Abstract

Subsidies of public transit have more than doubled since the late 1980s, with a disproportionate share of funds going to rail services. These investments have important implications, including how they affect both the composition of transit users and their travel behavior. To investigate how transit users and use are changing, we use Latent Profile Analysis and data from the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys to examine changes in transit users in the U.S. and in five major metropolitan areas. Nationwide, we find that the share of Transit Dependents grew by 17% to account for two-thirds of all transit users in 2017. These least advantaged riders were more likely over time to reside in very poor households and to be carless. There was a corresponding decline in Occasional Transit Users, for whom transit is part of a multi-modal travel profile. Higher-income, mostly car-owning Choice Transit Riders increased slightly over time but accounted for less than one in ten transit riders in 2017. Their growth was concentrated in a few large metropolitan areas where densities and land use are most transit-supportive. While increased rail transit service has shifted riders away from buses, transit’s role as a redistributive social service that provides mobility to disadvantaged travelers has grown over time. Efforts to draw more multi-modal and car-owning travelers onto transit have been less successful. As transit systems struggle to recover riders following the pandemic, transit’s waxing role of providing mobility for those without will likely become even more prominent.

Abstract

In this paper, we examine social and economic trends in California’s transit-friendly neighborhoods since 2000. In particular, we explore the relationship between high-propensity transit users – who we define here as members of households classified as poor, immigrant, African-American, and without private vehicles – and high-transit-propensity places – which are neighborhoods that regularly host high levels of transit service or use. As housing costs have increased dramatically in California and neighborhoods change, many planners and transit advocates reasonably worry that in transit-friendly neighborhoods, lower-propensity transit users may replace residents who tend to ride transit frequently. Such changes in residential patterns could help to explain sharp transit ridership declines in California in the 2010s ahead of much sharper pandemic-related ridership losses in 2020. Indeed, we find that California’s most transit-friendly neighborhoods have changed in ways that do not bode well for transit use. The state’s shares of poor, immigrant, African American, and zero-vehicle households have all declined modestly to substantially since 2000. Collectively, these trends point to changes in California’s most transit-friendly neighborhoods that are not very, well, transit-friendly.

Abstract

Transit use in the U.S. has been sliding since 2014, well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest state, California, was also losing transit riders despite substantial public investment and increased service in the pre-pandemic period. This downturn prompted concern among transit managers and planners interested in service-side interventions to reverse the decline. However, relatively little is known about changes in the demand for public transit and how shifts in demand-side factors have affected patronage. Drawing on California data from the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys, we quantify demand-side changes as a function of two factors—changes in ridership rates of various classes of transit riders (“rate effects”) and changes in the composition of those riders classes (“composition effects”). Statewide, we find that while shifts in the population composition were in some cases associated with lower levels of ridership, the largest declines in transit patronage were associated with falling ridership rates. Specifically, those with limited automobile access and Hispanic travelers rode transit far less frequently in 2017 compared to 2009. Transit ridership rates and rider composition in the San Francisco Bay Area were relatively stable during the study period, while both rate and compositional changes in the Los Angeles area were associated with much lower levels of total ridership. Overall, our findings demonstrate the important role of demand-side factors in understanding aggregate transit use and suggest that planners and managers may have limited policy tools at their disposal when seeking to bolster ridership levels.

Abstract

Buses, bus stops, trains, and train platforms represent sites of shelter for many of the over 500,000 Americans who are unhoused every night. This study seeks to understand how transit agencies are responding to them. Based on interviews with staff members and partners at 10 different transit agencies and on program performance data, where available, we provide detailed case studies of four sets of strategies taken in response to homelessness in transit systems: a hub of services, mobile outreach, discounted fares, and transportation to shelters. We analyze each strategy’s scope, implementation, impact, challenges, and lessons learned. Reviewing these strategies, we note that they may differ depending on the context, need, and available resources. We find value in transit agencies fostering external partnerships with social service organizations and other municipal departments and keeping law enforcement distinct from routine homeless outreach. We also underline the key need for funding from other levels of government to allow transit operators to adopt, expand, and refine homelessness response programs.

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings:
In many U.S. metropolitan areas, housing costs have skyrocketed in recent years relative to average incomes. A worsening shortage of affordable housing in these metros may push households away from job-rich cities and expensive neighborhoods into outlying areas, where housing is cheaper but jobs are more distant. To examine this issue, we revisit the jobs-housing balance, a popular topic of research in the 1990s, with a focus on the relationship between housing and the spatial location of workers relative to jobs. Our analysis draws on data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) for cities in California in 2002 and 2015. In contrast to earlier jobs-housing balance research, we find that California cities are becoming less self-contained over time, defined as a decline in the number of workers who both live and work within a jurisdiction relative to the number of commuters who travel either into or out of a city for work. Statistical models show that self-containment was higher in cities with lower housing costs and, in 2015, in cities with a greater balance between jobs and employed residents.

Takeaway for practice:
The deepening housing affordability crisis in many metropolitan areas like those found in California is pushing workers and jobs farther apart, increasing the economic, social, and environmental costs of commuting. Policies to increase the supply of housing in job-rich and high–housing cost areas could help reverse this troubling trend, though they are likely to meet with considerable resistance. Our findings also underscore the importance of efforts that include but extend beyond housing production, such as policies to better match job skills and housing prices to the characteristics of workers.

Abstract

Public investment in transit increased following the Great Recession, yet transit use nationally mostly fell, even prior to the 2020 pandemic. We investigate this troubling disjuncture by comparing transit ridership trends during the 2010s in two of America’s largest regions: Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. While both California regions lost transit riders, we see substantial differences in the scale, timing, geography, and modes of these declines. In the LA area, ridership fell longer and further, spread more across routes, times, and sub-regions, and concentrated on the region’s dominant operator. In both regions, increasing auto access appears to have played a central role, albeit in different ways. Greater LA saw increased automobile ownership, particularly among high-propensity transit riders. In the Bay Area, as jobs and housing have dispersed, ridehail services like Lyft and Uber may have eroded non-commute transit use.