Conservatives reassess the benefits of mass transit

Bergen Record, Friday, June 25, 1999

By PAUL M. WEYRICH and WILLIAM S. LIND

PUBLIC TRANSIT IS A BIG SUCCESS in New Jersey. Not only does transit provide a way to get to work for people who have no car available, many New Jersey residents who have a car prefer to commute on public transit. And light rail should soon become an important part of transportation and urban redevelopment in North Jersey.

So why do so many conservative critiques of public transit say that transit is a failure? Frequently those critiques base their argument on "the magic one percent." They say that public transit only carries about one percent of total trips. Since it carries so few people, they argue, we should not invest any more public money in transit, except perhaps for buses to provide local transportation for the few people too poor to own a car.

As conservatives ourselves, we found these studies troubling. Conservatives believe in the Reality Principle, and the reality in New Jersey and many other states is that transit is important.

How do we know that? Look what happens when the transit system goes on strike. Traffic immediately becomes horrendous, to the point where many people either try to get a hotel room near their job or simply give up going to work. So what is wrong with the studies that oppose mass transit funding?

It is not only the answer they give but the question they ask. In fact, transit carries about 2 percent of total trips nationwide. But total trips is a poor measure of transit's effectiveness. Only half of America's population has any transit available, and only about one-quarter have transit of a quality anyone would care to ride.

Moreover, the largest portion of total trips are shopping trips, which were never made on transit, not even in the heyday of the streetcar.

There is a better way to ask the question, a way that lets us get at transit's real utility. What percentage of transit-competitive trips does transit actually carry?

That is, where quality transit is available, and the trip's purpose is appropriate to transit (historically, commuting and recreation trips top the list), how many people use transit instead of driving?

Asking the question this way yields a dramatically different answer. In our recent study, "Does Transit Work? A Conservative Reappraisal," we looked at three high quality transit systems through this lens: the light rail systems in San Diego and St. Louis, and Chicago's Metro commuter rail system. In each case, transit carries far more than one percent or two percent of transit-competitive trips. For example, between 50 percent and 60 percent of the trips to Chicago's central business district are made on transit. While one of Chicago's main highway arteries, the Dan Ryan/Kennedy Expressway, carries 200,000 vehicles per day, the parallel CTA/Metra rail transit routes carry 182,000 riders.

Now we see why a transit strike is crippling -- rail transit is carrying almost half the commuters on one of Chicago's main commuting routes.

Chicago, San Diego, and St. Louis, all tell the same story: where high quality public transit is available (which usually means rail transit), it carries a high proportion of transit-competitive trips. And not just commuting trips: during Super Bowl Week in 1998, almost a million people used transit in San Diego to get to and from related events.

The St. Louis Metrolink Light Rail line today carries almost two-thirds the ridership carried by parallel streetcar lines in 1925, at the height of the previous transit era.

Ironically, the anti-transit conservative studies end up making exactly the opposite point from the one they intend. The principal reason transit nationwide only carries about 2 percent of total trips is that most Americans don't live near a rail transit line. The answer is not less transit, but more transit.

As conservatives, we like pointing to the fact that one of the 13 original colonies is still setting an example for the rest of the nation.

Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind are president and center director, respectively, at the conservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Copyright Bergen Record