Perception vs. Reality
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
I took a regional coach bus service from O’Hare airport to Milwaukee last week and there was a couple from England sitting up front and talking with the bus driver about transit here in the United States.
At one point the driver stated that the only two places in the U.S. where there is decent transit is in Chicago and New York City. Anywhere else he told the couple the transit is just poor.
Really? Is that the perception of transit here in the U.S.? That transit is only good in our largest metropolitan areas? The problem is that it probably is perceived that way by those coming to the U.S. from abroad.
There was an article we posted yesterday (No Car? It’s Hard to Get There from Here in Wisconsin) on the transit in Wisconsin and the guidebook they are using to present it. The article points out the scarcity of transit in Wisconsin and I have to say, that if I were traveling from Europe and was handed that guidebook when I stepped off the plane, my first response would be, “This is it?”
That said, the reality is that transit in the United States is far better than it is being presented to the rest of the world. Sure, we have difficulty with rural service, but rural here is nowhere near rural in Europe. The entirety of Spain is less than 200,000 square miles. Now compare that to the United States. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover in our transit (nearly 4 million square miles).
When I was in Spain last week the thing I noticed was that transit was still transit. The rail station was just a rail station, the bus stops were just bus stops and Madrid didn’t have any less congestion than Chicago or New York. It was like I had stepped into some transit Nirvana as it had been presented to me before I headed there.
We need to get the word out that while we have areas to work on, we have lots of good transit here in the U.S. to anyone coming here from abroad. New and expanded systems are popping up everyday. And for those saying we’re still a decade behind other systems, I say give us a decade and let’s see how we catch up.
Next Thursday is Dump the Pump Day. I urge everyone to do what they can to help make it a success and get the word out that transit is a necessity more now than ever before. Check back next week for a special guest Dump the Pump Day blog by APTA President Bill Millar.
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Hey Fred, next time you visit Europe, go to England or Germany if you want to see transit in action. A couple of years ago, I had an informal meeting with Hans Rat, then Secretary General of UITP. We were chatting about BRT strategies when he made the comment, “Of course, no one in Europe really looks to North America for transit innovation - you are still focused on the car as the primary means of transportation and transit is just for poor people in the cities.” I couldn’t disagree. In my present job, I travel a lot, and I would never consider taking transit in any US or Canadian city except New York and Washington D.C. where you have to be out of your mind to drive a car. While NYC’s MTA is old, and there are lots of areas for improvement, if you wanted a blueprint for the future of urban mobility once the car has gone the way of the Dodo, NYC is it as far as North America goes. You can get anywhere, at any time, at a very reasonable cost. In fact, you can’t duplicate that level of mobility and access using a personal vehicle. Until a new definition of mobility and access becomes the paradigm for transit in North America, most of the talk about how well transit works here is just window dressing.
June 14th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Hi Fred,
Evidently they never rode on a Samtrans bus,(San Mateo County Transit)out of Northern California. All of our buses are extremley clean and defect free on the road. More bus companies should model us. I am extremly proud to work for such a fine company. All our employees take pride in their work and it shows in our product. Our customers are the happiest in the world.
Charlie Porzio
Senior Maintenance Supervisor
June 14th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
A few weeks ago I was in Seattle with my wife. We met a two women living in Seattle who had emigrated from England several years earlier. Both perceived Seattle’s public transportation system as low compared to England’s. In talking with them, I realized that it was not simply the public transit system they had concerns about. It was the whole package of alternatives: limited rail connections between cities, poor or non-existent pathways, and ‘relatively’ low levels of transit services within the urban areas.
Coming from a more rural western state, my wife and I were impressed by Seattle’s system. But how does it compare with the vastly more diverse and integrated services in Europe that allow one to travel from towns and villages into and around cities without driving?
June 14th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Fred,
I agree that transit in the US gets a bad rap compared to other nations, however, we still have far to go. I live in Chicago and have been car free since I moved here in 1992. Within the city and inner suburbs, service is general good. However, if I travel outwards, particularly to a suburban location away from a train station, service levels rapidly decline. Everything is scheduled around tradtion work schedules. Bus routes that run every hour, visiting every apartment complex and strip mall in the area are not something to promote. Case in point, I recently went to Romeoville on a Saturday for a leadership development class. The bus connection in Downers Grove was easy, however, what would be a 20-30 minute drive turned into an hour long visit of the western suburbs. We looped around to hit every housing complex, strip mall and employment center available. I still had almost a mile walk to get to the community college where the class was being held. There was never more then 5 people on the bus at any time during our trip.
I travel to the Cleveland area often to visit family. Getting to Cleveland and around the city is easy. Getting to my mothers house in the suburbs has become increasing difficult. In fact, for at least four months out of the year, a door to door trip is no longer possible! Five years ago, I had several options. Most of this is the result of declining funding by the state of Ohio. However, even more at fault is the overall focus of transit as only a way to get to work or for the poor to get to work until they can buy cars. Regional government boundaries also are a barricade to transit as an effective and attractive option to driving in most of America. Until we think of transit as an option for travel other then to and from work, our nation’s transit systems will always be thought of as poor and irrelevant, no matter how good the equipment or service.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Hi Fred:
Surely the Metro in Madrid is not the same as the subway in Chicago or Philadelphia. The Madrid system is ubiquitous, it is continually expanding, and most of the equipment is modern. And one can actually go places other than to and from downtown. As for congestion, yes, Madrid is congested. But it is on a smaller scale with far fewer total cars. There are no ultra-wide Dan Ryan Expressways cutting the city in two to provide access for autos to the core of their city.
In contrast, Philadelphia has seen no investment for many decades (except for a short extension for the benefit of pro sports teams). Chicago has seen only the Orange Line in many decades, and New York hasn’t seen a new line in 50 years. Boston hasn’t seen a whole lot of expansion either, a genuine outrage when one considers the $15B that was spent on the Big Dig.
Madrid really is Nirvana compared to what I have come to accept.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Matt Drudge has declared Peaking Oil an issue of national importance. It’s a beginning, a step to wake up planners to the reality of lifestyle changes like, gas rationing.
It will see hundreds, no, thousands of elected officials across the USA saying they knew about it all the time, and they are 100% in support of transit expansion & extension. Always were…
It remains to be seen how fast this will translate into new steel & concrete and seats and schedules and appropriate boarding facilities. But a national transportation emergency could change the pace of things, I think.
Transit officials in the USA can (they would be well advised to) determine the nature & timing of the Peaking Oil Challenge and speak up in the Chambers of Commerce, County Planning Commissions & State level officials ASAP. This means the time has come to not be embarrassed about talking to corporate boards in your jurisdiction too. Buses can be sponsored as well as historic trolleys!
School boards- they need to rethink the student automobile culture,; remember school buses? If that gives moms heartburn, then they will need to take turns riding the bus and monitoring the stops & walk to & from.
Comparing overseas & other countries’ systems becomes meaningless as the ramifications of inexorable motorfuel decline per capita forces ways and means to maintain mobility. Freight railway expansion to keep victuals and necessity of life distribution at acceptable level goes along with this people moving challenge.
Transit officials and staff- get intimately familiar with the Robert L. Hirch Report on Peaking Oil and the 2007 Update. That is the beginning of post 911DAY wisdom, Ladies & Gentlemen.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Yes, New York City has a great transit system compared to less dense metropolitan areas. Where else can you step out the door and find a bus or train at your corner in a matter of a couple of minutes without having to rely on a schedule? But believe it or not, there is still much room for improvement. Not every part of NYC is easily accessible by mass transit and cars are still a necessity.
Worse yet, there are areas with bus routes that are underutilized because the buses do not take you where you want to go. Their routes have not kept up with changing needs forcing you to use an indirect time consuming route to get to your destination. In at least one place, you have to change buses twice just to travel down the same street!
Also, unutilized railroad rights-of-way go begging for rail or light-rail reactivation. To add insult to injury, the Mayor of NYC recently released a comprehensive public transit plan that omits these two salient points. Check out websites http://brooklynbus.tripod.com and http://www.rockawaybeachline.org/