Transportation expert: “Time to stop throwing money” at “obsolete” transit systems

In March of last year, policy analyst and Opp Now contributor Randal O'Toole gave testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on public transit's doom spiral. Instead of subsidizing archaic, inefficient systems like BART, local and federal gov't should allow them to burgeon—or die—according to the free market.

Due to all these factors—remote work, loss of downtown jobs, and decentralization of residences—transit will never come close to carrying as many riders as it did in 2019. Of all modes of travel, transit has been slowest to recover from the pandemic. Driving recovered to more than 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels as long ago as June 2021.23 In December 2021, domestic air travel was more than 87 percent and Amtrak more than 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels.24 Transit, however, was only 56 percent, and in January 2022 it dipped to 47 percent.25 I estimate that, in the long run, it will never recover more than about 75 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, or about 25 trips per urban resident, and even that may be optimistic....

The real problem with transit is not a shortage of funds but that transit agencies have too much money and they spend that money on things that do little to help transportation uses, such as building multi-billion-dollar light-rail lines and taking lanes away from automobiles on congested roads. More than a half century of growing transit subsidies should have taught us that people are not going to give up the convenience and economy of private automobiles to ride slow, inefficient mass transit where they are likely to become victims of crime and infectious diseases. At the same time, reducing subsidies would make transit agencies more dependent on fares and therefore more responsive to the needs of people who continue to ride transit.

It is time to stop throwing money at an obsolete form of transportation. Ending subsidies to transit will still allow some transit to exist, but it will be more efficient, serve mainly those people who truly need it, and rely mainly on buses that share lanes with other vehicles.

Read the whole thing here.

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