Quote:
Portland has attracted attention as a model for smart-
growth planning and light-rail transit. From a ridership
point of view—that is, ignoring cost—this attention
appears well-deserved. Since the first light-rail line
opened in 1986, transit ridership has kept pace with
driving, both nearly doubling. Transit passenger miles
have actually grown by more than 150 percent, meaning
transit’s share of motorized travel has increased from 1.8
to 2.3 percent.
The only problem with this story is that transit’s share
of travel was greater, at 2.6 percent, in 1982 before the
transit agency raised fares and cut bus service to help pay
for rail cost overruns. Portland’s powerful congressional
delegation, led by Senator Mark Hatfield, who chaired
the Senate Appropriations Committee in the late 1980s,
spared the region from any worries about cost overruns
when it built its second light-rail line. A good thing, too:
its cost ballooned from an original projection of $240
million to nearly $1 billion.
In 1998, Portlanders voted not to increase their
property taxes to pay for more light-rail lines, following
similar votes by Oregon in 1996 and Vancouver,
Washington in 1995. The city continues to build them
by finding ways of locally funding construction that
don’t require voter approval. The most recent lines have
not been as successful as the first two; early reports on
one that opened in 2004 indicate that it carries fewer
people than the bus route it replaced.
Quote:
• Transit ridership is declining in five out of eight
regions with older rail transit systems and is flat in
two others;
• In five regions with new rail transit—Atlanta,
Baltimore, Buffalo, Los Angeles, and St. Louis—
ridership has fallen below peak levels in the 1980s
before rail construction began or when in was in
the early stages;
• In at least five other new-rail regions—Dallas-Ft.
Worth, Denver, Portland, Salt Lake, San Jose—
transit ridership is growing, but more slowly
than when the region relied on bus-only transit
systems;
• Only in Boston has transit usage grown faster
than the growth of driving and only in Dallas-Ft.
Worth, New York, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San
Francisco, and Washington have transit kept pace
with the growth in driving. In Dallas-Ft. Worth and
Salt Lake City, it was the bus system, not rail transit,
that enabled transit to keep up with driving;
• In seven regions—Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco,
and St. Louis—transit trips declined from 1980s
peaks while passenger miles grew.
The major exception is Boston, which has significantly
increased commuter-rail service in the past two
decades and where strict land-use regulation has tried
to discourage suburbanization and decentralization
of jobs. In New York, transit ridership declined by 30
percent between 1984 and 1993, but has grown since
then, though not yet to 1984 levels. In San Francisco,
ridership has been flat but passenger miles have grown.
This suggests a reverse Robin-Hood effect, as transit agencies
sacrificed their core base of low-income inner-city
residents to capture business from relatively wealthy
suburbanites.
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