Looking Back and Moving Forward on the Correct Transit Investment
In an age where cities are getting more populated and congested, the traditional single occupancy vehicle is likely not the best way to move forward as a society. Assuming that commuting returns to normal within the next couple of years, and riding transit will be safe from a health standpoint, cities need to think which type of transit investment will work best from an operational efficiently and financial perspective.
From a personal perspective, my home town of San Jose has seen a great disappointment in VTA's Light Rail. At its 25th anniversary in 2012, it was the 3rd worst-performing light rail line in the nation in terms of passenger cost per trip. Additionally, 85% of funding comes from taxpayers, 15% more than the national average. It was the right call for the City and Santa Clara County to anticipate the need for a transit system in the early 80s. However, when the tech boom started in the 90s, those jobs were for the most part not located in Central San Jose, where Light Rail is focused on, and instead in North San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View, near the freeways. One could call it bad luck or bad execution, but one could also ask if the investment was really worth it.
All of those could be a right answer, but neither is the right answer.
Along with San Jose, other major American cities such as Buffalo, Portland, Sacramento, and San Diego opened light rail lines around the same year. Four of these five cities saw decreases in commute trips by transit since 1980, which was also a nationwide trend. This is all despite a general increase in urban center population during the same time period. Unfortunately many of these cities also built freeways in the same time frame, which increased car accessibility, diminishing the need for local residents to take transit, contributing to the worse-than-expected results for these light rail systems.
Whether to invest or not in transit lines is not the main issue; the issue is how and what cities invest in. If there is no suitable way for people to move around town, people and economies will suffer. In planning for the future of mobility, there is no single one-size-fits-all implementation method, as cities are different in terms of layout and culture. For example, in sprawling, auto-oriented cities, perhaps rail transit investment should not be a priority, and instead they should focus on a lower-cost mode like Bus Rapid Transit. However, in dense cities where transit is already vital, necessary improvements and expansions will need to be made in order to ensure the system will work for the foreseeable future.
Works Cited:
Freemark, Y. (2014). Have U.S. Light Rail Systems Been Worth the Investment? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-10/have-u-s-light-rail-systems-been-worth-the-investment
Hannon, E., et al. (2020). Transit investments in an age of uncertainty. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/transit-investments-in-an-age-of-uncertainty#
Rosenberg, M. (2012). 25 years later, VTA light rail among the nation's worst. https://www.mercurynews.com/2012/12/26/25-years-later-vta-light-rail-among-the-nations-worst/
Evan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. I definitely think that investment approaches being logically reliant on local context makes a lot of sense. However, I'm curious what you think about funding mechanisms for something like BRT--especially when buses seem to be less popular with the public (from a funding perspective). On top of that, I'm generally just curious whether part of the reason why car use has increased in the price of fuel, on top of infrastructure investments (and the population growth you mentioned).
Thanks for sharing Evan! I'm from north Orange County which gets compared to San Jose a lot when it comes to suburban sprawl and proximity to a large urban area. It suffers from similar problems of multiple smaller job centers vs jobs in a central downtown core, and many residents also commute from Orange County to other cities for work. In what ways do you see BRT succeeding where the existing light rail system can't?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Evan. I'm curious to know more about why the LRT in San Jose ended up not being where jobs were located. Was their complementary zoning to the LRT? Or can it more simply be attributed to the magnetic pull of San Francisco and all development emanating from there, and maybe in the next decade or two the LRT corridor will see a lot of new development?
ReplyDeleteLRT has faced a lot of criticism (and even legal challenges, as mentioned in class) around its focus on attracting "choice riders." Cities like San Jose have discovered that when the competition is so underpriced (driving) and when land use isn't coordinated enough with the transit system, it's an uphill battle. And, worse yet, LRT tends to replace high frequency bus lines and make many existing transit users worse off (including the transit-dependent). Even places like Portland with much tighter planning around LRT lines have really only managed to tread water. Assuming a return to something like the trajectory we were on pre-pandemic, I do think inner Portland was getting close to a tipping point back toward transit, but that was the result of 20-30 years of densification efforts! This past year, parking occupancy on my block (about 1/2 mile from the Orange Line) was hitting 80-90% most nights where it used to be 25%. That's a sign of density that could start to drive transit use, but only if the system's in place to support it...
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