Vancouver built a regional growth strategy around dense development at Skytrain stations. “Transit-oriented development” became a major theme of industry conferences.

With increased political support, cities got more ambitious. Early light-rail systems were generally expanded one line at a time; now cities began going to voters with master plans covering many lines. Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Denver embarked on multi-decade rail expansions. Along with light rail, cities started building commuter rail, with six new systems in the 1990s.

NEW TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION (miles)

commuter rail commuter railbus rapid transit streetcar light rail peoplemover heavy rail

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street running to get trains into Downtown lines in freeways and rail rights of way

suburban stations with park-and-ride lots

radial system focused on downtown

Sacramento Light Rail, built 1983-2015

US and Canadian transit, 2000-2009 US and Canadian transit, 2010-2019

NEW TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION (miles)

commuter rail bus rapid transit streetcar light rail peoplemover heavy rail

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In the 2000s, the transit toolbox expanded further. The Bush administration pushed hard for bus rapid transit as an alternative to rail, pointing to successes in Pittsburgh and Ottawa. This resulted in some high-quality dedicatedlane systems, and in multiple cities investing in multicorridor rapid bus lines that still shared lanes with traffi c but improved speed, frequency, and passenger amenities. Meanwhile, the modern streetcar line that Portland opened in 2001 inspired dozens of other cities to study streetcars, several of which got funding under the Obama administration’s stimulus in 2009 and the TIGER program that followed.

US transit is as diverse as it has ever been, and major transit infrastructure—rail and BRT—is now a normal part of American cities. Big cities like Phoenix and Houston (below) that had rejected rail expansion in the 1980s opened new BRT systems. So did cities like Norfolk (1.8 million), Albuquerque (1.2 million), Tucson (1 million) and Eugene (360,000) that had been considered too small for anything but local bus. In the 2010s, massive transit expansion in large cities continued. In 2016, Seattle voters approved $53.8 billion in new transit and LA voters approved $120 billion. So did the expansion of rail and BRT into smaller cities, with new streetcars in Milwaukee, El Paso, and Tucson and BRT in Richmond, Albuquerque, and Fort Collins. But merely building a lot of transit doesn’t make a good transit network. Many rail lines had been planned as separate overlays on existing bus networks. Now more cities, like Portland, Houston, Minneapolis (below), and Seattle, are starting to see rail and bus as one network, improving the quality of bus service and redesigning bus networks in conjunction with rail and BRT projects. Boston and New York, cities where the transit discussion had focused mainly on rail, are making bus service faster and more reliable with new bus lanes. The focus on bus came in part from a focus on equity, with networks explicitly designed to connect people to jobs and education and off er current bus riders faster and more-reliable trips. Portland, Minneapolis, Houston, and Toronto all deliberately built rail to benefi t low-income neighborhoods where transit ridership was already high.

NEW TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION (miles)

commuter rail bus rapid transit streetcar light rail

heavy rail

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branded bus route with upgraded stops and traffi c signal priority rail connecting multiple employment centers and universities

light rail on city streets through low income neighborhoods