People love to hate public transit, and will click on any headline that promises to fuel their sentiment.
In particular, people who commute using single-occupancy vehicles are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of transit.
Can't you just use the same logic to make the opposite point?
"In particular, people who commute using public transit are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of single-occupancy vehicles."
In general, it's not constructive to make arguments based on questioning the motivations of people you disagree with. I try to always assume rationality and good faith on the part of everyone, even when they appear to be brainwashed or just plain crazy from a distance. Trying to figure out why people might be irrationally disagreeing with you is a lot less useful than trying to figure out why people are rationally disagreeing with you, even when they are being irrational (because aren't we all, in one way or another?).
This is very much an American thing to hate public transport though. Places in Europe, especially Switzerland for example, have much better infrastructure and taking a car can be a pain compared to a train which is faster and a lot more comfortable.
Denying the problems with mass transit in America that lead most Americans to prefer single occupancy vehicles is not the way to get more people using public transit.
I don't hate it, but I do question if it is the best use of funds. The U.S. doesn't have the density required to support the transit systems we have built. Fare box revenue only covers 44% of operating costs in Boston; in Austin, the CMTA only covers 12.4%. And operating costs do not include the cost of capital, which must be massive [ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio].
-- Edit 's/costs do not cover/costs do not include/'
I think the reason has to do with the perception that ridership should be rapidly increasing and it isn't. Population is up, urbanization, is up, but public transit isn't keeping pace. That's an interesting story because it is non-obvious. I don't think there much else to the media fixation than that.
Building good rail transit infrastructure takes a pretty long time, and it's very expensive. You can also have good bus service, but having it competitive with driving usually requires bus-only lanes, and that's a difficult proposition in America. If you look at Seattle, for example, people there are desperate for new transit, and they want it done as soon as possible, but the timelines for the upcoming ST3 package have most of it taking upwards of a couple decades to complete.
For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport.
In Washington DC it has taken over ten years of crashes, worker and passenger fatalities, and awful service for the press to start telling "Metro is failing" stories. Up until then the stories generally were positive.
Out of curiosity - per day or week: how many people ride the DC Metro, how many people die on the Metro, how many people drive, and how many people die driving? Metro services have the same issue as airlines in that a non-issue failure rate ends up reviled in the news because there's the same name attached to every single incident and everybody is completely failing to group up the alternatives to examine them.
Bad service I can agree with - that's something that needs to be fixed. More money, supportive legislation that makes it easier for them to acquire capability, etcetera. But unless the Metro is killing someone literally every day I doubt its fatality rate approaches cars.
I think Metros problems are relatively recent though. There were some crashes before (inevitable in a large transit system). But it's only in the last few years that service has totally gone off the rails.
Public transit is a very visible part of government for people who live in cities that have it, and it's controversial because it's partially financed with taxpayer money whether you use it or not.
I feel like especially in southern California, there are a lot of people in the suburbs who don't use public transit and who feel like the money spent on transit ("moving poor people around") should go to road projects instead which benefit them.
I was recently in Miami, and my friend who lives there said to use Lyft instead of taking the bus or the metro, because "it's only used by poor people". I compare this to Boston, where people complain about MBTA crowds and management, but in general if you're near a subway stop you'll take the subway over Uber of Lyft (when it's running).
> it's controversial because it's partially financed with taxpayer money whether you use it or not.
This is true of every form of transportation. It's just that motorists are frequently unaware of how their preferred mode is subsidized by the government.
Remember that every bus full of 'poor people' is 10 or 12 cards not on the road. It already benefits everybody. As public transportation increases, so do road conditions for all. This is an example of a win-win situation.
Likewise, bike users are tired of paying for either 12 feet lanes, the war that petrol-dependent citizen make in Irak, or their contribution to global warming.
You may be paying for it even if not using it, but you have to account for the environmental savings. But people care less about stuff that's harder to measure.
Maybe I need to take off my tin-foil hat - but I think this reads exactly as if somebody paid the newspaper to write a story about the "failure of mass transit", and the writers/editors snuck in this graph as a hidden message.
I'm interpreting that chart as tracking the year on year percentage increase/decrease of the population and ridership.
So the population has more or less been increasing year on year since 2005, with a near zero decline prior to that.
The ridership has gone through a steep decrease which bottomed out at -35% in ~2005. Sure it's been decreasing less, but isn't it still decreasing? The ridership line is flat near the end, but isn't it still decreasing at more than 20% year on year?
How else can the chart be read? How am I reading it wrong?
It may have to do with for example, the VTA expanding service (in miles of track) but the ridership not going up to match. Also, rail in places like the bay area, or even buses, just can't justify the opex given the relatively light ridership. Mass transit is rarely profitable (financially self sustaining) but many transit systems, given housing density and commercial/residential patterns, in the US, are woefully in deficits.
Edit: To add, I mean this in terms of more than just the high density corridors and terminus to terminus lines. I mean if you live in Almaden Valley and want to get to East San Jose or you want to get to Milpitas. Or if you want to get from The Marina in SF to the Outer Sunset. Most SF transit is designed to pull people in and out of the old downtown core (even MUNI uses the terms "inbound" and outbound" which tell you a lot about the passenger flow they had in mind. There is no "ring" line or N-S LRVs in SF.
As someone who uses the Caltrain every week 3-4 times , I can say the ridership at commute times is very healthy. The housing prices in SF and the concentration of a decent number of large companies (AirBnB, Pinterest, Atlassian) in the SoMA area is probably the chief reason for this trend.
I'm hoping the failure of transit leads into a 32-hour/4-day work week media fixation...
Overnight 20% reduction in load = dramatically faster service and reduced congestion.
As a long-time rider, the VTA infrastructure is excellent, and the route coverage is good. It even has wifi.
In the short-term, if buses left and arrived on time, that would be a helpful improvement. Longer-term, ride analysis from Clipper data could optimize routes and frequencies.
When looking at farebox recovery numbers, remember that the bloated bureaucracy, driver salaries and pensions have to be paid from that.
Doubling the speed of the light rail would make it much more usable.
I have zero evidence of this, but having witnessed Uber and Lyft spending over $8 million dollars trying to pass pro-ridesharing legislation here in Austin (which failed, thankfully), I can't help but wonder if these types of "Transit is Failing" stories might be their astroturfers/PR agencies at work.
Think about it: as a ridesharing company, the more you convince people that public transit is in bad shape and getting worse everyday, the more they will clamor for your ridesharing service.
Please don't post any comments about how you live in Montana, then.
In the meantime, I thought that it was not merely an interesting article about a particular newspaper in a particular place, but an interesting observation about how to lie with graphs and what interests newspapers really serve.
I don't get the downvotes on this one. The article headline makes assertions about the press generally, and then discusses only California anecdotes. There is absolutely nothing in the article to support anything about a "media fixation on 'transit is failing' stories." More accurate would have been "why do a few California news sources have some stories asserting that some local California transit systems are failing?"
[+] [-] kazinator|10 years ago|reply
In particular, people who commute using single-occupancy vehicles are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of transit.
[+] [-] mwfunk|10 years ago|reply
"In particular, people who commute using public transit are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of single-occupancy vehicles."
In general, it's not constructive to make arguments based on questioning the motivations of people you disagree with. I try to always assume rationality and good faith on the part of everyone, even when they appear to be brainwashed or just plain crazy from a distance. Trying to figure out why people might be irrationally disagreeing with you is a lot less useful than trying to figure out why people are rationally disagreeing with you, even when they are being irrational (because aren't we all, in one way or another?).
[+] [-] sebgr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbucc|10 years ago|reply
-- Edit 's/costs do not cover/costs do not include/'
[+] [-] barney54|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|10 years ago|reply
For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport.
[+] [-] ddebernardy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] massysett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saulrh|10 years ago|reply
Bad service I can agree with - that's something that needs to be fixed. More money, supportive legislation that makes it easier for them to acquire capability, etcetera. But unless the Metro is killing someone literally every day I doubt its fatality rate approaches cars.
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcoffland|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchowe|10 years ago|reply
I feel like especially in southern California, there are a lot of people in the suburbs who don't use public transit and who feel like the money spent on transit ("moving poor people around") should go to road projects instead which benefit them.
I was recently in Miami, and my friend who lives there said to use Lyft instead of taking the bus or the metro, because "it's only used by poor people". I compare this to Boston, where people complain about MBTA crowds and management, but in general if you're near a subway stop you'll take the subway over Uber of Lyft (when it's running).
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|10 years ago|reply
This is true of every form of transportation. It's just that motorists are frequently unaware of how their preferred mode is subsidized by the government.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tajen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aleman360|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cptskippy|10 years ago|reply
Why not plot actual numbers for population and ridership on a chart instead of % change relative to 2001? It seems deceptive.
[+] [-] strommen|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] code_sloth|10 years ago|reply
So the population has more or less been increasing year on year since 2005, with a near zero decline prior to that.
The ridership has gone through a steep decrease which bottomed out at -35% in ~2005. Sure it's been decreasing less, but isn't it still decreasing? The ridership line is flat near the end, but isn't it still decreasing at more than 20% year on year?
How else can the chart be read? How am I reading it wrong?
[+] [-] mc32|10 years ago|reply
Edit: To add, I mean this in terms of more than just the high density corridors and terminus to terminus lines. I mean if you live in Almaden Valley and want to get to East San Jose or you want to get to Milpitas. Or if you want to get from The Marina in SF to the Outer Sunset. Most SF transit is designed to pull people in and out of the old downtown core (even MUNI uses the terms "inbound" and outbound" which tell you a lot about the passenger flow they had in mind. There is no "ring" line or N-S LRVs in SF.
[+] [-] redditmigrant|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] occamrazor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oceanplexian|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fucking_tragedy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xkcd-sucks|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaur|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_exer|10 years ago|reply
In the short-term, if buses left and arrived on time, that would be a helpful improvement. Longer-term, ride analysis from Clipper data could optimize routes and frequencies.
When looking at farebox recovery numbers, remember that the bloated bureaucracy, driver salaries and pensions have to be paid from that.
Doubling the speed of the light rail would make it much more usable.
[+] [-] enraged_camel|10 years ago|reply
Think about it: as a ridesharing company, the more you convince people that public transit is in bad shape and getting worse everyday, the more they will clamor for your ridesharing service.
[+] [-] dkopi|10 years ago|reply
Uber doesn't let you avoid taking the bus/train. It lets you rely on public transport 95% of the time, and use ride sharing the rest of the time.
Fighting uber/lyft means forcing people to own a car, and if they already own a car - they aren't going to be riding the bus.
[+] [-] mistermann|10 years ago|reply
Why are you opposed to Uber & Lyft?
[+] [-] orasis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|10 years ago|reply
In the meantime, I thought that it was not merely an interesting article about a particular newspaper in a particular place, but an interesting observation about how to lie with graphs and what interests newspapers really serve.
[+] [-] massysett|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rco8786|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply