Higher parking rates!
That'll please the voters.
4
I stopped riding SEPTA when folks were being shot when they exit the bus. I've been riding the route 33 every day forever but when there was a crazy person outside the stop two stops from mine, I gave it up. I ride only to work and back home now using Uber or Lyft, whichever one gives me the lowest price. It's still cheaper than owning a car. When it becomes more expensive than owning a car, I'll buy a car. Plus, the buses and trains are disgusting inside the city. There are roaches and bedbugs...eww!
24
Granting drivers licenses to undocumented workers in LA probably supports a downward trend in ridership here.
10
I used to ride the Bus because it was convenient and stress free, besides cheaper than any alternate. But then it began to change, this will be taken as racist but no one of any race wants to ride a bus/subway/Bart and be hassled or threatened by the gang bangers who are there to rob or just to entertain themselves. The drivers see nothing, and police if they are around, do not want to get involved since they will look bad regardless what they do, and they will still be writing reports, when the courts have already released the bad actors. and it starts all over again. Also the buses stink since the homeless do not want to get off, so they pee in the corner.
So members of the population who need find a way to get around the City, will find any alternate available rather than ride city transportation.
36
Part of the problem is transit agencies Several years ago Atlanta's system, MARTA, threatened to cut off all service north of the Chattahoochee River.. What disuaded them was financial blowback: the buses were funded by sales taxes, and wealthy areas north of the river argued that if they weren't getting service, they didn't have to pay for it . ( They weren't being cheap; they wanted the service). MARTA caved in.
6
Most folks I know are putting more than 40 hours a week in at work. Possible that free time has become so precious that some have stopped taking the bus, which in most cases takes longer than driving. It doesn't explain all of the decline, though. I think Uber, etc. has certainly taken a cut. Pity because you really get a sense of your community when taking the bus.
8
This article is theoretical. The comments are actual experiences. Try riding a bus on a regular basis, and then write an article. The idea of trying to 'make' people ride buses is laughable because nobody rides a bus for pleasure, they ride it because they have to. A person is autonomous in their own car and riding a bus can never beat that.
25
I remember standing at the bus stop one day and seeing a big ad for lyft right at the bus stop. Reaching out to all the bus riders impatiently waiting.
5
In my experience, bus rides are best avoided. They are cramped, noisy and dirty. There is the inevitable confrontation between the driver and the unruly would-be passengers. Most routes make multiple stops and get caught in traffic, making the trip seem longer than it really is. If a car, train or subway is available, they are much preferred.
14
We live in the country and have no transit but when we go to cities we use transit and one thing that would help is to allow people with RFID credit cards to just get on the bus and get the same fare as any unsubsidized rider. This is possible, I know, because they do this in Sydney, instead of making customers jump through hoops they're not used to jumping through. It's bad for business, and for visitors especially, or anybody who hasn't ridden in awhile, it's a pain to procure some ridiculous card or ticket. Your phone will tell you which bus or train or boat to take and when it'll get there, but paying the fare is still an obstacle.
26
Lack of funding and the resulting conditions noted by many commentators here have taken a terrible toll.a variety of St
According to an article some years back, many governors lamented that they could get federal funding for highways and other car-related expenditures but not for rail or other non-car expenses.
Once the oil industry loses its grip on the politicians, we will have a much better chance of having attractive, functional mass transit that is used by large numbers of people.
But for now, I am sure the oil execs see an article like this one and smile contentedly...
19
Unless property prices reflect the benefits of access to good public transit, buses will remain the choice of transportation of the poor or underprivileged.
If you take a typical Bay Area neighborhood, say Almaden Valley or Santa Teresa (an older generation Silicon Valley professional neighborhood with the political power of the moneyed kind), the residents there actively discourage public transit of any sort to keep "others" out. They rather suffer three hours or more of grueling commute every day.
10
Interesting article but misses a fundamental cause of declining ridership: time cost. When working, I could drive to work in 1/2 hour. To take the bus was over two hours with 2 transfers between the bus and light rail. People will not ride the bus when there is such a large disparity with their time cost. To increase the number of riders, make the routes convenient enough for folks to make their time cost on the bus closer to the drive time.
37
@Daniel - I agree, the main reason I don't take the bus is inconvenience. When I lived in SF, Portlandand NY I took public transpo all the time, because their systems got me where I needed to go in a reasonable time. In the early 2000's when I first moved to Seattle I didn't have a car, and it took me 1 hour and a half EACH WAY for a 20 minute commute, due to long waits between transfers. That incentivized me to get a car asap. I bought a used car for $900 that lasted me 8 years costing me less than $3000 total after repairs.
Since then Seattle's population has ballooned. The road system connectivity is poor as there are only 2 main routes going North to South and to go East-West you need to get very creative, with the lack of obvious routes. The traffic and poorly planned grid actually contributes to a higher ridership. And it seems like they have improved the availability of transfers. The added light-rail is hugely popular!
Now I live an hour + outside of Seattle. The closest bus stop is a 20 min walk away. I often take the ferry to Seattle, but prefer to drive the 20 min and park near the terminal rather than spend 20 min walking to take a bus that will arrive a half hour before the ferry leaves. Oddly the buses are not timed conveniently for the regular ferry departures to Seattle, which 100's of people take. This is a no-brainer. I think they changed this in the past year. But sheez it seems like the route designers don't bother to ride the bus.
19
One answer is to make transit free for everyone, regardless of income level. Where it has been tried, ridership goes up to the point where it justifies increasing levels of service - more buses, more frequent buses. The cost of doing this has to be weighed against the benefits.
1. Reduced traffic congestion from getting people out of cars. That saves everyone time, money, and cuts emissions.
2. It makes it easier for people to live without all the expenses of car ownership.
3. It provides mobility options for people who are not capable of driving a car, or do not want to,
4. It reduces the need for parking everywhere.
5. It facilitates transit-oriented development.
6. It eliminates all the costs of collecting and managing fares.
7. Other considerations involve looking at how it affects highway safety, road wear, etc.
Free doesn’t mean cheap - it has to be a convenient system everyone feels comfortable using, one where they feel safe. It has to be good enough that people will use it by choice even if they can afford something else.
It may seem like a radical idea, but is it any crazier than building roads everywhere people use for ‘free’ with their cars? We pay for those ‘free’ roads with all kinds of taxes, traffic congestion, emissions, and so on.
20
@Larry Roth Where I went to university claimed to have the largest free bus system in the free world at the time. It certainly was convenient. It made the loading of buses much, much faster, and there was transit to quite a lot of places.
8
In NYC, at least, the number of people riding buses who don't pay their fare has risen dramatically over the past few years. So if ridershop is being measured in fares as opposed to physical riders, that could very well be a part of the problem.
9
@EdNY
How does one not pay their fare?
Metro cards of no value?
Stolen cards?
I mean, do you just observe the scam and the outcome and think "ANYone can get away with it, I will, too."?
Do you read about it on Reddit?
1
I have driven since I was 16, and will continue to drive until I am no longer safe. I will walk, or take a taxi before I take a bus, or subway, or lightrail. I got turned off to Uber when I read about their rating system, the driver supposedly gives you a bad rating if you talk too much, or don't talk enough, or whatever. I don't need that! When I had surgery and the local bus let me down (there are no routes that take me closer than 3 blocks to physical therapy - if I could walk that far, I wouldn't need the therapy). Then, the bus went by me without stopping. I priced both Uber and Taxi, they were the same price, I prefer the anonymity of a taxi. Both were too expensive to ride for someone on social security. I do not feel guilty about my car centric world. I think they should develop electric cars that are less expensive and more available. They could do so if they had the political will to do so.
11
I do get tired of people talking about baby boomers who have the same habits and make the same choices. I am 70 years old and took a bus during my entire youth. I also rode a bike. I grew up in Madison, WI. I still ride my bike and the bus ridership in Madison is strong. However, I have found that bus ridership tops off eventually and additional modes of transportation are needed to get people out of their cars. Ubur and Lift have been good for communities and so has bike share (including electric bikes). Madison is now looking at a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) which will get more people using public transportation. Transportation options/systems are vital for communities and are vital for lower income people/families--especially with the rising challenges of affordable housing.
13
From a Londoners POV, more cars on the road equals slower bus journeys. I decided to walk more often or take trains instead. Slow buses are claustrophobic and annoying to ride. It's teh number of cars on the road that's the problem, not the ownership. People use them to block the roads! :-)
10
The article asks: "What has been happening then, across all of these places, at the same time?"
It then posits that: "The answer probably lies deep in a number of trends: the rise of on-demand technology, the changing nature of work, the evolution of e-commerce, the redevelopment of city centers, the influx of young professionals, and the suburbanization of the poor."
San Francisco is probably the greatest exemplar of these trends. Yet its bus ridership runs the most contrary to the trend of declining ridership. The article conspicuously declines to address this striking anomaly. What gives?
17
I am sorry to hear that some people have had negative experiences on public transit in Minneapolis.
My husband and I have had only good experiences on Minneapolis busses and light rail. We often ride a clean express bus into the center of town; it is pleasant and quick. On occasion we have taken a local bus to the Mall of America and changed to light rail that takes us directly to our terminal at the airport.
The drivers have been friendly, helpful and careful on the highway and side streets. The other passengers have been courteous. We have been riding for over six years and shall continue to ride going forward.
10
I live in San Francisco where it is crazy not to take public transportation - especially if you are going down town. I will admit to using uber to go to the airport, but otherwise it is the bus for me.
10
I've been fortunate to have traveled a lot and lived in various cities around the world. I generally avoided busses because they are cramped, I can get carsick, so I am unable to read while taking them.
Contrast that with cities with good subway lines, where trains are fast, smooth, and where there is more room. In cities like New York or London or Moscow, with extensive subway systems, getting around makes a car simply unnecessary most of the time.
I'll take a subway over driving any day. Busses...it depends.
8
Buses in Paris couldn't move if they didn't have their own, dedicated lanes. They do, and amazingly, they can usually get through traffic.
And they're cheap: 1.40 Euro gets you an hour on as many buses as you need, in any direction.
Then there's an app that tells you exactly when and where the bus is going to stop. It's a cheaper, more efficient competitor to Uber.
Dedicated lanes to get through traffic, a smart-phone app so you don't waste time waiting for the bus, and cheap fares-- that's the recipe for a successful surface level urban bus transport that creates enough demand to support very frequent service.
25
I have had horrible experiences riding NJ Transit buses. I was boarding an unfamiliar line at Port Authority. The signage was confusing and I asked the bus driver to confirm I was riding the right bus to get to the NJ "park and ride" lot where I left my car. The driver affirmed I was on the right bus and acted impatient when another passenger made the same inquiry. An hour later the bus was mostly empty when the driver pulled over to the side of the road and announced that we were at the last stop. It was 1AM. We were somewhere in an industrial wasteland about 30 miles from our destination. There were three other passengers on the bus. All had been told they were on the correct bus. The driver said if we refused to disembark she would call the police and have us removed. The driver suggested we might catch the next bus at 6AM. She added we could get a refund by contacting NJ Transit. We had to hire a car service (for $60!) to get to our destination. NJ Transit did not respond to my complaints the next day.
17
NYC buses are the province of the very young, the very old, and the mobility impaired. This makes sense: buses run at street level and stop every two blocks, making them very convenient for all three groups. However, as a solo, able-bodied adult, unless you're picking up a (free) subway transfer or looking to get cross-town, you've absolutely got better things to do with your time.
5
@Rustic Morlock For the able bodied, frequent stops are a dire frustration. Bus rapid transit, or where feasible rail/subways, would be better for them. How to serve the needs of both the able bodied and those who'd struggle walking more than a block or two?
3
It's great to listen to the car radio,
and throw any amount of stuff into the car.
Every local place to go is close with lots of free parking.
Why wait for a $3 bus instead of a 10 minute drive?
I'd have the car expense anyway in order to use the highways.
I love to use the bus when I am in Paris.
Each stop flashes the number of minutes until the bus I want.
5
I love taking the bus. I get to see who lives in my community, and I get to see people working together to make the best of a bad situation. But - even though my city uses the European model (pay before boarding, dedicated lanes), busses still run haphazardly, are overcrowded, slow, and vagrants ride free if the driver has any sense of self-preservation. Covid has improved the experience due to lower ridership, but also revealed that our busses are only cleaned once a month. I ride for free as a city employee, but it is still not worth it. I ride my bike when I can, but someday I'll be old, and I hope my options are better.
8
Interesting reading the comments from Portland, OR, where we are fortunate to have reliable public transit. I've been taking the light rail (MAX) and occasionally the bus since we moved here in 2012. I prefer MAX, whose trains arrive every 13 minutes or so, but live on a "frequent" bus line with an even shorter arrival time. It's true that both forms of public transit have increasingly become havens for the homeless and/or mentally ill, especially during non-rush-hour times, but I generally feel safe. However, my husband and I usually drive downtown in the evenings when service is less frequent.
As with other infrastructure spending in the US, $$ for public transit needs to drastically increase. Safe, clean, extensive systems exist elsewhere--London, Paris, Barcelona, etc.--why not here? I grew up in NYC in the 1940s-50s. We didn't have a car but walked and took the subway everywhere so it seems natural to me.
6
@taffy I'm a former Portlander, visited London last week. That city's transit has received a good deal of care and improvement. I wish New York had it so good. Portland has plenty of bus lines, but some fairly long waits.
4
Buses, from personal experience, have homeless people who urinate on the seats. People being rude to each other and generally being awful. The service is painfully slow and God help you if you have to wait for someone who needs special services, you will be even more late for work. The entire service of buses is broken.
14
#Why I live in NYC!
Never discussed -- Like population control -- another taboo subject but very impt. in fact essential is the lack of American public transportation sort of like the lack of universal single payer healthcare.). Essays on isolation but not what has led to isolation. There used to be lots of buses in small towns and big cities and between small towns and big cities.. Now Greyhound only runs between big cities....small towns no longer have local buses and those in large cities often have a lack of ridership... altho Columbus Oh seems to be trying to bring the bus back.. I am grateful that there s a bus between the Greyhound Station and the Airport rent-a-car establishments. Old people with vision problems should take the bus...but look Ma, no bus.
More vulture capitalism - we all know all that matters is profit. I would like to see Google cars (AI driven) but there do seem to be problems in development. A fleet of google cars in a small town could provide lots lo low cost transportation.. but if the engineers keep screwing up..... argh. The AI software not yet up to snuff.
Not everyone can afford Unber.
2
Agency should rethink their routes. For example how about direct bus routes from inner city depressed areas to where the jobs are in suburban office parks, hospitals and industrial parks.
5
@Dave The jobs are typically well dispersed. Dallas does try to use suburban rail stations and bus transit centers as hubs, but while efficient on bus usage, the trips are 2X to 3x a car trip. People avoid if possible.
2
@Michael Blazin
try pickup in inner city neighborhoods and direct non stop to major job destinations. possible here in NE and elsewhere. TX always a special case?
1
What is the goal? Is it to increase bus ridership, or is it to help more people get what they prefer?
Social engineering can support both, but probably not at the same time. And pushing a single mode certainly requires inhibiting choice and options.
Some of the comments about the virtues of buses sound like evangelical ideology, including the need to save people from themselves. Meanwhile, a transportation "system" that includes trains, bikes, scooters, hires, and even private cars, along with buses, may be messy and less efficient, but lets more of us live as we like.
6
Why aren't people taking the bus? Well, because with the advent of Uber and Lyft they won't have to.
I just moved to DC. Decided to take the bus for a 15 minute commute at 3pm. I'll never do it again. The experience was horrific. Vomit on the floor, obnoxious riders threatening fellow passengers. Loud music blaring, making it impossible to talk or read. Never again. I have options.
14
I live in Seattle and I can tell you people here avoid the buses because they are dirty and often like moving mental hospital. lots of abusive behavior and clearly disturbed people with often bad hygiene.
16
I am a daily rider who uses a handful of different routes.
So would not be surprised if you don't use the system much. Yes there are a few routes and stops (perhaps 2-3%?) with folks you might not want to have dinner with. As for the other 97%, the buses are quite clean, staff professional, riders cooperative and well-groomed. You might even have an enjoyable conversation and get a good book/movie/dining recommendation. Beats driving and parking by miles.
8
All this flailing around seems like willful ignorance. The obvious explanation would be white flight. Not racism. Just that no one likes to show up at places where their skin color makes them a small minority.
It doesn't bother me though. I always feel outnumbered. I don't identify as normal. I identify as freaky.
4
If the largest decline in bus riding is among whites, is there any chance racism is a factor -- white people don't want to ride with people of color? (I am white)
6
Minneapolis-St. Paul/Metro Transit buses & light rail trains are absolutely filthy and ridden with crime. Violent assaults occur regularly on board & at the stops/stations. You never, ever see a transit police officer on board or anywhere near a station. The 7 county Metropolitan Council & Mpls-St. Paul City Councils refuse to hire additional officers. Instead, they are relying on unarmed transit ambassadors to advise homeless riders not to relieve themselves on the floor & seats. Criminals who assault riders will be politely ask to leave. I am not joking.
14
@Reggie You said it better than I could. It was a shining resource only a few years ago. Now it is often a traveling homeless shelter.
We know that some homeless people use it to get to work hard at jobs that don't pay enough for them to pay rent, but there is another element that does not care for sobriety, hygiene, or safety, which has ruined a good option for many.
Several weeks ago, some youth followed a man who was a well-respected leader in a minority community out of the bus and beat him so severely that he died, all for his request to keep their noise down. Yet the officials have done nothing to assure the responsible riders or would-be riders that using public transportation is a safe and pleasant experience. Did the reporters investigate those factors?
6
I hate taking the bus in winter in MPLS. You wait outside in the cold for the bus to never be on schedule. You get on the bus and lately I have been seeing a lot more fights ranging from yelling at each other to actual fist fights on the bus. All and all not a very safe environment.
9
I had to really laugh at what the writer puts as reasons for decline in bus usage in Miami. I lived there for three decades, ending in the early 2000's, and the bus system is the worst I had ever seen. No protection at bus stops (rain, sun etc), dirty nasty buses and unknown schedules that were never kept. THAT is why ridership fell. Here in Budapest the government covets the mass transit, and it shows. It has lots of takers and is clean, full scheduled and has well thought out stops. No one ever praises the U.S. system. Why look at NYC, where I grew up. The metro is filthy, the trains are filthy, and the stations in a lot of Manhattan are downright scarey. And it has the best system in the country for accessibility. Stop finding intellectual excuses and admit that the U.S. failed in keeping mass transit, and trainlines for that matter, current.
13
@Martin I ride the subway all the time in NYC with no problem. People are generally courteous and will give up their seat for elderly or infirm or pregnant. Definitely the fastest way to go in NY. but needs more resources for on-time service and repairs.
2
Miami has miserable public transit. only one rail line... so you have to get to it... somehow... then, the parking is a racket. Minneapolis is worse. IF you can get to the bus, it's 10 degrees out.. and then, it stops too often.. takes forever. So in both cities, I drove and parked.
4
Like most of the south, only the poor and students take the bus. The cities are made for cars. Austin still doesn’t have sidewalks in some areas making bus riding unsafe (South Congress after William Cannon). It can take 2-3 buses to go a few miles because they’ve cut up the routes in a ridiculous manner. (East Riverside drive. East Oltorf) The routes were cut up so they can send them to a middle class area (crestview) that already has good transportation options. After gaslighting us about the wonderful bus route changes the city performed maintenance and didn’t even bother to put up signs for detoured buses. That doesn’t happen everywhere.
No buses run on the main Street, Congress, near the state capital anymore, so in 103 degree heat the handicapped, elderly, infirm and the service workers are all huffing and puffing 2-3 blocks to get to work.
The new bike and scooter lanes with ridiculous permanent cones reduce the lane width and make turning dangerous. It also increases and bottle necks traffic since 2 lanes are reduced to a very narrow one so all 5 bikes have plenty of room. The scooter folks and electric bike riders prefer the sidewalk over the nearly 5 foot wide bike lanes many times. It’s crazy!!
Buses are stuck in more traffic (partially caused by the overwide bike lanes), don’t run on time, are filled with hygiene challenged people too, and insist on using fabric seats that are filled with urine. Nasty. So, call me a Lyft, baby!
5
Have you been on a Philadelphia bus lately? They're disgusting. Various unknown liquids on the floor - and sometimes on the seat. And if you're not riding exactly at rush hour, all kinds of people who are talking to themselves, zoned out on drugs, or smell like a stable. I _have_ taken busses for many years, and it's like the 1970s hippies all over again, but without the "breezy" attitude.
11
Wow--I'm lost by the purpose of this article. if, as in Denver, light rail has greatly increased, but buses sorta declined.So what? Mass transit is mass transit. All is good, no? Why partition buses alone as some kind of savior to public good, excluding rail?
I always look forward to Ms.Badger's informed articles, but this does not meet the mark. It's like a plea for bus systems in the 60s in LA where I grew up.Kill the Red Cars, LA rail transit: GM.
Yes, Denver's main issue seems to be recruiting new bus/rail drivers. So?
1
@gjo
" light rail has greatly increased, but buses sorta declined.So what? Mass transit is mass transit."
I suppose the reason is that it is easy to change a bus route -- just give the driver different directions -- but hard to put down new rails when the light rail route changes. Plus light rail systems usually require stations, whereas bus stops just require a sign on a cornder.
4
Too many other choices!
Recently got an EBike & have more fun than ever zipping around cars lined up waiting for stoplights. Do not take too many chances yet people notice & feel like an advocate for alternative transportation options in our urban/suburban coastal SoCal beach town!
1
From my somewhat limited experience in my USA (northeast) it could be because the buses are poor and the service is terrible.
In Sweden my intercity bus service is at such a high level it almost matches the best train service. My buses Bus4You intercity are state of the art - single seating upper deck, perfect seats, first class bathroom, all electronic scheduling. In addition the intercity highway Linköping to Göteborg is perfectly smooth.
Contrast with Greyhound Boston Albany every summer. Primitive bus, appaling "bathroom" - really an outhouse, poor seats on and on.
Local buses in my city Linköping - frequent service, all have space for walkers and baby carriages, electronic ticketing, fine waiting stations with display of next arrival. Contrast that with Providence RI to Rumford RI where I once lived. Non existent.
Swedish local buses also run on renewable energy.
As always with these comparisons. The Times needs to have reporters make matching trips in the US and in Sweden or other advanced country.
Last but not least. Have you ever been in the Albany NY bus station
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
15
@Larry Lundgren - Took another look at the column.
Additional factors. Every single bus or trolley I ride on locally in Linköping and Göteborg is designed to make it easy for older people - those with walkers or in wheelchairs and for parents with a baby carriage to get on and off. Ramps, special signals, room with means to secure anything that rolls. I was surprised last summer to see that Albany NY buses have no provision for wheelchairs, baby carriages, walkers. Why not?
When I take my local bus to go to my job as a Red Cross volunteer to discuss everything under the sun with new arrivals from Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan etc / in Swedish, my bus is likely to be filled with high-school students, college students and the like / packed.
Maybe in the US they ride school buses.
Rarely in Sweden.
5
My experience with urban public bus transportation is limited to New York and Israel (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv). The differences in demand between the two markets cannot be overstated, and the reason is obvious. New York city bus drivers are slow, sluggish with poor reflexes and a decided lack of 'drive'. By contrast Israeli bus drivers are confident, super-competent multitaskers who corner their articulated buses on narrow streets masterfully, know how to take a commanding position in the flow of traffic, and take professional pride in getting to the next stop with alacrity. When I am on a Jerusalem bus I know I will get to my destination with maximum efficiency. When I am in New York I try to convince myself that a bus will be faster than walking.
7
I gave up on this irresponsible bus service a while ago. They added a GPS tracker. I see bus coming on phone screen. Feel happy. Then.. the bus disappears. The drivers turn off the GPS tracker at whim apparently.
I spent 20 and even 30-40 minutes waiting for the bus sometimes. Often in cold, windy weather. Then.. 2 buses arrived at once, 3 buses at once!
This union is horrendously mismanaged.
Besides, buses don't go everywhere as was mentioned.
4
@John. You've got to remember the Union motto, "We're not happy until you're unhappy!"
In San Francisco I used to be all in favor of riding buses but after too many years of dealing with among other things, how slow and inefficient they are, inconsiderate riders playing loud music, and smelly homeless or mentally ill people, I now avoid the buses like the plague. I bought myself an electric scooter which I use in my daily commute to work. I now only ride buses on rare occasions but am always unhappy doing so.
9
The SF numbers are important for a few reasons. First, the city has created many more dedicated bus lanes which make them a faster option compared to driving (or lyft/uber). The recent closure of market street to private vehicles has further enhanced the experience for bus riders and bikers alike.
Second, there are studies that show that as the frequency of service increases so to does ridership. Great piece done by Roman Mars on his podcast here:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/missing-the-bus/transcript/
2
The liberal commentators in the article avoid the elephant in the room: in Los Angeles, where I frequently ride the transit system, there has been a huge increase in fare jumpers, mentally ill and unhygienic riders.
I see older riders clutching their opera and theater programs after seeing performances downtown, en route to North Hollywood, having their night out ruined by menacing, mostly non-paying riders.
Kick out the non-payers and vagrants and ridership will increase.
17
but in cities that have very popular subways do people also choose not to ride the bus?
1
This article has missed a big point.
In most cities I've lived in, except NYC, bus stops are sparsely distributed, buses come way too infrequently, and the routes are slow and unreliable. . The underpinning of the rideshare boom has been relatively cheap and door-to-door transit. Although the article points out the increased congestion as a factor, even before Uber and Lyft, bus service was all of the above. It's a colossal waste of one's time to wait for the bus, sit on a bus as it meanders through city streets, and walk to/from your ultimate destinations. Most of the US lacks the population density to support a dense transit system that works for most people. This bus decline is one fallout of the suburbanization phenomenon.
Some anecdotes: in SF, periodic stories about erratic and long waits for buses on various bus routes, observing constantly empty buses in LA, San Jose, Sacramento where buses seem to just constantly drive nobody around, in Boston, where the touted "Silver Line" is routinely trashed as the worst idea to come out of the MBTA in a long time.
Contrast this to major European and (some) Asian cities, where population density supports an effective bus, train, streetcar system.
It would take a massive change in public policy to change any of this.
5
As a suburban. once rural, car dependent type, there are a few other issues.
In the suburban area I live in, I tried to use the bus when possible -- but the last trip home was before 6 PM, and my hours generally ran late. The trips were time consuming, about 4 to 5 times as long as a direct ride, and most people could not walk to a bus stop. And most of the times, there were not enough riders to "justify" a full size bus.
Maybe a solution could be smaller and more flexible public transit solutions - fuel efficient minibuses where riders subscribe ahead of time, perhaps, along the way paratransit operates ( where it operates). Cooperative car services? Uber or taxis don't work for everything. But that leaves the issue of paying drivers - or going driverless.
Cars do cost far more than most people imagine to operate, to have supposedly unlimited flexibility. Perhaps if people really grasped what each trip cost, they would be begging for other alternatives. A really rough calculation of the cost of owning a vehicle bought used (for cash, no interest involved), and run for 6 1/2 years, came out to about 7200 a year, absent stuff like tolls. I was expecting to see around $4000 and was taken aback.
6
I live in Atlanta and take the bus occasionally, on average once per week. While I appreciate there are nuanced and complex reasons for most things that are not usually easily explained away, I think the MARTA bus problem can be. All facts below are easily confirmed via search.
Problem 1) Most MARTA buses run at 30 minute intervals. Until this is reduced to 10 or less, this will not be viable for most errand runners or commuters.
Problem 2) By MARTA's own admission, routes are circuitous. As we say in Atlanta, "MARTA is for people who ride MARTA". If you don't have a route memorized, likely a result of all ready being a rider, engaging on your first MARTA bus trip is daunting. This is a result of the public input process that effectively creates a forum for those few people that the circuitous route actually benefits to vigorously defend it.
Problem 3) The newest problem MARTA (in terms of buses) has created for itself is the principal of "avoiding redundant service" ie don't run buses where you already have trains. While this makes sense in theory, the effect is a disjointed bus system through the densest part of the city. For example. If you live at the corner of 10th and Piedmont, close to the center of Midtown, you would need to transfer to go north to 17th or west 15 blocks to Northside. Also, Piedmont is a major road and has no bus service until 14th St.
A better alternative is to run straightforward routes, through dense areas at frequent intervals.
8
For some of us, there is no public transportation and we have lived almost all our lives where there is none. Even getting to the greyhound stop was an hour drive. The times we do travel to a city where adequate public transportation exists, we use it. The times we travel to DC, Boston, London or Paris, of course we use public transport.
3
As a kid growing up in the forties and fifties, I sometimes rode buses to the ends of their lines with friends of mine during summers just to see what was there.
We’d come across all sorts of interesting stuff.
Falling down houses. Rickety old country stores that sold unbeatable cold cut subs. Abandoned graveyards. Stagnant ponds with dead things floating around in them.
If buses ever stop running, there will be no other way for kids to get to these places.
6
For years, I took the 57th crosstown bus, en route to Columbus Circle and the uptown subway to get to work. The X-town was (and is) slow as molasses due to clogged traffic, delivery trucks of all kinds, and CONSTRUCTION. That
X-bus took between up to 45 minutes. No problem. I left my First Ave. flat early to enjoy the rolling reading time along with a good study of Turnbull & Asser's window. Yes, I adjusted to what was, but missed the days the buses actually moved and you could count on them.
2
It was Spring Break, so I took two days off for doctors' appointments. I have to take 2 buses to get to the foot doctor. This was on Wednesday, late morning and early afternoon. The buses were pretty crowded. On occasion, buses to work in the AM are so crowded, people are standing. I live in a relatively affluent NJ suburb of Newark, a lot of New Yorkers have moved in. But where there is affluence there is a lot of poverty (the two go together), so lots of people rely on the buses, as do some of the city people who move here. All of the poor people who work for the rich people take the bus. So if one of us gets sick, we may pass it on to the rich people, or vice versa (rich people travel).
1
Put this in a comparative international context to get some answers. Buses are well used in Paris, for example, because of the low price and reliable frequency. In American cities it is often the opposite: expensive and too infrequent. If a city is going to offer bus service, it needs to subsidize and go all in.
11
True, if you miss a bus, you may wait a half hour for the next one, even in the morning going to work. And a monthly one-zone bus pass here is $59, so if you don't work 5 days a week, then it doesn't pay to buy one (one-way one zone fare is $1.60). I use it a lot because there is no affordable store in my neighborhood, only a Whole Foods. I have to take a bus uptown to shop, and people just love it when I schlep my heavy bags and cat litter onto the bus.
2
It's interesting to read these comments. As a person who lives in NY and has traveled around the world (and uses buses all over the world) the problem with buses in the US are obvious. Lack of investment and care. Favoring the individual over the community. Obliviousness to the huge environmental impact of car culture.
All of these combine to make buses very much a 3rd choice option for most Americans. To bring buses back - especially in urban places, bus lanes and ENFORCEMENT are key. The Select Bus Service is fantastic. By following the European model of pay before you board combined with dedicated bus lanes - these buses actually move quickly.
When the police actually start enforcing no parking or standing in bus lanes and at bus stops, efficiency will return. For some reason, there's a huge lack of enforcement. I don't understand why but perhaps a reader has the answer. Fines for blocking a bus lane should be hefty, swift, perhaps automatically doled out by cameras to the point where the word is out that if you drive in or block a bus lane you WILL be fined at least $1000 - so don't do it.
Enforcement is the main issue here as we do have "dedicated" lanes, but they are disregarded all too often. The same thing goes with fare avoidance (on non-SBS buses) but don't even get me started on that. On my local BX19 bus, I estimate that 50% of the riders just walk on without paying. Makes me wonder why I do.
12
I live in Philly and I take the bus a lot, that is until the corona virus arrived. I'm not taking the bus now. The bus system in Philly is very good in my opinion. And with a smart phone, you can see where your bus is and how long it will take to get to your stop, and also figure out which buses to take to a destination. When I turned 65 last year my bus pass became free. I was really happy about this. I now zip (well not exactly) around the city freely. It's a wonderful feeling of freedom. The bus moves pretty well in this city, but the double parkers, and all the vans from e-commerce are really a factor. And so is frequent construction and repair on old infrastructure below the streets, especially with so much new building going on. The City needs to do a better job of organising all this disparate traffic, keeping the bus lanes clear, perhaps regulating delivery traffic. It makes for a very frustrating ride for the driver as well. I personally do not really like Uber and Lyft because one is subjected to dirty cars with odors and music one doesn't like. And they are expensive. My typical same ride in Uber within Center City Philly as the bus would be $7 to $10 dollars (much more if it's raining) vs. the bus fare of $2.50. I do own a car, a used 11 year old Volvo but hardly ever drive it. Driving and parking in the city is chaotic and expensive. The taxis are filthy and broken down. London offers the best taxi service.
9
In a low density city like Ann Arbor public buses system almost feels like a scam. Mostly empty, large, buses driving on mainly nonsensical and inconvenient routes. Extra dark windows were installed to shield taxpaying public from the truth. The budget is very revealing - continuously declining ridership and fare revenue (7,336,441) but growing salaries, benefits (26,650,220), maintenance costs and 'other' expenses (2,407,556 ) and now ambitious 5 million dollar expansion. Spending these millions on on-demand uber-like systems would be logical and encourage people to leave cars in their garages.
7
Where lived until recently the bus transportation was sacrificed for light and commuter rail. One needed to drive an automobile to the train stops rather than a bus-as the bus was no longer available.
Then the car and train combination added time to the commute-at times twice as long to get to the workplace or shopping.
So why, the commuters ask, should use a transportation system that adds hours to my commute.
6
Another factor is the changing nature of work. Fewer 9 to 5 full time jobs where you can plan your arrival and departure on a fairly reliable basis, more part time flexible shifts, odd hours, etc where the need to get to another place nullifies any advantage the bus route might have provided
5
In Auckland, New Zealand, bus ridership is high. Parking is $30-38 a day in the city, and the traffic flows are terrible for cars. The local government has invested in bus lanes that make it a lot quicker for buses to get into town. The bus stock has all be invested in with very modern buses, and USB chargers. I think some have WIFI. Also, each of the bus stop has a display which is realtime and tells you which buses are coming, which routes and how long they will be. Along with an App that provides all this realtime. And, they have set up a one hop card that you can either prepay or it will do regular top ups that cover trains, ferries and busses with just the one car that you tag on and off. Most people at my work, professional IT, all take buses to and from work. It is quicker, and cheaper
15
In my personal experience, the bus service is not frequent enough and not reliable.
8
At home in an Ontario I've been too lazy and stingy to ever use the $3 bus in front of my house instead of the car in my driveway. Every local place to go is close with lots of free parking. Why wait for a $3 bus instead of a 10 minute drive?
I'd have the car expense anyway in order to use the highways.
I love to use the bus when I am in Paris. Each stop flashes the number of minutes until the bus I want.
7
Albeit this comes from a so-called "woke Boomer" but one reason may be that I've been told that many young people today call buses: "Looser Cruisers".
If it's socially unacceptable to ride a bus you can almost be certain overall ridership will decline.
9
@George pPublic transport was cool in the 90s for environmetal reasons. The fashion has changed. In addition punitive atmosphere and a menacing fare enforcement by private security complete with quasi governmental court hearings for scofflaws in many areas means poor people do not want to ride. People are surveilled and recorded on buses. Who likes this? Rising fares along with millions of federal dollars being spent for inner SE professionals to cross the Willamette along rides four miles to work while forcing elderly and poor in suburbs to deal with cancelled lines and infrequent service is why no one bothers. This is why ridership is down in portland...the bus routes serve gentrified ighborhoods primarily, repel the young and hip, and provide poor expensive punitive service to The light rail took real cheap easy service away and rather than spend two hours from Oregon City to Tualatin each way for work, missing a transfer by two minutes and waiting 58 minutes for the next bus (true circumstance) people will figure out how to get a car. Further, text alerts about arrivals made on time travel a fantasy, to the point that job ads stated they would not hire bus riders. Employers hate the bus too! If people can't get to work reliably and shopping is a boondoggle that takes four hours, people will not ride. I stopped. When Portland complicated their system, raised fares, targeted the gentry professionals with cars as their ridership, they destroyed ridership.
3
This is silly, because when you get a seat, you can read or text on the bus, as opposed to those losers who drive. The bus to NY finally banned cell phone use, but people just text instead of talking.
1
@Stephanie Wood Except for those of us who get car sick on the bus. Then it is wasted time.
I don't know how Uber and Lyft figure into the equation. They are so much expensive than a bus. By now, they cost as much as Yellow cab. Are people suddenly so affluent?
As all the comments say, the problem is how slow the buses are because of traffic congestion. But Uber and Lyft riders are stuck in the exact same traffic, at a much higher price!
True bus lanes are amazing. Madison Ave buses get two lanes, so double parkers don't cripple it. The bus ride past the stopped taxis is a joy. And express buses are really fast.
Why doesn't NYPD immediately Tow anyone in a bus lane? And charge a huge fine? Or allow two traffic lanes per bus?
7
@akamai No, Uber or Lyft take the expressway AROUND the center-city traffic if they're going across town. Buses take the city streets and stop at each block. (Except one bus driver I had about 8 years ago who zoned out or something and blew through 4 stops because the lights were green!)
1
I would take the NYC buses more often, but the shelters are so inadequate. The subway is preferable because there's a roof over your head and (on most platforms) shelter from the wind.
2
I'm a full time bus/light rail rider in Seattle - one of those cities that has bucked the trend. I believe that in the next few years, you will probably see a decline in bus ridership here as well, but not because of Uber/Lyft or even bike sharing, rather because of the extension of the light rail system. That being said, there is one primary reason why bus ridership struggles, even in Seattle and its not mentioned in the article at all. Employer subsidized parking. Seattle has literally built dozens of buildings over the last several decades. The companies that have come to inhabit those buildings almost always provide their employees with free or cheap monthly parking. The end result is that the city is in near gridlock because of the number of single occupancy vehicle trips. Even though the % of these has declined, the overall count continues to grow. The city has answered this growth by widening the highways. If you really want to increase bus traffic, stop subsidizing cars. Stop using tax dollars to build wider highways. Stop encouraging new construction to build bigger and bigger parking garages. In fact, I would recommend that parking garages tax parkers more heavily.
11
@Marston Gould well said! My company, in california, provides free parking for it's over 2000 employees, in it's 'heart of the city' office location, while they pay lip service to trying to reduce greenhouse gases. I took the trolley to work every day, and it was not pleasant - homeless people all live on or around the trolley system. And what is a 15 minute drive was an hour commute.. also, I paid a reduced commuter rate, but public transit should just be free. There is one free day a year, on the San diego trolley, and everyone suddenly can find the time to use it..I am sure we as a society can subsidize the 2$ fair, to increase ridership.
4
I’m a boomer. I love riding buses. I do it for fun, at times. Sure, buses are slow. But someone else drives, I sit above street level, and get to see everything— especially when the bus goes slowly. There are dedicated bus lanes, and selfish car drivers use them to get ahead of others. I think the crux of the matter is that people are in too much a hurry to go everywhere. My advice: slow down, take a bus, and have some fun.
6
I live in upper Manhattan and take the bus a lot. Many of my fellow passengers are older or have mobility issues which means you sometimes have to weave through a maze of walkers and shopping carts to find a seat. They are preferred transport for people who can't manage subway stairs or have a destination far from the subway stop -- yet there's no accommodation for the walkers, the carts. Wheelchair passengers can board, which is great, but the majority of those with mobility challenges are the ones that slow the enter/exit process. Add in heavy traffic and you have a recipe for a second rate solution. Also, waiting 20 to 25 minutes for a bus and then seeing 3 come at once ????
5
Many people mentioned it already but buses are slooow (frequent stops and traffic jams), and often unpredictable. Walking is marginally slower but without a 20 minute wait, bikes are much faster. The only time when it's semi-convenient to take a bus is in bad weather but that's exactly when they are even more unpredictable than usual. Dedicated bus lanes would help.
3
I'll save you a lot of ink.
Bus ridership is declining because there is horrible traffic, which makes buses slow and inconvenient. Reducing or eliminating cars and creating express bus lanes will reverse this shift.
9
In Austin, buses are constantly stuck in traffic. We need dedicated bus lanes on major routes. Free fares wouldn't hurt either. Also, there is a parking glut and the city is decentralized.
2
US transit officials should take a serious look at the successful bus rapid transit systems in Bogota and Mexico City, both of which I've used. These systems compare well with subways in speed and efficiency but are far cheaper to build. They have two key features: (1) truly dedicated bus lanes, where possible physically separated from auto lanes; (2) boarding only at stations, where passengers pay in advance and board quickly from platforms at bus level, just as with subways. Build systems like these in the US and you will see their use skyrocket.
11
I think that this analysis ... misses the bus.
The issue isn't an overall decline in mass transit -- trains are doing well. The decline is limited to buses.
I suspect that the reason is that the buses are stuck in the terrible surface traffic that auto commuters face. Subways don't have to confront that, which is why their ridership is increasing.
7
Yes, but the subway is so crowded, and sometimes you get stuck down there. I used to ride them every day, but then I got a job back in NJ, and didn't miss the subways at all. They always got on my nerves.
1
@Claire Laporte "trains are doing well" - Light rail ridership has declined nationally the past two years.
1
Here in the SF Bay Area nobody uses buses (except private ones). Why?
Zoning here is a joke. People both live and work all over the place, and rarely close enough for public buses to be practical.
In SF itself buses are at least somewhat useful and used, because it's both dense enough and practically zoned - with most of the jobs in a reasonably compact downtown.
But other than that the entire area would need to be totally reconfigured in order for buses (or alas most public transit) to be really useful. Give us about 30 years ... perhaps.
2
I live in Pittsburgh and commute to work by bus. This city has one of the best bus systems I've encountered. Buses are easily trackable, frequently running, clean, and generally on time. In turn many people use them to commute to work and school, even if they own cars. People ride buses if they find them to be worth the cost, and in many cities they just aren't.
8
You guys keep talking about Minneapolis and never mention winter. No one who has any other option walks long distance in winter. Especially not for transit.
You also mix express bus and local bus. In Minneapolis, express bus has been increasing while local bus has been declining dramatically. Express bus primarily serves wealthier people going to work and that has been growing. Local bus, which primarily serves poor people, has been declining. Minneapolis has been gentrifying like crazy, pushing out lower income people who traditionally ride local buses. Poorer people have been taking Uber rather than the bus, especially lower income people of color because Uber and Lyft provide better mobility than the bus. Informal Uber-like networks have also arisen in Minneapolis.
8
After my service my retina detached and also being easily distracted I decided to put off driving. Not purchasing my hometown's product made meeting my parental responsibility and retirement needs much easier. Now I have a half fare pass and I gladly ride the subway and a bus into my sunset. I will probably never ride my childhood route to Gratiot and Hoover or Woodward to the DIA again.
In my experience, the impact of Uber/Lyft and FedEx/UPS/USPS on bus traffic cannot be ignored. Traveling by bus around Brooklyn is an agility course, with one or two vehicles per block double parked. Traffic jams are often the result of 'illegal' obstructions. Crosstown bus trips on 14th street in Manhattan, or in areas with dedicated bus lanes, is pleasant and expedient. Solve double parking, solve bus problems.
10
Buses, unlike subways, have to deal with traffic jams and so have no advantage over cars except possibly cheaper. It is often faster to walk in a crowded city than to take the bus. Would be interesting to see how popular buses are when they are given traffic preferences such as designated lanes. Also, in smaller cities, buses often don't go where people live and you may have to walk 30 minutes to get to a bus stop and then wait for the bus.
12
Even in NYC, where public transit is a given, the bus is considered the bottom rung; the choice of last resort. Where the subway bypasses traffic, your bus has to deal with red lights. If you need to travel on the surface, at least the taxi/uber/lyft will depart and arrive on your own schedule, and give you a nice granular destination. Sit at a bus stop for 43 minutes in August, then tell me why people don't take the bus.
13
Here in Tahoe, the local transportation agency is endlessly trying to get tourists out of their cars and into a bus. Doesn’t work. In Tahoe City, they built a beautiful artistic transportation hub building. It’s a ghost town, no one ever uses the building.
After reading the article, maybe the age of busses has past. Too many other better options. Think of the money we could save.
5
In Los Angeles one transfer will double your average ride. The train is more reliable. As far as Vermont Avenue is concerned, that is not a highly educated white population. When people estimate their time in dollars, they will do anything rather than ride the bus. When gas prices go up enough, there is increased ridership.
1
Bus companies teach you to be a bus driver for free... but you need to be there at 6am for 8 weeks!
Plus, try to find a bus stop with a ruff top to help you hide in the summer from the sun or stay dry in the winter is non existence.
1
Simplest answer: no one who has a choice wants to ride a bus.
12
Has the person who wrote this article been on a bus? Buses at least in the US are never on time, they are inconsistent, and infrequent. It is the worst service industry. I waited 2 hours for a bus on multiple occasions on one of the coldest days, a Nj transit bus that is supposed to show up every 30 minutes according to schedule and it was very popular bus stop. You call the company they give you inconsistent answers. No one trusts the bus industry, and those who have no other choice just use it.
18
This article is so bad. They need to add something to make more interesting like They could compare with buses companies that are actually doing well or whose ridership hasn’t decreased as much. Like Spanish buses are used a lot, why? That’s a good comparison to make. Or Lakeland buses too, they seem to be utilized and ppl enjoy them. One is cheaper one is more expensive. Quality speed frequency and consistency, all things city buses lack
3
Buses are slow because of archaic labor laws and union tricks. Take the M15 bus in Manhattan. The bus going south starts out at 125 St after the driver has rested at 126 St. At around 101 St a 5-10 minute shift change occurs. Riders are sitting idly for 5-10 minutes while a new driver relieves the one who minutes earlier had a rest break at 126 St. Much easier and much faster to take an Uber or even walk, especially since on weekends you might wait 30 minutes for an M15.
8
Express buses that take suburban commuters off the highways are a great idea. I take one into the city. Annoying and slow sometimes, but each bus takes 30-50 cars off the road. They should be cheaper and more frequent, with express lanes to get to town quicker. Look at London and Dublin, chock full of buses for commuters --we need more of them here.
6
The problem in the bus ridership issue is that the environmentalists have dominated conversions of what people "aught" to do, which is in distinct opposition of what people actually do. Simply put, riding a bus takes a lot, and I mean a lot more time out of a person's life than having a car and driving to one's destination. If it takes me 4 minutes to drive to the grocery store and it takes over an hour to accomplish the same transportation task, then, for people who value their own time, there is no comparison.
Try standing in the "weather", rain, shine, snow, sleet, heat, cold, wind and baking sun waiting for a bus with the better alternative of getting into your car and driving to a destination, particularly a "close" destination.
Ever try waiting for a train scheduled to go long distance and make transportation arrangements after getting to the general vicinity of where you wanted to go?
The primary obstacle to bus & train is the waste of people's time in waiting for the transportation to arrive which leaves you off at a place that requires you to make further transportation arrangements.
Declining public transportation ridership to a reality check for the otherwise disengaged "do gooders" whose incantations basically reflect their spiritual orientation.
Most people are not in their church.
5
@RiHo08 I think it varies by city/town. For example, where you state that a 4-minute car ride for you would equal one hour-plus ride by public transit, I'm stymied. I didn't realize parts of Michigan had traffic congestion that rivaled Bangkok. Here in NYC, I observe and know many car owners who drive cars, not because it saves them time, but simply 'because'. They reach for their keys automatically, even when in many instances, public transit will get them there faster. Heck, I have car-owning friends in NYC who will propose to drive us somewhere, and then follow that comment with lamentations of how 'awful' the traffic and parking will be. And all I can think is 'huh?'
In NYC, being as dense as it is, we have countless transit options which very often Do get us in the general vicinity of where we actually wanted to get to, and in a very reasonable amount of time. And even then, many car-owning NYCers will still opt for their cars.
2
@RiHo08 tip - Our "church" is the planet and we are all in it whether you chose to accept that or not. It's dying and private petroleum-powered vehicles are the major culprit. If you're not an environmentalist now, wait 50 years when the ice caps have melted and chaos reigns.
1
@Lisa
"In NYC, being as dense as it is,..."
Yesterday (Friday the 13th), as the Wuhan coronavirus impact was being felt on a national level, I jumped into my car to run a number of errands: Home Depot, pharmacy, jeweler (retrieve a resized ring), Costco for gas and some home social distancing items. 16 miles in total, in 2 1/2 hours. The Costco sized toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls fit neatly in my trunk along with the smaller items.
Now, I have ridden the subway in NYC, initially as a child holding my ears against the great metallic sounds of the trains; struggled later in life with large packages trying to find a seat for myself and my load. BART in the Bay area's neglected filth. Chicago's elevated during Christmas crush. Los Angelos's surface system that bumps into cars/trucks and things that go from people trying to beat the crossing guard arm. Many European (Swedish, London's Tube) with Eurorail Pass in hand for Czech, French, German etc., Australian and assorted others rail/bus systems.
I've tried them all. So far, all I have observed are some pretty dense people.
1
Maybe the people studying this issue don't have a lot of personal experience riding city buses. Buses in most cities are the last-resort transportation option. You have to wait outside in the weather (if you're lucky there may be a pathetic plastic shelter littered with cigarette butts.) They are often very slow and way off schedule because they are subject to the whims of traffic and how many passengers want to stop along the way. If you are unfamiliar with the route then good luck getting where you need to go -- you will have to pull a signal cord to indicate your stop (tough to do if you don't know exactly where you are.) In many cities, bus routes are poorly planned and don't really go where people want to go, or take too long or require transfers. There are ways to improve bus systems (bus rapid transit with a dedicated right of way, better signage indicating stops, better route planning) but because bus ridership is dropping there is little incentive to implement these things. It's a cycle.
8
Because the bus is unreliable
Because the bus is expensive
Because of UBER/
Because Homeless are sleeping and living at the bus stop. The benches smell like urine and worse
Because the bus comes infrequently
Because the bus stops running at 8:00 p.m. and does not run during the middle of the day
Because the people on the bus may harm you and the driver will not intervene
20
@FerCry'nTears
Thank you,
2
I love the Public transportation system in Munich, especially the Trams.
6
Riding the bus in a major city is usually a very slow and unpleasant experience. There are too many bus stops and the buses are usually dirty.
6
Happy to see that San Francisco went up.
A note on the graph: If you already say that ridership "rose" there's no need to include a "+" sign; it's understood to be positive and therefore redundant. The same goes for "fell"—no need to include a "-" sign. (In fact, in mathematical thinking, the double negative would be strictly construed to be a positive!)
1
I have read a lot of the comments, and many people blame Lyft and Uber....as if the only way to make the bus ride more attractive is to eliminate ANY alternative that people might prefer. The truth is that Uber and Lyft became viable BECAUSE of the crummy bus experience, and the overpriced crummy taxi experience. Why would you have any desire to ride in a smelly bus full of nasty transients when you can ride in a nice clean car with a pleasant driver..who will pick you up and drop you off at your destination...on your schedule.... for just a bit more money?
13
@Bill Clayton It clearly varies by city, because honestly, of all the buses I've ridden in NYC, 'nasty transients' are hardly ever an issue. Off-schedule buses...buses one behind the other, and then nothing for another 20 minutes.... buses stuck in traffic... painfully slow boarding/payment process... yes, yes and yes.
NYC subways have lots more reason for folks to avoid it, due to homeless and/or mentally unstable people. But buses in NYC? The overall experience is far more civilized, esp. if you don't have to ride that bus from start to finish and/or that you get a seat...
I know of a midwestern city, controlled by a billionaire (oil & gas), with a mandate that bus ridership was only "for the poorest of the poor."
1
@NotKidding What midwestern city would that be?
1
SF is one of the places where ridership has increased.
For our household near SF, cars have largely become useless due to too many other vehicles using the same roads. We stay closer to home, take more transit, and walk and bike more than we did in 2010. We are so dine with cars and everyone needs to make this shift to combat climate change.
2
The problem in LA with the bus is that half the riders are coughing homeless people. No thanks.
6
Riding the bus is a terrible experience. Bumpy. Noisy. Filthy. The constant lurching of sudden stops and starts. Smelly transients on board. Noisy kids watching loud cell phone videos. Having to sit in traffic AND having to keep slowly pulling over to the side, then back into traffic.
This is why the only people who ride buses are those that have no other choice.
8
I commuted by bus for years but the service was poor and slow. The times I got a really obese smelly person overflowing my seat were disgusting. The time I had to work late and had to call for help and the guaranteed ride home program failed to get me home I quit using the bus. Slower than driving nasty and uncomfortable and left me stranded. It is not surprising ridership is down
8
Protected white children don’t grow up to ride buses with the rough side of the street. They don’t want to live near them either. Our melting pot is no longer.
5
The bus is expensive. The bus is filthy. The bus is insanely overcrowded. The bus runs at random times, late, early, not at all. And now, the bus is a viral cesspool.
9
Buses are slow.
End of story.
6
Think free public transit and go backwards from there to argue against that position
2
Uber and fear of crime on buses.
3
I'll tell you why. More and more mentally ill homeless, etc. are traumatizing people who aren't accustomed to being traumatized while riding public transportation.
It's filthy and noisy.
And it is not safe.
No public restrooms in sight.
And public transit doesn't advertise the benefits of taking the bus. They haven't reached out to those who would benefit but aren't accustomed to public transportation.
12
A lot of info and supposition. Here’s something to think about - have you ridden on a bus?
2
I ride one every day to work. Sometimes the one chance to read a book in a busy day.
2
Simple explanation. Rough ride. Dirty vehicle. Slow. Noisy.
3
Article misses the obvious point: homelessness. The bus and other transit is crawling with smelly and often aggresively crazy people. No one wants to be around that.
47
Many, many of the "white" potential bus riders have spent their entire lives in white neighborhoods, segregated public or private schools, and now work in companies where almost everyone is white.
In the event that one of these white, young people actually ever do get on a bus, they might see a black or Latino person for the first time in their lives. For folks who have been completely isolated from black and Hispanic people all their lives this would feel threatening in the extreme.
Reduced bus ridership is just another manifestation of segregation.
Reduced bus ridership is just a consequence of generating people who were segregated at birth, and, plan to stay that way for life.
25
@Michael. This is not true at all. I am white, and grew up in the suburbs riding buses because my parents worked and couldn't pick me up from school or drive me to my friends houses when I wanted to go. So I had to improvise.
Now I live in Philadelphia, and used to take buses all the time. Now I take Uber, because for only $1 or $2 more, I can have the convenience and time of my "own" ride and not have to wait for a bus. Its less a segregation thing, and more about that Ubers are not priced correctly. The are being subsidized by the independent contractor model, and are not accurately priced. Its purely economic, not based in segregation.
65
@Maria One counterexample does not mean that a generalization is "not true at all." You could both be right. You make a good point about Uber being non-market priced.
9
@Maria Buses aren't priced correctly either. They all need subsidies to keep going. The price would have to go up for the system to at least break even.
7
I live 2 miles from my job. I used to drive and paid for a parking spot. $150/month. I wanted to save some money for a vacation so I dropped the parking spot last May and just walked. It takes longer at 35 minutes one-way and there's been plenty of heat/rain/snow, but I've lost weight, have listened to dozens of audiobooks, and just mentally feel better. I suspect the drop in bus ridership might have some relation to other office workers like me who switched to an active commute in order to get some daily exercise in. If that's the case, we're probably not switching back soon.
3
Not one mention of the effects 24 hour service? If Uber didn't let drivers work past 11pm how successful would it be? Buses are professional drivers who can carry 60+ people at a time, we should give them lanes and sensible routes. Just like commuter rail is obstructed by the freight lines - our roads are given away to parking and amatuer taxis. Public transit should be as free as a public library or NPR... and Uber/Lyft drivers should not be allowed on expressways.
4
@Rodness Roads with cars carry 2000 cars per lane per hour. If you take one of those lanes as a dedicated bus lane, and factor in the average bus utilization of 12 passengers per bus, you would have to have buses every 20 seconds. Dedicated bus lanes are a poor use of limited resources. Also at average ridership of 12 per bus, they are worse environmentally.
1
Everyone is complaining about slow buses. Buses are slow because of all the traffic generated by cars. Blame the cause, not the effect.
7
As noted, affluent young professionals prefer Uber/Lyft and Via (ride hail shared ride) to buses.And can afford to pay. Bicycles also a factor.
But bus use has also declined because of bus service cuts, a self-fulfilling situation.
In NYC, bus frequency and bus routes have been cut - people thus give up .
5
If you go to much of Africa, the poorer Arab countries, they generally do not rely on the large 50 person large bus. Transportation relies on entrepreneurs running smaller, microbuses, with many passing by a bus stops per hour. Potential riders ask each passing driver "where are you headed?" and usually they drivers are headed to the most common destinations. I see this as a possible replacement our current static model: A larger fleet of 8 to 12 person mini-buses where the driver goes where he can make most fares.
3
@Borat Smith I absolutely agree. Living in the UK and Germany both countries had smaller buses which went right into neighborhoods and I often thought we needed them here. Now I am in the Seattle area and I notice that Microsoft's private bus service for its employees also uses them (as well as standard size buses which are more luxurious than your average bus). This article should have looked at Microsoft and why and how they decided to build their own private bus system which is clearly highly used by employees. Their buses go to where people actually live to get them to and from work. The light rail system that is being built out will also have a stop right by the Microsoft campus so tens of thousands of cars are taken off the roads. People want to use transit but compared to Europe our public transit system is pitiful.
1
I don’t own a car and regularly take the subway. Here in the States, I occasionally take the bus too but, more often than not, they are unreliable and/or show up infrequently. It’s often faster to walk or to take an Uber/Lyft if the distance is great. This is in contrast to my experiences in Seoul and Copenhagen - both cities with exceptional public transport options, from subways, to buses. And, Copenhagen is a model cycling city too. Truly impressive.
I really wish that we’d make some major investments in infrastructure improvements to bring our nation’s transit systems up to par. More dedicated lanes for both bikes and buses would be wonderful too - it would help the former be safer and the latter to operate more reliably and with greater speed.
5
A lot more people are living in central cities and walking to work -- that's a good thing. But there has also been a lot of job growth in the suburbs -- but bus routes don't effectively serve suburban office parks. There is no way to get to suburban jobs that doesn't involve cars, and it's true, cars are cheaper to own and operate than ever.
But some of this is simply transit agencies that take 10 or even 20 years to change routes when they should be adjusting constantly. And union contracts inevitably get in the way of innovation. Transit agencies should stop thinking of themselves as bus companies and instead think of the myriad ways to get people from place to place. They should be working with Uber and Lyft as well as yellow cabs and limousines and van and mini-bus services.
Here in Philadelphia probably 80 percent of the route network is virtually unchanged from 25 years ago -- and this is a pretty well run transit agency. But change comes extremely slowly and usually only in times of crisis.
4
I live in Kyoto city in Japan. Bus is crowded in my city. So, I use subway when I commute.
Because of Covit-19, I want to avoid crowded areas.
I am interested in US people's comment on this article.
4
I've ridden the bus to work in most cities I've lived in: Atlanta, Savannah, Greensboro and Honolulu. I look first for buses when traveling to larger cities: New Orleans, Las Vegas, Baltimore, San Francisco... I am a white female with a college degree; taking the bus makes me feel free - free from the aggravations of traffic, owning a vehicle, and paying too much for transportation.
5
@Sher Wild my 16 yr old daughter loves taking the bus for the same reason. She travels all over the Puget Sound area by bus. She enjoys the independence and freedom. Luckily although we live in the surburbs (because further in is unaffordable) we are well served by Express buses that whizz down the freeways in the express/HOV and bus lanes.
1
Bad bus service like big gaps in scheduled time and the bus always being late coupled with having to ride with rude or loud or downright weird strangers, having to wait while the bus driver deals with a wanna be passenger with a story but no money for the fare, the constant stopping and starting of the bus while it wanders on its circuitous route, there's just a few of the reasons I avoid taking the bus.
6
@Karen Yup, those are pretty much the same reasons for not riding the bus up here in Portland too.
2
Buses in Los Angeles were never on time and there was never any accountability. The problem is that the people who oversee public transport never use it and have contempt for those who do. Buses are wonderful and run frequently in Paris, so long as the are not on strike!
11
I live 6 miles from my job in Sacramento, California. If I take the bus, it is a 3/4 mile walk and two different buses. Takes an hour total.
Car, 15 mins.
Guess which I choose.
14
@AJ They can pry my car keys out of my cold dead fingers.
3
Californians have destroyed the planet.
Ridership is down because buses are the slowest way to go. Here in NYC, a reasonably healthy adult can often, literally, walk faster than the time it takes to wait, board, ride, disembark and finally get to your usually less than ideal destination. Bottom line, it's an outdated way to travel.
10
In Montgomery County, Maryland, there is an extensive bus system. But, most routes for commuters run every half hour. If a bus misses a schedule, you automatically add a half hour (minimum) to your commute. If the combination of bus and rail gets you to work just in time, you have to build in an extra half in case of delays. Compared to driving, commutes generally take much longer when busses are used.
7
In sunbelt cities that were built for cars riding the bus is just not an option if you have any other choice. A commute that might take 15 minutes by car could take 50 minutes by bus, including the several blocks of walking in 110 degree heat on either end. Throw in a school drop off or a stop at the grocery store on the way home and you are looking at adding an hour or two to your daily commute.
9
In Portland, while bus use was dropping, bikes were increasing. Since 1991 bike crossings of our downtown river have increased 322% while car crossings stayed about the same. A bike is often faster than the bus, stays on your schedule, is easier to park than a car, provides exercise and, here anyway, is a thing. Plus I just got an electric bike so hills are no longer so challenging as I get older.
6
Chicago transplant here and am thrilled with the number of bus routes in this city. The El is faster but I don't feel nearly as safe, either at stations or on the train. The bus drivers in Chicago put up with absolutely zero nonsense and are generally pretty interesting people.
I enjoy the people-watching on my commute, which involves two buses each way. I also love the hour I have to myself to read a book instead of fighting traffic. I even take the bus on the weekends as long as I don't plan on grocery shopping - I still use my car for that. I'm able to go so many places and not have to worry about parking - and it's cheaper than an Uber or Lyft.
This article is so timely because I just responded to a survey from the Chicago Transit Authority asking me about many of the issues you covered.
18
One factor of some significance which was not discussed was the Federal Transit Administration's transition, beginning about 2008, from accepting a number of manual-sampling methodologies for inclusion into the National Transit Database to uniformly requiring data from automated passenger counters for which the FTA had paid. Beforehand, transit agencies could figure out which manual sampling methodology would produce the best numbers, then get a clear message to their paid samplers that when in doubt "more was better". For a given agency, look at the years after 2008 when the year to year passenger fall-off was most dramatic, then check the manual-to-automated reporting correlation for that agency.
3
Thank you for your article. I was recently back home in Portland, Oregon. On one, short, 30-minute ride, there were two different men (on medication) who were screaming obscenities on the bus an another medicated man obsessing over his suitcase and talking to himself. Trimet, in Portland, provides an important service for lower income individuals and I've never had a bad experience using Trimet; I'm proud of it. My brother thinks that higher income people may not want to share a commute with the rest of humanity. As unfortunate as it sounds, I thought he had a valid point; intercultural friction and shock may be factors in bus ridership.
22
@Gavin I find your brother's comment very sad and problematic. How much discomfort really does it cause me to witness other people's suffering? Trimet is an important service for ALL of us not just low income people. I consider my decision to ride the bus regularly an act of civic belonging and love for my community. I see more and more people in Portland avoiding the streets, avoiding busses, staying in their cars and as a result we are a more and more segregated society. Being around homelessness and poverty can make people who are more fortunate uncomfortable. But it's no safety risk. And it's so important for us to see each other. BTW in 3 years of riding Trimet I've never experienced anyone shouting on the bus or any situation which made me feel even a little unsafe. And the diversity that I see of people on the bus (believe me, it's NOT only low income people) give me a little hope for humanity.
1
@Jenny Hi and thank you for commenting. Oh, I very strongly agree with you. I realize my experience was very unusual; 99.99% of the time on my bus rides were uneventful. My brother's comment may describe the inner-group, outer-group friction. People may just be uncomfortable with what they don't know. I'll reveal something; I have one arm (congenital). Of course, all of my life, people have felt uncomfortable (to different degrees) at first. It's what it is. So, I'm with you, I promote everyone taking the bus; those who mix together, get along more.
2
@Gavin But, 99.999% of the time, a bus ride on Trimet is just boring. Thank you Trimet!
There is no mystery at all. I have used public transit regularly for almost 40 years. Two things have changed. First is the availability of Uber and Lyft. It used to be that your options were to drive and pay for gas, vehicle maintenance, and expensive parking, or to take public transit, or to take taxis, which were not always available, and fairly expensive. Uber and Lyft upended this by allowing people to take private cars and externalize the cost in terms of pollution and congestion. Until these services are forced to pay for external costs the situation will not change.
The second issue is that public transit, while never an oasis of calm and comfort, is increasingly negatively affected by the same issues that plague our streets, i.e., homelessness, drug use, and general vagrancy. Transit systems are increasingly being used by people living on the streets for shelter. It is a simple fact that people, especially women, don't want to be on a bus, street car, or subway car with riders who smell like they don't know what a shower is, or who look or act threatening.
48
@Mike
This is spot-on. As a longtime bus-and-train rider here in Los Angeles, it's my observation that numerous components of the mass-transit system have improved immeasurably over the past couple of decades -- expanded subway routes (particularly efficient in getting to downtown L.A.), app-based "real-time" bus schedules (I can literally monitor my phone, and leave my house when the bus is one minute out) -- but these improvements are countermanded by the aforementioned A.) existence of Uber/Lyft; and B.) increased homelessness / meth use / general unhygenic buses and trains. Not sure what the answer is, but I'm betting these two dynamics are wholly responsible for decreased ridership.
16
@Mike
Sometimes, a single homeless individual will raise a stench that transcends the entire bus. After the unfortunate individual departs, it is not unusual for the driver to drive for a bit with the doors fully open in an attempt to ventilate the bus.
6
In Los Angeles, riding the bus is an unreliable and distressingly slow form of transportation. If one cannot find some other way to travel, then one takes the bus. The buses do not run on time, they run many minutes apart and they are not cheap. It's easy to miss a bus and then be late for an important appointment. It takes 3 to 4 times longer than by automobile. A twenty minute car ride and parking trip, requires at least an hour by bus. If one needs to be someplace on time, then one needs to catch an earlier bus which means a lot more commuting time. On top of that bus companies are trying to save money and so they deliberately run buses less often to do so.
8
In Minneapolis we quit enforcing the rule of law on public transportation. It’s driven by a sense that the numbers would be mostly minorities and the homeless, but it’s turned the trains and buses into rolling homeless shelters and too often outright violent scenes, some involving homicide.
The local (not express) buses are also awful from a scheduling perspective. I can reliably be downtown in 20 minutes from my house in a car but a bus ride will take me close to an hour. What good is that? And it hasn’t improved one iota since I was a bus rider in high school 35 years ago.
24
@Conch Republican Once people have options the buses lose. Buses are dependent on a captive audience.
@Conch Republican
My experience in Portland is very similar. At 75 I don’t want to stand in the rain for 20 minutes waiting for a bus, and I can’t run to catch one. If I do happen to
take a bus from my home to city center, it can take up to 45 minutes to go four miles one way. I can get in my car, stay driy, not have to run, and drive it in about 15 minutes. Buses are clean, but the riders often aren’t. Homeless, odiferous, threatening, incontinent, rude passengers are significant deterrents. The $2.50 fare is excessive and an inconvenient amount to render. If my wife and I take our two grandchildren, it can cost us $20 for a round trip! My car might cost more, but the benefits make up for it. Plus, I don’t always want to go where the buses go, or I have to do some serious grocery shopping, and I’m not going to get in a bus with six bags of groceries. I could go on, but the point is, even with terrible traffic, my car just makes more sense for my transportation needs.
3
@Conch Republican
Thank you,
Some people don't ride the bus because it is the de facto home for homeless and mentally ill people. There's always the possibility of a weird or uncomfortable scene. Just sayin'.
27
@Maché Hi, I'm from Portland and I get what you're saying. I have learned to just go with the flow. I just appreciate Trimet; without it, it'd be so hard to get around. I haven't had anything bad happen to me, however, on the bus. 99.99% of the time, it's just an unmemorable busride.
2
I'm a Boomer and for YEARS I was a bus rider until I got married and moved into the suburbs. I'll tell you what the REAL problems are with bus ridership, at least in my area. (1) Buses are notoriously UNRELIABLE when it comes to following their schedules. If one must be at work by a certain time, one must try to get the earliest possible bus because it is dead certain that if one takes the bus with the "schedule" that is most appropriate, YOU WILL BE LATE. Buses generally arrive 10, 15, even 30 minutes off their written schedules, which means a person could be perpetually late for work. Many people are tired of this so they either walk (if they can), take an UBER or buy a car. (2)
Buses do not always have routes where people actually live. For example, within the past 15 years the suburban area near my home has sprouted three housing developments and two very large apartment complexes, but there are no bus routes anywhere nearby. In fact, the nearest bus stop is about 4 miles away from the biggest apartment complex in this area.
Is it any wonder that everyone is driving.
18
In NYC buses don't come often enough, and they're often off schedule. It's understandable that traffic varies, but who has 20-30 minutes (or more) to wait for the next one?
8
Well, the decline in ridership here on San Francisco's BART could be to filthy, druggie infested stations (addicts passed out or shooting up in the hallways) used needles on the seats, stabbings, thefts on the trains and urine soaked station elevators and escalators. No parking at the stations unless you arrive at 4:00 AM and on and on and on. All this with the benefit of ever increasing fares.
46
@Bob Agreed. There are times when BART increasingly looks more like a rolling homeless encampment than a transit system. I sometimes ride BART in from the airport, which is a terminus station. Everytime I get on there are "gentlemen" spread out sleeping across multiple seats, and they are not people that look like they are suffering from jet lag after a flight from London or Tokyo. They don't smell like they are drowning in duty-free cologne either. There are others that are just waiting for the trains to get moving, so that they can begin panhandling tourists, sometimes in fairly threatening ways. Meanwhile, anything resembling BART security is nowhere to be seen.
Then there is the epidemic of fare evasion, which is not being seriously addressed by the system at all. There is not even a plan to install secure turnstyles system wide. The first attempt to install them in a few stations was a complete farce, with the new turnstyles being no harder to get through than the old ones. There may be a "plan" to install some more in stations considered most at risk by the turn of the century, but that's about it.
15
@Mike -- It should be mentioned for this nationwide-and-beyond audience that we digress from buses; BART is a light-rail trunk line (with a fee-for-distance fare structure and a farebox cost-recovery ratio about twice that of buses, making it expensive to ride). It does have some problems, some of them intertwined with issues that cities struggle with everywhere, but they may not be the same as the problems faced by buses.
The several transit districts that it serves all have their own bus lines -- a mixture of locals and express buses that in some cases compete with BART. Some takes on their issues
https://www.govtech.com/fs/In-the-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-Congestion-Takes-Riders-Off-Buses-and-Worsens-Congestion.html
(traffic and resulting slowness is the main thing)
https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/ACT-TAM-Plan-2018-03-09-Final-C.-Rev-20180403.pdf
(ridership peaked in the Great Recession and has dropped considerably as times got better)
Not too hard to figure out why the MBTA (Boston, etc.) busses' ridership has gone down. The service is terrible. Schedules are a joke, a fantasy -- you can wait at a stop for nearly an hour for the bus that was scheduled 45 minutes ago, and when it comes, it's too full to stop. Right on its heels, another one comes, with a third one right behind it.
If you need to be somewhere by a certain time, and you don't have all day to get there, you just don't take the bus if you can possibly avoid it.
9
A big part of what's driving this decline is that women don't feel safe on the bus.
10
@James Ribe That could be an LA-specific thing, since public transit there is still an anomaly, and so there's this notion that only 'scary' people ride the buses. Here in NYC, I'd actually feel more safe on a bus...and a late night one at that...than I would on a late night subway car that's not all that full and which might have some scary folk on it. At least on a bus the driver is always there. On a subway car, and depending on how long it is between stations, and with the conductor/driver possibly being cars away from you, passengers are much more vulnerable imho.
12
@James Ribe
I spent about 20 years out of my 40 work years riding buses, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay). I felt safe most of the time. During the other 20 years, I walked to work, took a train, or carpooled (2 years).
While driving, I had several "near misses." I prefer to take the bus; it's a lot bigger than my car!
5
Lots of reports if violence and rowdiness on the bus. Not encouraging.
11
Because, for the most part, buses don't follow their scheduled timetables. And the routes, in some cases, aren't helpful. How can someone who needs to get to work on time rely on the bus system?
And then there's the elephant in the room... far too often we find vagrants, drug addicts, and criminals on the bus. In some cities, it's perceived to be unsafe.
16
The economy picked up, so people bought cars. Case closed.
4
Want to increase use of mass transit and get people out of their cars? Make mass transit free or almost free especially if it is coupled with higher gas taxes. The net result will be better for the planet and all of humanity.
13
@George W "Make mass transit free or almost free..."
Agreed as to "almost free." make it entirely free, it will be a magnet for troublemakers. Even more than now, groups of teenage to mid-20's guys will eat and litter, play loud music, & harass women. And as practical matter, there's no way to control this behavior without opening broader conflict.
4
Because, for the most part, buses don't follow their scheduled timetables. And the routes, in some cases, aren't helpful. How can someone who needs to get to work on time rely on the bus system?
And then there's the elephant in the room... far too often we find vagrants, drug addicts, and criminals on the bus. In some cities, it's perceived to be unsafe.
5
#UberCarpool nothing else.
1
Your comments about Minneapolis bus ridership decreasing are thoroughly misleading. Many bus routes were cancelled when the newest light rail line opened, connecting the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Both the light rail and the bus systems are run by the same transit entity and the same MPO. Yet you insinuate that public transit as a whole is failing.
2
@Fred
Crime, homeless, in the bus and outside the bus.
No buses for me - the stop and go motion makes me nauseous (much worse than being in a car for some reason). I was unlucky enough to have a huge cast on my leg 20 years ago and could not negotiate the subway steps (which is just as handicap unfriendly now as it was then). I had to "walk" nearly a mile on crutches to catch a bus that lurched its way along the route. Those were the longest eight weeks of my life!
4
I stopped riding Metro Transit in Minneapols the third time my bus didn't show up- being late to work- seriously late- made really impossible to justify not driving. I hate driving, I hate destroying the earth while sitting in congestion- but I cannot, as a working mother, justify a hour+ long commute to go ten miles, and not have any idea when I will actually arrive. Metro Transit is really terribly run- and spends a lot of time researching and blaming demographic shifts, without recognizing that people with any other option will not take filthy, late busses.
9
Great article. I think the real issue is that bus systems do not have the resources or the desire to evolve. They tend to be mired in bureaucracy and union rules. It can take a million dollars just to run the studies required to move a bus line or eliminate un-needed stops, install curb-outs and other things we need to make the bus viable.
It's insane and horrible. If bus system had the budget and freedom to be redesigned logically they would be far more useful and far more popular.
6
@Lannock In NYC, it's also due to local politics, pandering to the vocal 'car people', pandering to local Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) - who for some strange reason think car people are their livelihood (vs those who travel by public transit, etc.)
So many cities are stuck in the past, and need brave, bold, decisive City Planners and politicians who are ready to make some major changes in how our streets are utilized. Sure, the vocal minority (car owners) ain't gon like it, but then, folks didn't like it when they were first told they could no longer smoke anywhere and everywhere . Whether it's public transit or smoking, we need to focus on the big picture and the Greater Good.
The future is public transit, not privately-owned Suburban Assault Vehicles (SAVs).
2
In Montclair, on average, one person gets run down per week, and everyone drives SUVs. So I finally got run down and I still have a goofy walk from my injuries 7 month later.
Busses: Slow, not on time. Unsafe some of the time due to riders who care less about the law and being civil toward others.
6
The Tri-Met bus system here in Portland doesn't take into account that even though City officials continue to talk in delusional terms about transforming Portland into Copenhagen, the reality is that Portland's urban sprawl is little different from any other major American metropolitan area. When my car was recently in the shop for two days, I imagined what my life would be like if I didn't have a car. And the obvious answer was that my quality of life would be reduced to a subsistence level.
3
They don't seem especially missing in Portland -- one of the four cities highlighted in your chart. Portland's trajectory is fairly divergent from the other 3 cities highlighted in the chart. Why is there no discussion of that in the article?
1
Speaking for NJ. NJTransit is such a mismanaged organization, their primary mission seems to be constantly raising fares. If anyone ever has the pleasure of taking the bus for the NJ to NYC, they will understand when I speak of the rickety buses, the infernal traffic, the traffic jams, that buses encounter. On the road, the buses are giving basically same privileges as a single person car, with basically no or limited priority given to buses.
3
I spend three hours a day on buses for my commute. It's so frustrating. Buses are late, buses get canceled, and the ergonomics of the buses are made for 6' tall men. There are no hanging straps on SRO buses, there are no elbow rests between seats so people are jammed together, and the entire experience is soul-killing when you have to do it year after year. And all this is for the lucky people - there are many neighborhoods that are woefully underserved or not served at all.
Bus lanes, true Bus Rapid Transit, high-speed rail — all of these solutions are ignored when they should be prioritized. And we pay the highest transit fees in the nation.
11
Seattle seems to be having success in increasing ridership. Why not more comparisons and contrasts in the article to what we're doing vs other cities? I assure you - Uber and Lyft DO exist in Seattle, and there is a god-awful push to bicyclize its citizens. That's the more interesting story, as opposed to speculative excuses from people trying to shift the blame.
1
All of the trends noted play a role in declining ridership, but I have noticed at our house in Boston that ghastly traffic has slowed buses so much that people will choose almost any alternative. Cities need to prioritize buses over private cars, Uber/Lyft etc. and convert parking spaces and multi-lane streets into bus-only lanes. That was done in the Roslindale neighborhood using a bus/bike only lane and it has materially accelerated bus speeds and service. You generally get what you wish for: if you want lots of parking, your streets will be clogged with parked or slow-moving cars and non-functional bus networks.
6
Left out in the analysis : Econ 101
Gasoline Price $/gallon
2013 3.53 (2013 dollars), 3.92 in 2020 dollars
2020 2.30
NYC base subway fare
2013 $2.50 (in 2013 ) $ 2.77 in 2020 dollars
2020 $ 2.75
Gasoline prices are 58.7 % lower, almost 1/2 of what they were in 2013, the cost of public transport did not
The lower the gas price, the more people drive, and the worse for the planet.
9
I've both taken the bus and driven to work.
When I drive, it's about a 15 -20 min trip, 7.5 miles one way.
When I take the bus, it takes between 50 to 110 minutes, depending on traffic.
And it's not a direct route, as the bus lines run where they can best pick up passengers. Probably closer to 20 miles, one way.
Plus, the time of day I need to be on the bus puts me in with rowdy school kids and quite frankly, at 61 no longer feel safe.
I've witnessed too many kids harassing older riders.
I realize I'm contributing to pollution, but my car runs a lot cleaner than the city buses spewing big clouds of diesel exhaust.
And any stops I make are directly on my route, avoiding a second trip if I need some groceries or such.
If the trip were shorter, or I felt safer, I'd ride the bus again but I don't see either of those things improving any time soon.
14
I recently returned to NYC from a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where the longest I had to wait for for one of my many bus rides was 3 minutes. True, I started off in "el centro," downtown. But there were no subways, while buses were plentiful and prioritized - for a fare of about 50 cents. So everyone took the bus - workers and grandmothers and young lovers, all of them letting me know when I had reached the stop at which I wanted to get off.
Contrast this with bus riding in our "advanced" U.S. of A., and I was astonished by the difference. (Sorry, Donald!)
Instead of us teaching them about MAGA, we could learn a thing or two from them.
In addition. when I was younger in NYC, I enjoyed sitting in the middle of the back seat and watch the people on the bus - the moms nursing their kids, the kids playing, the old men reading their papers, etc. It was - and is - a snapshot of the city. Yes, this is getting lost as riders are on their phones or listening through ear buds. Still, it is there.
So give me an efficient bus service with short waits and a diversity of people - and I am there!
18
Because there is a stigma connected with riding the bus in the US. Only the poor ride the bus is the prevailing view point. When I lived in Stockholm everyone rode the bus; yet, when I first moved to Atlanta even the bus drivers looked at you with contempt for riding public transportation. Plus, the buses run too infrequently. I finally bought my first car to avoid the hassle.
22
I live in St. Paul, which is part of the Metro Transit system discussed in the article. I take a so-called "rapid bus" to a light rail station, which then takes me to work. The rapid bus makes fewer stops (just at major intersections) and riders pay before they board, so the bus isn't idling while a rider digs for change to pay the fare. So, it moves a lot faster than a regular bus that stops essentially every 2 or 3 blocks. I think more people would ride the bus if all the lines were rapid buses. Personally, taking the bus (and the train) makes me feel good. I like walking the few blocks between my house and the bus stop. I don't have to drive, and I am doing my part for the environment. I rarely use my car now.
22
I live in Portland and I take our light rail almost every day. I could take the bus but it feels less sanitary and dependable. Frankly, the biggest turnoff to public transit for me is cigarette smoke. I am a migraine sufferer sensitive to smells, especially cigarettes, and bus stop and bus interiors are surrounded and filled by smoke. People don’t respect the directive to not smoke in bus shelters, etc. (which I get, it rains a lot in Oregon). If I’m going to take the bus I basically plan on a headache and it’s not worth it. It also is just unhealthy and out of my control. I feel like I can’t choose whether or not I’m exposed to it. As a woman, I also feel like I have less options for getting away from creepy men on the bus. At least on the Max I have wider seating options. I will take almost any choice — rideshare, biking to work, walking, Lyft, driving — other than the bus.
9
@Megan P
I have asthma, and so risk an attack any time I wait for a bus. The stops and shelters are always full of smokers.
1
When I was a child we always rode the bus into town. Now there is nothing to go to town for. Over time busses became dirtier, less convenient and routes less useful. It seemed only poorer people were riding them. Since I got my first car in 1968 I have never ridden a bus.
12
I'm an urban planner (but not transportation specialist). You could say I'm more motivated to use buses than most people, but frankly I only take it because my employer pays for it, and it is cheaper than parking. My 5 mile commute between my residence and my workplace is a straight shot down the same street. Yet it takes a minimum of 55 minutes, requires a bus transfer (2 lines), and the route is circuitous and not direct. I still sometimes drive, and even with urban traffic and several blocks walk from the cheaper (or free) parking location to work, that door to door trip is 20-25 minutes. Circuitous routing, lack of inter jurisdictional / system coordination, too long dwell times / boarding due to payment, and too frequent stops ( every block) in urban areas all can make a trip painfully slow. And that's before factoring in traffic, speed, comfort, and predictability/ timeliness. My good friend doesn't own a car, makes far less money than me, and gets a senior/disabled fare, but still uses Uber/Lyft a lot. Can't blame him.
20
@Bill C.
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If you are five miles from work, and it is a straight line, why do you not ride your bike most of the time?
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In NW Europe, many people would cycle. Five miles is a very ridable distance. It would take you roughly 25 minutes. Falls Church has an enviably warm climate, not too much rain, no snow.
.
Have you considered it?
4
@Richard Blaine I have considered that many times, however there is topography, insufficient shower/changing facilities at work, and a transition from very different suburban/urban contexts which do not make cycling comfortable or easy for all but the most fearless and motivated cyclists. We do have a bikeshare system in the municipality where I work, and it is very good for running errands at lunchtime. I also sometimes keep my personal bike at my workplace for errands, lunch, or post-work fitness/pleasure rides. I have been lucky in the past that I had a live/work situation where I could easily bike or walk. And yes I was about 15 lbs lighter then too. In my professional capacity, although I'm not directly involved, we are working on these policy issues, but it is slow and contentious. A local road was recently changed from 4 lanes to 3 lanes with a center turn lane and bike lanes, and that has and will continue to consume local politics for quite a while.
5
@Richard Blaine It's not California.
FWIW I lived in NYC on and off for almost 25 years before ever taking a bus. The routes seemed complex, poorly signed and service seemed spotty.
Transportation apps (I use one called Transit) that use your location to give you the best route, accurate wait times have been a gamechanger. I now use the bus whenever possible and prefer it to the more crowded subway.
This said there is still much cities like NY could do to encourage bus ridership.
1. Phone based ticket purchase
2. Electric buses
3. Better signage/maps at each station.
4. More express options
18
I've been interested in this issue for many decades. I chose a residence near my work in the late 60's because I was frustrated by the car-dependence of my exurban life as a teenager. Since 1970 I have biked the short distance to work. In other cities, while traveling, I have used a wide variety of public transit systems. A problem not discussed in the article, but mentioned somewhat indirectly in some of the comments, is class prejudice excerbated by the terrible income inequaltiy in the US. Desperately poor people crowd the buses in some cities because it is one of the few places to avoid the elements at low or zero cost, they are often inhygenic because they are homeless without easy access to showers and they are often mentally troubled because mental health care is not available to them and the asylums were closed without providing any alternative mental health treatment facilities decades ago. It is certainly in the interests of all the public to increase use of public transit, but it will be difficult until we take steps to resolve the larger problem of the growing number of desperately poor people. Clean abundant public housing, free medical care for all, excellent, well built and maintained public schools everywhere, public jobs for those who do not
successfully compete on the private market. All those things are done in other countries and can and will have to be done here to deal with this problem. More cops and cleanup on the busses alone will not do it.
25
Daily NYC bus rider here. Let's see...
-Buses are not reliably on time - wide, unpredictable gaps in service
-Buses are frequently crowded - too many people, carts and packages in the way, people won't move towards the back, getting pushed and shoved, etc.
-Bus stops are too close together to be efficient (every 2-3 blocks is typical in NYC)
-Lawlessness such as fare evasion, littering, graffiti, spitting, etc. are rampant
The whole experience is really just unpleasant, and anyone who can avoid it will certainly do so. I know I would.
23
It’s actually very simple. Most people will not ride the bus, if clean, quick, comfortable alternatives exist such as the Atlanta or DC Metro, etc. Buses can get stuck in traffic jams, delaying riders getting to work, and buses have to stop and go causing the doors to open constantly, so they struggle to maintain a comfortable temperature for riders whether it’s maintaining warmth in the winter or cool air in the summer.
6
More frequent buses, more routes, more payment options. I believe these will increase ridership even if tickets go up.
7
The streetcar? Please. My mom told us about streetcars, but she has been gone for almost two decades and that memory was from five decades before her death.
How about that the cost of ride share options, which appeal to many, has made bus rides less cost efficient?
A young friend in LA who does not drive or own a car - something we and her parents worried about at first - is able to get to and from her various work and personal commitments with ride sharing.
She did the math, and it was well in her favor. Purchase or lease, gas, insurance, maintenance and the cost of parking or storage space all figure into having a car, no matter where you are going.
The day to day commute? Not usually a surge pricing period. Available drivers are plentiful.
All ages can see this benefit.
4
I am a baby boomer who rode the bus or biked my entire career until retirement. It was my personal time and also a networking opportunity. I hired several students whom I met on the bus. But now there isn't a bus stop close to me. I have to walk at least a mile to get to a bus stop after the MTC decided to invest in high-speed, fewer stop buses on main commuter routes. There is no longer a bus that comes into our neighborhood. One lost rider.
21
I am a baby boomer who rode the bus or biked my entire career until retirement. It was my personal time and also a networking opportunity. I hired several students whom I met on the bus. But now there isn't a bus stop close to me. I have to walk at least a mile to get to a bus stop after the MTC decided to invest in high-speed, fewer stop buses on main commuter routes. There is no longer a bus that comes into our neighborhood. One lost rider.
1
I blame the embrace of City Bikes. So many upper middle class young people rent their DIVY bike and ride to work, even though they live right along existing bus and transit routes.
Cities are subsidizing the bikes (used mainly by wealthier professionals in the center of the city) and still has to subsidize the buses that serve the outer parts of the city (where lower earning workers tend to live).
Cities should message that buses are very environmentally friendly and point out that they have to load the DIVY bikes into trucks to reallocate them across the city. The DIVY bikes have a carbon footprint that may be worse than buses (which are always going to run).
4
@James So now cycling is bad? Who knew? Would it be different if the majority of Citi riders were low-income? I'm not sure how anyone can criticize the notion of cycling. Good for the environment, good for the riders' health. Sure, maybe the bikes have to be loaded onto trucks, but that's one truck for dozens of bikes I'd imagine. Also, lots of cyclists also own their own bicycles and do not employ Citi bikes...
7
@Lisa
I can criticize cycling's limitations. Not everyone can ride a bicycle and folks don't ride bikes in freezing weather. I am 73, have had a hip replacement and have a very bad knee. Plus, traffic and the neighborhood where I live is dangerous. Luckily I can still drive because supermarkets, friend's and family's houses are too far to walk and not on a bus route. I looked up going by bus to a place I often visit 15 miles from my home. It would take me 3 busses and about 2.5 hours each way. The drive takes roughly 45 minutes. If the planners, whoever they are, want more bus ridership they must make it cleaner, faster, more reliable and go where people want to go. Biking is out of the question for that trip even for the young and healthy.
In Boston, one is able to get around without a car, same in London and New York City, although the subway is dirty. Los Angeles' public transportation. is unwieldy and chaotic. From the comments, it would seem many cities have similar problems.
6
@James I think there is truth to this but fundamentally DiVY is a very good thing and should bee seen as complementary to busses. I am very glad they exist and are being subsidized!
1
there is no one reason. Speed have always been slow but may be getting slower as congestion increases. Uber/Lyft/bikeshare take a toll as does cheap gas and easy car financing as noted but I'd also emphasize how we subsidize "free" parking, even in downtown Providence and for all state employees. As whites leave the bus system (In RI down over 20% in a decade) and the system becomes even more weighted to people of color it makes it even harder to get whites to ride - indeed some downtown Providence business owners want to get rid of the buses entirely as its clientele makes it harder for then to lease space in nearby buildings. The environmental movement seems of little help, they mainly seem fixated on reducing transportation carbon emissions with electric cars.
Yet the maximizing of personal convenience by not using buses adds to congestion, ugly parking facilities, highway accidents, pollution and carbon emissions that hurt us all. I think the only way to start to reverse this is to make all bus transit free - that would also speed up trips, save costs of collection and help concentrate development more in areas with good transit instead of sprawl.
7
@Barry Schiller Indeed. So long as so many municipal bus companies/bus routes do not offer pre-paid boarding, the payment/boarding process in and of itself, has a huge negative impact on how quickly buses can operate along their entire route.
6
Also, the belief or suggestion that ride-sharing services are problematic, in that they increase the number of vehicles on our streets, is sort of a catch 22. Sure, they may be more such vehicles, but that's likely because the buses run poorly. And maybe the buses worsened as more people moved into dense cities and surrounding areas, and with them came their private vehicles. These dense cities, experiencing population increases, and folks with cars, then had slower bus commute times, so then ridesharing came in to speed things up, for those who could afford to avail themselves.
One could also argue that Uber etc. simply took the place (or 'killed off') what were previously taxi services. No one ever complained about taxis on our streets, did they? Though it's also possible that we have more ridesharing cars vs taxis, due to the ease of reserving them via apps.
Either way, I also find it interesting that so many (and I suspect owners of private vehicles) point the finger at Uber, at 'reckless Amazon drivers', etc., but never consider themselves, much less suggest that maybe too many people own private vehicles which they really don't need. We've heard all the excuses, but in many instances that's all they are.... 'excuses'. The majority of NYCers do Not own cars, and yet somehow manage, despite their having toddlers, groceries, elderly parents, sports they may engage in, doctor's visits, etc.
4
Confirmed bus rider for decades. But my employer moved, and I moved as well for ease of access to work. Now my "commute" is an 11-minute walk. Still value and use the bus several times weekly but no longer a reliable everyday rider. There are a lot like me in Portland.
8
I ride a MetroTransit bus every day in Minneapolis. The main reason that people avoid the bus is crime, and the perception of crime. The anti-social types, the drunks and drug addicts are the biggest problem. They tend to be concentrated on certain routes. But there is also an unfounded fear of crime by many people. It only takes one bad experience for someone to drop the bus.
Another reason is commuter bus services in the suburbs. The buses only come into the city in the morning, and go back in the afternoon. But people who live in the inner city can't get to the suburbs. The mindset is that the bus is an extension of the automobile.
I've also noticed that the number of people who don't pay fares is increasing. A lot in my opinion. It's become very common for someone to get onto the bus and ask the driver for a free ride. I've only very rarely seen the driver refuse them (for one thing, they're too busy driving the bus to care). And if you're tracking ridership with paid fares, that would be measurement problem.
16
@W The drivers are instructed to not have confrontations with riders. Period. If they don't pay ignore them and let them ride for free. They have a special clicker to keep track of non-paying riders. I know because I was a driver.
8
@W
Free rides? Really? I can't see that happening in NYC. Maybe our drivers are a little more assertive ( I didn't want to say aggressive)? I have, however, seen drivers tell people to get off if they don't have the fare. We take coins, but mostly use Metrocards to avoid time wasting time counting change. So if you don't have a card, that's it, no one is going to help you.
2
@W - You can't confront someone not paying. What are you going to do over $1.50? What are you going to do when a homeless person enters your restaurant for a free handout? You want them out of there as fast as possible without upsetting your restaurant patrons.
5
It's not convenient. I don't live in the city so busses to my area are infrequent, running maybe twice in an hour during the busiest time of day. The routes they follow and stops they make end up wasting hours of my day. It's more expensive to drive around with gas money and car insurance and maintenance on my vehicle, but now a trip to the store doesn't take an entire afternoon, it takes under an hour.
4
In south Florida, communities have tried for decades to get drivers out of their cars and into buses and trains. But our small downtown areas quickly give way to sprawling suburbs, the weather (heat, humidity, sudden thunderstorms) discourage walking the needed distance to bus stops—which have only in the past couple of years began to be converted to sheltered facilities. And where is the transportation from the stops to the neighborhoods where people live?
On many routes, the buses have become rolling sanctuaries for the homeless and drug addicted; working people who simply want a peaceful ride to their workplaces are harassed and made to feel unsafe.
The full sized buses on the vast majority of routes run mostly empty throughout the day and night. Why not convert to a system of smaller vehicles—mini buses and commuter vans to carry passengers to more stops closer to their homes? This seems a reasonable alternate to vacant behemoths on wheels blocking traffic as they stop to discharge a single rider.
11
Do all these statistics count the large number of people in NYC who do not pay fares? Citywide, one in 5 is said to not pay and on some routes, the rate of nonpayment is arguably much higher. Which does not take away from how slow the buses really are. I am happy to take buses when I do not have any schedule to adhere to.
8
@SR As you stated, it is 'said' that one in five do not pay. That is 'said' by the MTA, where clearly it's in their own self-interest to skew the 'farebeating' figures as way to explain away their budget woes. Sure, there are farebeaters, but I suspect it's far lower than what the MTA suggests. It's just that, farebeating is an easy target, often subtly framed as being a low-income (i.e., black and latino) problem.
Consider all the time and money that the MTA has put into their farebeating campaign..the PR agency they had to hire...the cost of all the new posters that had to be made...and then all those posters having to be put up by the MTA's union-salaried workers. A good use of our MTA and taxpayer dollars? And when that same money could have actually been put towards doing some things to actually Improve our commutes?
This to me is one of the MTA's biggest problems. They mis-spend our money.
1
@Lisa
Misspending notwithstanding, farebeating is a continuous and continuing problem in the entire system and it would be interesting to see what could be accomplished if all fares were paid.
3
@Lisa
I've only known fare-beating to occur in train stations. How do you get pass the bus driver?
I would need to take three different buses and then walk 10 mins in an area with no sidewalks to get to my job. . and IF all three connections were on time, it would take three hours to go 13 miles.
I would love to take the bus to work and or work at a company on a bus line, but a lot of the good companies are located in the suburbs.
8
One reason people decline to use buses is the uncertainty of when and if it will arrive. Buses cannot keep to a prepared schedule when traffic is variable. In Seattle, a professor of electrical engineering (Dan Daily) developed an cell-phone application that gave very good estimates of when the next bus would arrive at any stop. The city bus administration was initially very opposed, as they viewed it as revealing that the buses rarely were "on time" according to the schedules --as if the riders didn't already know that. Once it was pointed out to them that nobody cared about the schedule, they just want to know when the bus will be there, they saw the light. This may be one of the reasons Seattle has had increasing ridership. (It is also, like San Francisco, very hilly, making bicycling difficult for most trips)
11
I love taking the bus, and has done so in every city that I have lived in across the US. I got lucky when I moved to the Kansas city area to find that the bus stop is right across from my apartment.
I often stick out like a sore thumb on the bus, being a young, white, well educated middle class female, and I even had a police cruiser pull up to me once on a bus stop to make sure I am ok. When I mention to colleagues that I commute by bus, I am often met with "But isn't it very dangerous?" No. It's not. Most other people on the bus are also going to work, just like me. And the bus drivers keep an eye on all their riders.
Yes, it takes me about 10 minutes longer to take the bus, compared to driving to work, but I get to do whatever I want during my commute, and someone else has to deal with traffic and road work. The busses here run dead on time, even during snowstorms (I am very impressed), and are generally safer in those conditions. The month pass is $50, which is several times cheaper than what we spend on gas for my husband's shorter car commute.
I wish more young people took the time to slow down and appreciate the pace of public transportation.
38
@Natasha I couldn't have said it better! I've been a devoted bus rider for years in Chicago. It's the only way to go.
14
An increasing number Portlanders walk or ride bikes to work, grocery stores, and appointments. Far more people live near downtown. Tech companies that used to be located in suburban campuses moved into old buildings downtown. The company I work for used to qualify for discounts on public transit passes because a certain percentage of the work force used public transit, but can no longer qualify, do to the increasing number of employees who walk or bike to work, with no increase in the percentage driving cars. Downtown buildings have beautiful bike storage rooms and showers.
3
@David I biked to work in Portland for years, not riding TriMet because I couldn't consistently depend on getting to my job on time, and especially because I couldn't guarantee I would get off on time to catch the last bus back.
As someone said earlier, the bus is great if you don't have to be somewhere at an exact time.
@David - Your statement is factually correct. However, interestingly bike commuting is down in Portland along with transit ridership. A few tech companies to whom you elude may have moved from the suburban locations where bus transit is either non-existant or not robust; however, most downtown Portland tech arrived from Seattle, San Francisco, or are startup - don't throw suburbs under the bus. I agree that transit ridership is down in part because of the downtown workforce and housing proximity growth in general, but it is also down because the economy is up and people buy cars, and gas prices are down so they drive more. People in Portland like elsewhere are also using Uber and Lyft more because of convenience and due to lack of reliability of the bus schedule.
1
I never minded the bus/T ride to work and home every day. I felt that I was doing a good thing for society by not driving a car. I was saving money by not owning a car. It was interesting to watch the characters on the bus with me. It gave me exercise walking to and from the bus. A win-win for me. BUT... over the years the crowds grew and grew but the buses and trains stayed the same. Older and older and shabbier with more breakdowns and not enough of them to supply the demand. Auto numbers grew, making traffic worse and bus routes take longer and longer. I grew older and less patient, too. Unfortunately, I gave in and bought a car so I could avoid the overcrowding and lateness. If the infrastructure was better, I'd ditch the car in a second. This is one reason that the bus/train ridership is down.
18
Here is Berkeley and Oakland, the bus is often cancelled, enough that relying on it can mean walking or having the back up plan of a rideshare. Once a system proves itself to be unreliable a certain number of times, people make other arrangements. It's beyond frustrating to wait for buses that never arrive - so everyone who can, makes other arrangements. Additionally it's not cheap and there are no transfers.
7
@Nik B
There are transfers on AC Transit. What system are you talking about?
1
The primary reason bus ridership is falling in the U.S. is Uber/Lyft. College educated commuters in the city would rather pay $8-15 per ride to go door to door than $2.50 to wait at a bus stop and then walk to work from where they are dropped off.
In Chicago the second reason bus ridership dropped is because in 2014 the price of a 1-day unlimited pass went from $5.50 to $10. Prior to 2014 the typical 1-day pass was used over 5 times and they sold a ton of them, now nobody buys a 1-day pass.
4
Why aren't more people riding the bus? Have ridden a bus lately? They are slow, smell bad, often inhabited by obnoxious people, and dirty. I'd rather wake up early and find my way to work than hop on a bus.
28
In NYC, I can tell you that I specifically ride buses LESS now, due to increased traffic in our streets. More vehicles = slower speeds for buses. Lack of DoT and NYPD Enforcement of double-parked private vehicles, vehicles idling in Bus Only Lanes, vehicles idling in Bus Stops = further delays for buses.
Another contributing factor? The NYC MTA's lack of foresight. They'd rather spend millions on WiFi and 'countdown clocks', which, while 'nice' to have, do Nothing to improve or impact our actual commutes. Whether that countdown clock shows the next bus is 2 minutes vs 20 minutes away, guess what? We still have to wait.
In the year 2020, and this, the 'Greatest City on Earth', all MTA bus lines should be SBS or allow for pre-paid boarding at All Stops. Right now, riding an MTA bus (especially from start to finish) is sheer torture, not only because of all the traffic, but because the boarding process is ten times as long as it should be. 'Third-world' countries have better bus systems than this.
Buses, instead of being relegated to 2nd-class citizen status, should take Top Priority. Private vehicles need to take a back seat for a change, with more penalties, taxes and incentives to not buy/operate a private vehicle, being implemented. The future is public transit and people. Bikes. Pedestrians. Not privately-owned Suburban Assault Vehicles that pollute our neighborhoods, destroy the planet and maim and kill thousands of pedestrians/cyclists each year.
13
You barely mention the economic penalty! I take the commuter rail every morning and the cost of the monthly pass and parking (at the station, 50 minutes outside the city!) is greater than the cost that driving in (including gas and a decent month parking space space inside the city). I commute nonetheless because it is far less stressful...but I think government policy should encourage mass transportation by lowering fees and having free parking available at stations. Unfortunately government policy believes everyone should be taxed for roads but mass transportation should be self sufficient.
23
The Denver metro area is very expensive to take public transportation. I use rail and my bicycle most days. Whether rail, or bus, a day all region pass is $10.50. When I used to drive, it was less than two gallons round trip, which at today’s cost is less than $4.00 dollars and free on site parking. Now I buy a one way and ride my bike home. A hour by train to work and 2 1/2 hours ride home. Most days the ride home is like a short vacation.
5
It fell because of people like me who like the bus (I get a real kick out of the many characters who board and watching and listening to the banter of the regulars on the M103), but if you forget your Metrocard, or if it is low on funds you have no ability to add funds to it, except by going to a subway station and then of course the reason for taking the bus is moot. Let people pay for the bus with contactless credit cards and ridership will go up...or better yet make it free for a few months and it will surge back.
19
I can't speak for other cities, but if you've ever been to Salt Lake County, you'd know why people here loathe mass transit. Utah Transit Authority is inefficient, overpriced and constantly under investigation for corruption and nepotism. They make promises they don't deliver, they stop running hours before last call, and options like Uber and Lyft are always more reliable and cost effective.
8
Here in Dallas I live in what must be considered a "white" neighborhood.... So far out of downtown that I am 14 miles from the courthouse. But I live 2 miles away from a light rail station. I drive to the rail station and take the train a couple of times a week to downtown Dallas. I find the bus to the rail station, which stops 103 feet from my front door, inconvenient, as it runs only twice an hour on weekdays and once an hour on weekends.
2
The answer is simple for Minneapolis. The public transit (trains and busses) have become infested with serious violent crime. The officials deny this, but the numbers don't lie. People don't ride public transportation simple because of the safety concerns. Also, the quality and frequency of the rides have decreased in many areas. The MET Council has its head in the sand. I was a bus and train rider. I drive now because of safety and reliability. Sorry!
25
@MSB Portland is the same way. Tri Met has consistently underfunded security and ignored fare-evasion for years.
2
@MSB Exact same in Chicago. I can see the "L" from my front window, but due to crime I don't use it much any more.
3
@MSB
Thank you,
one of the reasons that I moved back to my hometown was for its public transportation. there is almost no street parking and downtown lots cost a small fortune. The big issue for me are the homeless and mentally ill who are my fellow passengers. It is not very pleasant and not always safe.
23
@Kathleen Clarke I doubt any city has public transportation as good as San Francisco. Whenever I visit my son, I buy a bus pass and use it until I am ready to leave. Then give it to a homeless person. The buses run frequently and I have never been disappointed in the quality of service or the courtesy of the riders and passengers.
4
I would say if my experience in San Francisco last year is an indicator, I would rather walk that ride or take an Uber. There was a homeless man in obvious need of medical can with a shoe full of blood, and another troubled person who was dumping ice cream on people in front of him. I got off after two stops as I got on and told the driver what was happening and she just shrugged -- and this was on a major line to get from downtown hotels to the museum area in Golden Gate Park.
No thanks, I'm walking.
28
When I lived in San Francisco in the 1990s, I usually took the bus or the Muni Metro train when I went to the grocery store. If I still lived in San Francisco, I expect I would be taking Uber or Lyft. Carrying groceries home on the bus was always a nightmare. Also, there were just too many scary people and weirdos on the bus. Looking back, I would estimate that at least 1/3 of my bus rides involved a negative experience of some kind with other riders including being stuck next to someone who was smelly, crazy, or insisted on talking to me about some weird topic; men who hit on me; occasional groping; observe arguments or violence between other passengers; people have medical emergencies; mechanical break downs that caused long delays; and general unsanitary conditions.
17
I live in the LA area. The closest bus stop is 3 miles from my house. It does not go where I need to go, and is slow. Next question?
10
I live in the LA area. I'm a short walk from 5 bus lines and a Metro Rail station, would love to see better service and more dedicated bus lanes. But point taken, there are areas where transit makes more sense and areas where it makes less sense.
4
Buses are super unreliable especially in cities. They also make a million stops....
5
Here in Portland, I have felt scared taking public transportation. There is no visible security, and people have been attacked and even killed in recent years.
15
@Rick Sorry but I'm from Portland and your comment seems a bit extreme. Yes, there were attacks (almost 3 years ago) but I think you overlook the fact that in 99.999% of cases, we get to our destination safely (my estimate). Still safer than driving, etc., the media's coverage of extreme events on Trimet, (much like coverage of plane crashes), may adversely influence people's perceptions of risk. If I may, I'd suggest contacting Trimet to get information/data on safety. I guess it may relieve your fears.
3
@Rick That's interesting. I ride the bus when I'm in Portland every couple months and am amazed at what a pleasant experience it is. Perhaps give Trimet another chance.
2
Honestly, can't America just copy European or Asian public transportation systems? I live in San Franciso Bay Area, with one of supposedly better public transport systems in USA, and it's awful. When I first moved here and took my first trip, my first thought was "Gosh, this feels like going 50 years back in the past". Commute by car from the airport to home takes 30 minutes, but public transport on the weekend can be as long as 4 hours. My commute from San Francisco to work in Palo Alto (Muni, Caltrain) could take anywhere from 1 hour to 2 during the workweek - how could I plan showing up at work in time? Caltrain pricing is for the rich (one stop (3 mile) ride can cost 6$), and unfortunately a car is way cheaper :( If you can't even get a reliable trip, why bother trying? I used to travel by public transport exlusively when I lived Germany, now I rarely do. I bet if public transport was great and convenient, people would take it.
36
People like trains and subways walking driving or Ubering. They just don’t like busses. It’s not a new thing. No one has ever liked busses.
7
At least in NYC, one way to attract new riders is to allow bikes and strollers (not folded) on the bus. Get rid of seats if necessary.
1
Ride-sharing companies moved in overnight and stole billions of dollars in public revenue. That's what happened.
8
Have the writers of this piece been on a city bus recently? Older people I know who rely on busses are going out less because the busses are unsafe. Some riders are mentally ill homeless people, drug addicts (vaping on the bus!), or menacing gang members who refuse to pay. The general unreliability of schedules and long times to go only a few miles, means people are asking their friends for rides or paying for Uber or Lyft. I took the bus once recently to pick up my car from the repair shop. The pay machine was broken, there was standing room only, and a clearly angry bus driver. I couldn't wait to get off. The writers are focussing on technology and generational changes which has some validity but the terrible condition of the busses, scary people, and the lack of reliability appear to me to be more salient. Anyone who can avoid the busses in Los Angeles does so.
43
"The answer... would be to make the true costs of driving more apparent"
Well no... the answer would be to recognize market signals like every other enterprise in a free economy. People don't want to ride buses - deal with it. The solution is not for some pointy-headed city planner to suggest the answer is "more taxes for everybody".
The good news is that at least bus routes are flexible and fungible - those silly mass transit light rail solutions that gobble up billions of dollars are not.
So - a rational market-based approach is:
discourage single rider cars while encouraging rideshare/bikeshare
then buses
then way down...subways
and way...way... down Light Rail.
4
Public transit is an inferior good, meaning people use less of it as they grow wealthier. This is just a sign of increasing living standards.
7
I agree with the comments of Bruce1253 and others . But I will also add: I wonder if declining ridership correlates with the increase of opioid addiction and homelessness. I tried to use only public transit in suburban Denver. It only lasted 4 months. Two personal experiences of mine: 1) I saw a nice professionally dressed young female commuter looking Very uncomfortable as a weird creepy scraggly man with a face that was Literally bleeding insist on talking to her, clearly when she didn’t want to. 2) I boarded a bus and there was a horribly strong body odor stench, putridly disgusting. I bought a car two days later.
21
I am a white long time resident and bus rider in a Cincinnati city neighborhood that is being rapidly gentrified. Ironically the white well-educated gentrifiers most interested in climate change are the least interested in "uncool" solutions like bus riding. My black neighbors and I have been reducing our carbon footprints for decades and yet stand to lose the most through loss pf affordable housing and public transportation because more affluent whites are reclaiming land their parents rejected in "white flight" and would rather Uber or drove their own cars, none of which support the values they claim to have. The hypocrisy is galling.
36
Is this a trick question? Riding the bus is awful. It is the worst of both worlds. You get to sit in traffic and bear the unpleasantness of public transportation. I'll take a Metro train any and every time I can. Yes, they can be crowded and there can be some unpleasant people one has to deal with. But I am going faster than the traffic on the roads above me.
The main reason we have buses are that our political leaders won't invest in rail transportation.
12
Is this a joke? People don’t ride busses because they are the worst possible way to get from point a to point b. If you have any other option you take it. They don’t keep to schedule, are crowded and super slow and still don’t actually take you to your final destination. I live in NYC and I walk before I take the bus. Even in the rain.
12
High ticket and monthly pass costs, unreliable time schedules, inconvenient routes, dirty seats/floors, and shabby poorly maintained buildings/facilities. Europe does a MUCH better job on all of those factors so people actually trust their transit system and use it more often.
6
From personal experience, eyewateringly pungent drunken people who ride the bus nonstop for ac in the summer and heat in the winter are a problem. Add to that the drugged and the men who harass and grope women and i’d rather not ride our town’s free bus system. Also, the bus doesn’t run late enough to ride downtown for a meal & a drink on the weekend. I’m not sure why they have a bus system except as a rolling homeless shelter or a college shuttle.
15
Most of the bus lines use dirty buses, exact-change-only payment policy, restrictions on pets and carry weapons of passengers, etc. Who wants to patronize them?
3
Why aren't they taking the bus? Because buses are gross and get caught in traffic jams.
4
Having lived overseas, where public transportation is the usual way to travel in and out of cities, I have noticed that here in the US there is an assumption that public transport is for the poor. A sad "Parasite" effect.
10
While the times are certainly changing, one fact remains:
Americans use transit more when the economy is bad and much less so as the economy soars as we have witnessed from the Obama economy, extending to, well, a few weeks ago.
As money get tight, people turn to transit as it is typically far less expensive than a car. Micro transit and the uber-lyft thing is nice, but it is far less productive than transit and results in far more traffic and pollution.
1
Buses and other public transit options are failing a major audience - women. I don't take the bus in part because of safety concerns I have as a woman riding alone or with my kids. https://laist.com/2019/10/03/los-angeles-la-metro-women-public-transportation-travel-report.php
23
How about dirty buses with unreliable schedules? Buses that terminate or connect through dirty bus stations with suspicious-looking panhandlers hanging out without going anywhere? If it takes 45 minutes to go from one transfer point to another, with another 20 minute to 45 minute wait for a connection, why take a bus?
10
Buses are the lowest form of transportation, that is why ridership is down..When all these cities, like Charlottesville, va. started talking about putting in trolleys, and it turns out they mean these big ugly buses with a weird exterior plastic wrap to look a 'trolley', I almost fell off my chair..Buses are nothing like the light, easy experience of real city trollys. Frankfurt, A.m. has a great system, as does Philly, in some parts - it was a HUGE mistake to think bus lines could act like real light rail..No thank you..I would rather walk.
7
I am retired and I love public transit, the MAX train, the streetcar, and the bus. I get to look at what is going by and relax. EXCEPT - when a transient, horribly smelling, carrying a huge trash bag of their belongings, mumbling to themselves or to me, sits across from me. I am ready for them to jump at me any second. Maybe not rational, but I am human. And you have to be careful where you sit. These incidents are few, but one can tarnish the whole. Why would anyone who could drive put up with this? Except for old duffers like me!
I spent several weeks in Berlin Germany recently and it was transit heaven. U-Bahn, S-Bahn, Tram, and buses everywhere. Rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes, the cars were fairly clean, and periodic sweeps by fare checkers/police. Even the very few transients were behaved. Perhaps a lot more attention to daily maintenance and operation?
25
@C. Neville So true! If Tri Met would do some fare/checking and transit police sweeps of its trains and buses on a regular basis it would vastly improve the riding experience. I was in Amsterdam last year and mass transit was remarkably better than Portland's.
7
ITSS! It's The Service Stupid. It's not telework, it's not those darned millenials, it's not "the suburbanization of the poor." It's unreliable bus service. Many routes have atrophied, and those that have survived often have a bus every 30 min. or even more.
Who would volunteer to take all the bad parts of driving (i.e. traffic) with none of the good (e.g. not stopping every 2 blocks, not waiting to get in the car)?
11
I don't even consider taking the bus anymore, and there are definitely times when it would be useful. My reason? Other riders. People are so rude, gross, and sometimes even dangerous. I've been harassed and threatened and followed by other bus riders enough times that I see no reason to put myself in those situations anymore. And I've also been on buses when someone defecates themselves, which is not only horrifyingly disgusting, but also dangerously unsanitary. I will pay extra to take Uber etc rather than deal with the great unwashed masses.
19
@Kate Same in Chicago. Dangerous and not worth it.
3
So what cities are the two blue lines that are going up?
@Susan
Oh, I see now that you can click on the line and it will tell you. Note, however, that the words "fell -21%" is actually an increase, if it fell by a negative number. A better word than rose or fell would be changed.
1
I find people attach some stigma to using mass transit in cities where it's not the norm. The cities you mention have a lot of young tech workers, they can trend "libertarian" in their views. They can often work at home or easily afford to take Uber or Lyft. Being civic-minded and supporting mass transit to get cars off the road isn't something most Americans are willing to do. Convenience is king here. This is why we are unhealthy. This is why the earth is in trouble.
5
There are many reasons, but this is the major one. My trip to work, which takes 25 minutes by car in bad traffic, can take up to twice as long on the bus. The round-trip commute adds about an hour and forty minutes to my work day, or about 8 hours a week, just to get and from work. The extra time I spend on the bus means time away from the things I need and want to do.
Cities need to make dedicated transit routes and improve commute times if they want to boost use.
11
I live just outside Portland, OR, and the bus is virtually useless to me. The spoke-and-hub suburb-downtown system is perfect for people who live in the burbs and go downtown to work Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, but useless for those of us who only travel suburb to suburb, and also for my two adult children, who work non-standard shifts at grocery store and hospital.
8
Bus lanes have NOT increased bus ridership in NYC.
And Express Bus and Select Bus have only made bus ridership more difficult - ask anyone who uses the bus, not MTA management.
4
@Eugene I'm perplexed as to why you say express and SBS service have made ridership 'more difficult'. Can you explain?
I routinely ride the M60 SBS and it works like a charm. Boarding and disembarking is a breeze. Local MTA buses are horrid, mainly due to the front-door only boarding process, which at times can take a full five minutes at just one bus stop (depending on the stop and the time of day).
Also, bus lanes should theoretically speed-up bus travel, if only the NYPD and DoT did their jobs at making sure these lanes are empty of idling private vehicles.
7
For physically and mentally active adults, the time wasting of public transit is a huge issue. If buses could be half the size but run twice as often, it would probably help a lot. Of course, more is spent on labor, then. It might be worth it.
10
I live in downtown Chicago - the West Loop. I have never owned a car and my husband gave up his car in 2010 after he balked at high parking prices. We use the bus because that's what's close to us. But, we have commuter and Amtrak stations within walking distance and can take a shuttle to the airport when we need that. Friends want to know why I don't use Uber/Lyft - why should I? There is no shortage of taxis in my neighborhood, either. Right now, until the retail landscape changes, I can do all my shopping (food, clothing, pharmacies) by walking. It's entirely possible to live without a car and the bus lets us do that. I just wonder why more folks haven't figured that out.
8
@Chicagogirl13 I live in Chicago too. Not every neighborhood is as well served as the West Loop, which is a great neighborhood. I've lived downtown without a car, and that was fine. Very easy to get around. However, most of Chicago has CTA busses and "L" trains that are filthy and dangerous with no police anywhere to prevent the frequent harassment, muggings, etc.
I live in Brooklyn but am from Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, it used to be that it wasn't easy or cheap to get traditional cabs, and in many cases, people might have opted for a bus. Now that Uber and Lyft are widely available and cheaper than traditional cabs, I have a feeling that some of the bus ridership has shifted to them. Also, the congestion has gotten much worse in the last 10 years, which makes buses move that much slower (same as NYC). People then think its a better option to use ride sharing services, which then makes congestion worse and buses that much slower. Priority needs to be given to buses, no question about it. That is especially true in NYC. The closing of 14th Street in Manhattan is a perfect example of what will happen when buses are prioritized over low occupancy vehicles. On 14th street, bus speeds went up quickly and significantly, which led to an almost immediate increase in bus usage. It simply became the better option and a better usage of limited road space.
8
@Will BA I too, am from Minneapolis, and the time wasted in waiting for buses and riding distances is time lost forever. I consider myself fortunate to live in a neighborhood where I can do almost everything by walking.
4
Besides the factors mentioned in the article, I feel there’s a stigma attached to riding a bus. Since most bus systems were built as a safety net for the poor and those without other options, most people (especially the poor) don’t want to be associated to it. Having a car is not only for convenience but also a source of pride. America has been leading the world in this way of thinking, and many immigrants consider buying a car the first achievement they can make in the new land. Even though many wealthy, well-educated Americans are reducing car-ownership as a statement of their environmental concerns, the poor (and new immigrants) are still aspiring to the middle-class status by buying cars.
9
@Phat Katt Interesting observation. On one hand, yes, most of the folk I tend to see on the bus are clearly 'blue collar' and/or immigrant and/or folks who clearly care about the planet, recycling, etc.
But on the other, I definitely do see many from the various immigrant communities in NYC, driving vehicles. And you are on point in that...sadly, many immigrants who come here seem to immediately take up all that is disgusting about the stereotypical American lifestyle. They all want the fanciest homes possible, complete with faux 'corinthian colums' on their porches, etc. And they typically are driving a massive SUV that runs for anywhere from $30-40k.
5
@Phat Katt
"most bus systems were built as a safety net for the poor and those without other options. "
Not true! Most bus/transit systems were developed for everyone in the city. RE: the poor, they used it less frequently than the middle class--they couldn't afford the fare. In the 1950s Americans started buying cars in much greater numbers, which decentralized the urban area and scattered workplaces and other frequently traveled-to places, which reduced demand for buses, causing reductions in service, further reducing demand, further reducing service... Meanwhile, poor people were given vouchers and fare enforcement was diminished, further changing the demographics of ridership that you have suggested. In the Sun Belt, the Civil Rights Act did more to reduce transit ridership of whites than probably any other factor.
It's time we face these issues and develop transit systems that make their usage attractive to all segments of society.
1
Portland has dedicated a lot of money to light rail, and I use it when I can, but I'm 5 miles away from the nearest line. Dedicated bus lanes and smaller buses might be an answer, because our streets are jammed at all hours now.
4
@Kilroy71 Portland is spending all of their money on light rail, ignoring the need to expand freeway lanes. They seem to forget that I5 is an interstate freeway, not a city street. I live south of Portland and frequently head to Vancouver. Light rail will not help me at all. I simply want to get through your city as fast as possible. The people in Washington State had it right when they removed the silly little HOV lane, saying "you can't mix social engineering with traffic engineering".
I was visiting Shanghai last year and my local guide, a high-income MBA in the finance industry, suggested we get on a bus rather than on the Metro for a particular trip. It was a gleaming modern articulated vehicle, customized with doors on the left side to travel in a dedicated lane. It was roughly half full with well-dressed passengers. Seeing my dropped job, the local asked "Don't you have buses in Boston?" I said, "Yes. And they serve an important social function. The bus is where poor and very poor Americans meet and interact."
6
I’m a boomer, retired and living in Bordeaux, France (much more affordable than my native Southern California). I haven’t owned a car since 2015 and my annual transit pass here costs about $350. I ride the bus and tram every day because it’s available, covers the entire metro-Bordeaux area, and is safe and reliable. Everyone uses the metro system here and it’s constantly expanding to cover a wider area. What’s not to like?
24
I work downtown Minneapolis and do not see where they have expanded ride options. I mostly ride the bus to work but it seems to run less frequently which means I ride it less frequently. If I have to work late, I have to drive because Metro Transit keeps cutting the evening routes.
4
I'd love to take the bus, but it would turn my 20 minute commute into a 1 hour and 15 minute commute. That's why I don't take it.
33
The article focuses mainly on buses, but it's also necessary to look at layering of transport systems (urban rail, metro, buses, trams) like Europe has, and then, as Mr. Manville says, charge driving its true costs (higher parking fees, congestion taxes and higher gas prices). London has been an innovator with congestion taxes and bike lanes (ok, I agree the public transport is crumbling), and Zurich, among European cities has done a strong job layering urban rail, metro-like rail service, buses and trams to crowd out the need for cars. The biggest challenge now in the US is the political will to do it and the billionaire sponsors who lobby dramatically against it (Nashville comes to mind).
The article doesn't mention Curitiba, Brazil (although a reader below references Missoula, Montana for the same thing!), but they created a central core that is only pedestrian and forced all central traffic onto buses with dramatic positive results for the vast majority of citizens.
The lesson from all of this is that cities have to address the whole environment of transportation: build plans to tax/de-emphasize the forms that deteriorate city living experience and promote the forms of transport they want with associated incentives. Current thinking is just "how do I fix my bus service?"
8
Some time back- about a decade - I visited Portand for an extended class of several days held at PSU. At the time the Portland trolley was running up and down a nice downtown circuit on a regular schedule. At the stops one could see the arrival times of two coming cars (3.00 min, 15:00 min)
The trolley was free. Many times the class would meet afterwards at a restaurant along the route. Great meals and a safe ride back to the motel/hotel on the route.
Afterwards, I would always comment how my three day stay in Portland was one of the worst experiences - because after leaving that city I left behind the most convenient urban transportation systems ever experienced (I am look at you San Francisco.)
I understand the free was done away with - which is the wrong way to go IMHO
6
Metro Transit (Minneapolis/Saint Paul) has continued to extend options for riders. For example, more express bus lines, light rails, and extra servicing some of the busier areas of the city.
I'm glad to see that they are constantly working to improve service.
3
The Puget Sound (Seattle and other large municipalities) transit system routes a healthy portion of it's bus traffic through the same 3 blocks of Seattle. While this may make sense in terms of relieving congestion through downtown it has warped the nature of a transit system with communication and coordination problems between different large players. 13 mile rides from one sizeable suburb (Bothell) to another (Redmond) can take 1.5 hrs; you are routed through Seattle, across the lake, and back to nearly where you started.
This is not an uncommon problem in the US. We spend too much money and time serving downtown corridors rather than revitalizing neighborhoods (reducing the need to commute/drive) and connecting suburban communities to their industrial workplaces.
4
One of the problems can be the difference between job locations and bus routes. That would tie into transfers from one route to a connecting ones, which would tie into bus schedules and time needed to get from home to job and back.
Everywhere doesn’t have connections like the NY subway system. Even the SF Bay Area hasn’t a subway system as up to snuff as the 100+ year old one in NYC. Between stile jumping, phone and pad thefts, and more serious crimes if the rest of the country is dealing with these situations, it’s no wonder bus (and train) service is down nationwide.
3
My college-age daughter takes the bus from our house to campus. It's a 10-15 minute walk on each end but it still takes 45 minutes or longer -- to go 5 miles. (Can't walk or bike because the road is very dangerous with no sidewalks.)
The bus only comes once every half hour and it's sometimes early so you have to build in 10 minutes of waiting so that you don't miss it and have to wait 30 minutes or more.
When my car was totaled I tried taking the bus for about 3 days. In the mornings I didn't feel that I had the time and I ended up calling Lyft. I enjoyed the walking but didn't enjoy waiting for the bus on a busy street breathing car exhaust fumes or the waiting around.
I grew up taking the bus to a magnet school across town, so I know how to ride the bus. A lot of people have never done it. It would take a marketing campaign and incentives or a call to help the environment to get people to even try the bus. You might have luck with a program that asks people to ride a certain day of the week. It takes too long to do it daily (in my location). Anyone with better transportation options is likely to choose those over the bus.
4
The bus schedules are inappropriate for the working person, don’t go where you need to go and have absurd wait times here in California.
For instance, I need the bus at 6am in order to get to the train station in time. But the bus line does not start until 7am. So I can’t take it, I take the car.
Besides the bus does not take me directly to the new train stop, I’d have to walk a half a mile. So I take my car.
After work, if I do take the bus it’s a 20 min wait for a 5 min ride. My friends and I are always tempted to share an Uber instead.
I could go on and on about the differences between the bus, light rail and Uber. But the bus ridership carts in this article tell it all.
17
I grew up riding the Chicago Transit Authority aka CTA bus as a connection to the elevated and subway trains on the South Side of Chicago.
I moved to the Chicago suburbs some years ago. And when I come into the city during the day I ride regional public rail and the elevated and subway lines.
I can't recall the last time that I rode a CTA bus. But a 24/ 7 CTA crime wave has also ended my elevated rail and subway excursions.
I prefer to drive and park my car for personal safety reasons.
13
busses : jack of all trades, master of none. Bus is trying to deliver students, commuters, and retirees going about their business. Can't get enough density from the mixed missions to establish express routes with large busses. Can't load and unload quickly. Commuters bail and go to a commuter lot and take a company bus or van or carpool. Students have no choice until walking and biking becomes faster. Retirees take other options and order their stuff delivered.
2
I travel by any means necessary other than single-occupancy car. Here in Portland, that means run, bike, bike-share, bus, rail and the occasional rental car for weekend road trips. While car sharing (ReachNow, Car2Go) has regrettably gone away, and the Lyfts and Ubers clog the streets, it's totally possible to get around without a car. We've got efficient infrastructure (dedicated bike 'highways', a transit mall, college shuttles, vehicle-charging spaces, dense neighborhoods, high-frequency transit corridors and omnipresent bike shares for the proverbial last mile) and a population that, for the most part, is willing to use transit.
I tire of the perception that driving is 'faster' than other means and the self-centered mindset it propagates. 'I'm running behind, so I can't take the bus!'...and then they compete for parking spaces for 20 minutes. Everyone loves the bus...as long as everyone else takes it, right? Get over yourselves! It's beyond time cities encourage people to get out of their cars and address the true costs of emissions through steeper registration and usage fees. A functional bus system will always be part of the solution.
16
I'm a young professional and take the bus to work every day (about 35 min across the city ). I'm fortunate that my employer pays for my transit pass and I recognize this is a privilege. I had a car but sold it because I was taking the bus almost every day. I'm a huge bus advocate, primarily for these reasons:
1. Most importantly, it makes me feel like I am a part of my city and has made me aware of and care about those who live differently than me. Cars are isolating and help us control our social environment, for better or for worse. I fell in love with Portland on the bus- the streets and landscapes, the rhythms and routines of different neighborhoods, the loud high schoolers, the toddlers with nannies, the tired night shift workers trading seats with men in suits on their way into the office, the girls toting yoga mats and tiny old ladies gripping grocery bags. We all ride the bus together. This has changed my perception of myself and my role in this city-- when I make decisions (or vote) I find I am better equipped to think about how things will impact US as Portlanders, not just ME.
2. It ensures I get to spend and hour reading every day, which makes me happy and grounds me mentally. It gives me the time and space to "come down" from the work day.
3. One less car on the streets is not better for the environment but better for the city. Portland, like may cities, is clogged with traffic and lacking adequate parking.
Take the bus!!!
156
@kk I agree with #1 completely. I feel much more connected and attached to my city since I regularly started riding the bus 3 years ago. I've ridden BART and the DC Metro to work for about 10 years, but the experience is a bit different and a little more detached (albeit not as much as when driving) than the bus portion of my commute.
9
@kk
I totally agree with your three reasons (I'm also a regular TriMet user in Portland). Thanks for the post.
One silly but real barrier to some people taking the bus is potential embarrassment--they don't want to be seen as ignorant when they get on the bus and can't use the app or otherwise pay for their ride. I've proposed to my employer (Portland State University) that they set up a buddy system for new car-oriented employees, connecting them to a transit rider from their neighborhood who could serve as a buddy for a week. Once people realize how straightforward and easy using the bus is, they will likely stick with it, for all the reasons that @kk states. (Unfortunately, Portland State wouldn't implement my suggestion out of privacy concerns associated with sharing people's addresses.)
7
@kk
Sorry, but the risk of infecting my home or my job with bedbugs isn't worth it. Also, the risk of waiting for a bus that never comes on time is a game changer. You are lucky that your employer pays for your rides, but that's unusual, we can get tax free rides here but not employer sponsored rides. Now that we are quarantined to work from home, I'm glad that I don't have to pay 3 to 4 times the rate to travel to work and back home for a ride though.
I still don't own a car but if it becomes more fiscally feasible to drive than to take a gig ride, I"ll grab a car in a heartbeat!
I take the bus much less after they first changed the M5 route (adding time and two more blocks of walking) and then broke the route into two lines (M5 & M55) making it necessary to change buses (again adding time and now weather concerns) all in the name of supposedly improving "ontime" schedules. Well now the bus may run faster but I and others now don't ride on either.
I realize this is on anecdotal as is my lifetime experience of watching a general decline in service as they try to make bus trips faster instead of more convenient and available.
3
I live outside Albany and take the bus. I have an approximately 25 minute bus ride to and from work. The bus stop is about a half mile from the house, so I get an additional mile of walking exercise in each day. I have a car, and could take that but I prefer public transit--I'm trying to do my part fighting the Climate Crisis. Also, it saves money for gas, wear and tear on a car, and I get to read and enjoy someone else driving me to and from work. We need more people CHOOSING public transit, for the planet and for us all.
13
@Ben I, too, take CDTA (Capital District Transit Authority) buses regularly. I haven’t noticed some of the concerns that big-city dwellers have mentioned in this forum (crime, putrid smell, drug addicts, homeless occupants).
One thing that commentators have not mentioned is the enormous cost savings from not owning a car ($7,000+/year when considering car loan/lease payments, insurance, gas, maintenance, tolls, parking). Since selling my car in 2007, I have literally saved tens of thousands of dollars. In a country where many live paycheck-to-paycheck, the cost savings from taking public transit is meaningful. Also, in a society where time is money, please consider the money saved when waiting an extra 15-30 minutes for your next bus ride.
Wish this were a Jeopardy question. The answer Alex is TRAFFIC. It makes a short bus ride and l o n g ride. For the cost of the ride compared to subway fare, it's not a good investment.
In Bangkok when you leave a train station there are motorcycle taxis ready to zip you to your destination. I'm not suggesting that in NYC, but as long as traffic causes a two block bus ride to take 5 minutes or longer, walking is preferable.
6
I live In Saint Paul. I wonder how crime, real or imagined, is affecting ridership. We have seen a significant uptick in Light Rail crime in recent years...
25
I say all of this as a true fan of public rail. The graph shown here corresponds pretty well to the rise of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. But in my area there is also the unaddressed issue of truly indigent people with serious hygene and health problems, urine stains on the seats, etc; sometimes people get on an immediately change cars because it smells so bad. Sadly in my very wealthy city the municipal rail stations look like they belong in a third world country; escalators are inoperable in most of the stations, ticketing machines and turnstyles are only working at one end of the station, to say nothing of the rude station agents which seem to be a built-in part of all subway systems. And there is the simple fact that I can drive my car across the San Francisco bay for less than a round-trip BART ticket. The lack of ridership is a combined failure to subsidize public transit meaningfully and to maintain it.
51
@Erich Richter Yes, the BART seats are old & smelly albeit fast yet loud, MUNI is generally better smelling yet slower. Overall SF/Oak/Berk is a compact area so transit functions better than almost anywhere else in the US!
Finally got an EBike & have more fun than ever zipping around cars lined up waiting for stoplights. Do not take too many chances yet people notice - an advocate for alternative transportation options in our urban/suburban coastal SoCal beach town!
1
The first mile/last mile gap is a big issue for many riders. There are a number of cities that are testing autonomous electric shuttles with flexible pick ups to eliminate this problem. They pick you up at your residence or business for quick and efficient transfers from/to the transit hub.
This is the future of mass transit and should help reverse the ridership declines and climate crisis issues. I'm surprised the author didn't mention it.
8
@Minneapolis Mom This is a good observation. Suburbs are particularly impacted by first mile/last mile gaps.
1
I think part of the issue that buses have limited utility for many people.
1) They don't always go where or when you want to go
2) You aren't going to use them if you have a lot of stuff to carry
3) You aren't going to use them if you have multiple stops or make or multiple errands to run
For example, my commute to work is a 15 minute drive. If I tried to take the bus to work, it would require two transfers and take over an hour. And then there's the fact that I often run errands on the way to/from work.
27
I've been taking the same bus route to and from work in Minneapolis for the past 8 years. It works well for me, the commute is quick and easy, but I've noticed in the past 2-3 years the buses have just gotten more and more unpleasant to ride. I don't know if the decline in ridership has led to cut-backs in cleaning the buses but unlike when I first started riding the bus the seats are filthy, it smells of urine, and there's garbage everywhere. I'll keep riding the bus for now but I've been tempted to start driving, I've sat in something...wet too many times now.
41
I realize Missoula, Montana is not Chicago or even Portland, Oregon. However, N.Y.Times, please send a reporter out here to do a story about how Missoula went to Free Busses, and ridership jumped 'biggley'! Look on the map, up in the Northern Rockies, sort of south of Alberta...there you go!
90
I live smack in the middle of Los Angeles for more than 4-decades. Over the past 5 or 6 years, traffic has doubled on seemingly every street -- no such thing as rush-hour traffic anymore. I blame Uber and Lift, really. Half the cars on the road are folks earning a living with their vehicle using ride-sharing aps. They have become the defacto public transportation in this city. It's not sustainable.
"I guarantee you that if you took a lane of Vermont Avenue and dedicated it to the bus, ridership would go up," and that would be true on Santa Monica Blvd and Wilshire Blvd and Olympic Blvd, etc. If busses flew past traffic, more folks would use them.
53
I can share my anecdotes. I rode a bus to and from work for just short of 6 years. According to this article, demographically I was an outlier among bus riders as I am white, 20s, with a college degree, and lived in a rural/suburban area. I had more time than money, and it helped me save money, so I was a very happy bus rider at first. As with all public transportation, there was an occasional unpleasant person, but there were also very nice drivers and riders. What this article hints at, but does not explicitly say, however, is that over the last decade the pace of the world picked up so riding a bus became a hindrance. Roads became over capacity, friends, coworkers and family came to expect you to travel faster or further than a bus would take you, and changing weather patterns caused floods or snowstorms that made bus travel less reliable. I had to give it up and buy a cheap car. I miss saving money (car ownership is terribly expensive) but the world has changed. If I gave up my car, ride sharing would probably be my next choice instead of a bus.
10
In Boston:
1. Suburbanization of the poor began a while ago, along with
2. Criminal neglect of public transit infrastructure and terrible legacy labor culture
3. Population growth that was not expected a generation ago
4. Ride share vehicle drivers engaging in many behaviors that bring traffic on narrow, non-grid streets (viz. Boston!) to a halt with great frequency.
Buses are the last priority in revisioning transportation because they are the vehicles of the poorest and least visible.
13
@Karl -- good points. I would also add that the apparent reluctance of municipalities to enforce parking regulations for all, not just Uber and Lyft, contributes to the problems busses face, such as cars parked in bus stops. The bus has to stop in the travel lane to let people off and on, and traffic -- including other busses -- gets backed up.
4
It's time to accept that companies such as Uber and Lyft are bad for the environment. There's a place for rides for people in urgent need of them, but we strongly need to discourage such behavior that increases the number of cars on the road, if there's any reasonable option, and we should go out of our ways to provide reasonable options.
10
@Stephen Merritt Totally agree. There was a good story on this recently in the Sierra Club magazine by Andrew Linhardt. I recommend everyone concerned about this issue to read it.
4
Here buses only come once or twice an hour, max. That adds 30-60 minutes to every trip, and multiply that if you need to transfer.
It's a conundrum. If the bus only comes once an hour, no one wants to wait that long. So hardly anyone takes the bus.
So the city says, "We can't offer more frequent buses, because there is no demand."
But there is no demand, because the bus only comes once an hour.
136
@The Poet McTeagle Same here in Sonoma County, and when it finally does come it's always 10-20 minutes late.
6
Growing up in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City I recall people saying that a 40-year-old riding a bus is a failure but a 40-year-old riding the (MetroNorth) train is a success. Buses have a stigma that trains (light rail, commuter rail, streetcars) do not. Additionally, unless it's fixed-route transit, there's no impact on the built environment with buses. This is part of their appeal, but they do nothing to help build neighborhoods and community centers.
3
I live in Miami Beach. Currently there is no connection to the Metrorail from Miami Beach in under 45 minutes on the bus. The bus from Jackson Hospital downtown takes over an hour to reach Miami Beach, meandering through residential neighborhoods at a snail's pace. If you want your question answered, more people are working, but fewer take the bus, your answer is there. No working person is going to spend over two hours per day on a bus when you can drive in half the time. Design bus routes with commuters in mind and they will take transit.
42
Owning and driving a car is aspirational. People who don't have degrees and rent housing can gain status by having a car. Nobody wants to work hard at a low status job and ride the bus.
For established persons riding the bus is downscale. Also, it can be dangerous and,in the age of coronavirus,a health hazard.
Mass transit can gain and hold ridership in very densely populated NYC and parts of Boston,SF and Washington.
Also,the culture supports that choice.
We need more efficient transit but cannot ignore the social and behavioral forces behind the decision to ride,or not.
1
I've taken the bus in Seattle. Redmond to Queen Anne took about 30 minutes leaving by 6:30am and involved 1 transfer, and as long as I left the office between 3:30-4:00pm I could get home in under an hour. Miss those windows and it turned into 90 minutes. Some days the transfer from downtown to Queen Anne wouldn't show up so I'd hoof it 15 minutes or walk a few blocks to catch a similar route. I did it for about a year and didn't miss it at all, plus got to sleep in a bit, when that role wrapped up.
I haven't attempted to take the bus in LA but do know the bus is always in the way and slow as holy heck. My son's classmate lives about 20 minutes away by car, it takes him an hour and a half to get home from school by bus. Any time I google directions I can rely on the bus route adding 1 hour to commute time. Why would I even consider such a thing?
17
Here in Portland a lot of people take public transit, but if a person has an appointment or needs to run an errand after work they will drive. People that have children that they pick up have to drive. People who can afford it and don't want to walk to the bus and wait in the rain, plus lose 30 minutes or more each way, will drive. I worked downtown for 15 years and drove the 6 miles to work which was a 20 minute commute. To take the bus I would have had to walk 3 blocks, take a bus for 10 blocks, and then wait for another bus to go downtown. I would have wasted about 90 minutes a day or 30 hours a month. Rounded down, that ends up being about two full weeks of my life per year. That is if I wasn't five minutes late so I would stand in the rain for an extra 20 minutes.
29
@Teddi yes! Similar situation in many parts of Baltimore that are only a few miles from downtown. Though in Baltimore, it's usually the public transportation that's late.
1
@Teddi
Thanks for posting your story. And here I always imagined Portland as some green model city.
attitude. btw...Why should sbus companies care about customers anyway?: Many get their big money from their school bus contracts and run the public busses as a colateral damage to their profits. So public ridership fares (and downtrodden people who ride them) don't matter much to them.
My experience is anecdotal, but I'm sure my frustrations with public transportation, particularly buses, are felt by many others in many cities.
I used to live in Baltimore. I worked downtown, and lived about 3.5 miles away. I also lived only a block from a bus stop, where I could have caught a bus that dropped me off two blocks from work. I ended up only taking the bus a handful of times in the four years I lived there.
Why? For starters, the bus only ran every 25 minutes during rush hour and every 45 minutes during off-peak times. That would have been less inconvenient if it was on time, but it often wasn't. The bus was regularly 20-40 minutes late, a window of uncertainty that is unacceptable when you're trying to get to and from work. The Maryland Transportation Authority eventually installed GPS trackers on newer buses so you could track them, but that only made it clearer how unreliable this bus was. Additionally, if I wanted to get to any other part of the city, I'd most likely have to take this bus downtown, and transfer to another bus to take me to that neighborhood. It's a pretty inefficient use of time. I feel for the people who have no choice. Under these circumstances, I also don't blame people for driving. I ended up buying a bike.
And then there's this issue of cleanliness. Baltimore's public transportation is not clean. At all. This is also a turn-off. The government(s) need to invest in better infrastructure.
39
@AG I too lived in Baltimore until recently and never took the bus, for all the reasons you cite. The city has tried to improve things in recent years by creating dedicated bus lanes, but delivery trucks always park in them and there is no enforcement action to prevent it. It's really a shame that the streetcars were forced out of business by the automobile, tire, and gasoline interests, but there you are. They seemed to work just fine, at least according to my mother who grew up in Baltimore in the 1930s and '40s.
10
A more effective bus system would help. In Berkeley the Metro bus system is understaffed. Sometimes I've missed not one but two schedules buses.. When I ask the bus driver that finally comes along the answer is usually absence and no one to replace him or her. Totally unorganized and inefficient. Amazing. Oftentimes it is the evening shift, and waiting in a but stop 40 minutes in the evening may not even be safe. I've almost given up.
By the way, if bus system managers are reading these comments. Turn the air conditioning system in Berkeley buses off. Open the windows. Air from outside should be circulating in the bus in the midst of an epidemic. It is cool outside so there is no need for it and it is a health concern. Who's making these decisions?
14
I have to wonder what impact new residential development patterns have had. In Minneapolis-St. Paul new development has boomed along the new light-rail lines. It is true transit-oriented development. In addition to access to the train, residents there have real walkable neighborhoods.
There has also been a tremendous boom in high-rise residential development in the downtowns and the university area with many thousands of new units. Those residents can now walk to school, work, and shopping.
4
Well where I live in Wilmington DE, it just takes too long to get anywhere by bus for me or my neighbors. Where I volunteer at a museum, it takes 10 minutes to drive. Bus? Well, first I'd have to walk a mile to a bus stop. Then the bus, would eventually come and take me downtown. There's I'd have to transfer to another bus to go somewhere near, but not very, my destination. It's a kind of spoke and hub system. Where I used to work, the drive was 25-30 minutes. The bus? An hour and a half.
That's why a lot of folks don't take the bus.
64
When I didn't have a car, I rode the bus (DC Metrobus and Arlington Rapid Transit) everywhere. I even commuted by bus although it took a lot longer than the subway. I prefer watching the scenery go by and opening the window for fresh air over riding an underground train. I have a car now but will take the bus if I am going to a location that has no or difficult parking.
Contrary to Mr Lind's viewpoint, some boomers actually did ride public transportation. He needs to check his biases. Everyone is not from a suburb. I grew up in NYC and walked or rode the bus and subway as my parents did not have a car.
17
I live north of Seattle and always take the bus when I have to go downtown. But if you have to go to the Tech hubs of Bellevue or Redmond, you have to change buses and it takes too long. It would be an impossible commute. The biggest problem with buses is they are inconvenient and unless you are going downtown during daytime hours, they are inconvenient.
I think more routes to outlying areas should be put in, and buses should be run at least every 15 minutes.
5
We have a reasonable bus system, AATA, for a small city. However, if I try to use a bus, it takes at least 2x the time to get to where i wish to go. Further, we have a hub and spoke system, so usually, one must take the bus to either the Ann Arbor transit center or the Ypsilanti transit center and transfer. The system does work for our high school student, since the bus stops 1 block from our house and terminates at the high school.
10
@james: I agree that hub and spoke is ridiculous. Here in Portland, they even created the light rail lines to follow the same principle. If everyone worked downtown, it might make sense.
3
I wonder how much this has to do with the growth in the cities is among higher paid individuals and the perception of the busses (at least in NYC) is that they are for poor people.
As someone who lives in the city I take the busses all the time and love them. They could be cleaner and faster, though with dedicated bus lanes they're much better than they were, but particularly where I live (Harlem and work in Harlem) they're a boon.
I think cities need to grok that it's a perception thing (maybe, likely) about class and race and they should work on a public campaign to make people feel better about them.
5
@John I think if transit agencies took cleanliness, punctuality, and passenger safety seriously it would be far more effective in making people feel better about riding the bus.
4
This is not rocket science. You can't easily make bus fares much cheaper, but you can easily make gas more expensive.
And that gasoline tax will be used to pay for improvements to public transit that will make bus service more frequent, reliable, clean and safe.
11
I don't ride the bus because:
1) fares are more expensive then gasoline
2) it doesn't feel safe - the bus itself and waiting at stops
3) it's slow to get me where I need to go (it stops where I don't need it to stop, on most city streets it gets no more advantage then cars, it often requires multiple transfers and I always have to walk a portion)
5) you're on it's time schedule (including delays)
6) it's dirty
7) it offers no exercise benefits itself like biking
8) it's confusing (although google is helping make that easier)
Advantages are:
1) you can work/do other things on the bus
2) it's the "right thing" to do
So there we are....
33
@L " . . . it often requires multiple transfers and I always have to walk a portion . . . ." There's your exercise benefit!
5
@Flaminia Well the bus part doesn't actually provide the exercise benefit, the walking part does.
@L except you can't easily work on other things when you're standing inches from a dozen other people because the bus is so crowded.
4
I am a Minneapolitan transplanted from Boston, where I lived for 15 years without owning a car. After two months attempting to ride an "express" bus, I realized I was losing too much time to my commute: upwards of 45 minutes each way versus a fifteen minute car ride. The express bus stopped running at 4:30 in the afternoon and was across town from my office, so I needed to leave at 4pm if I wanted that option. Leaving later meant needing to change buses twice in the six mile ride. Simply not a viable option.
52
Buses are stuck in the same traffic as everything else. Seattle seems to have addressed this by turning freeway shoulders into bus-only lanes and the buses go from freeway exit to exit picking people up. Here in the Bay Area it take a bus an hour to get 5 miles so I'd rather bike and get there in 20 minutes and have no parking issues. Honestly I don't have an hour to get 5 miles so the bus doesn't work for me most of the time.
13
I have always thought the "use public transit" mantra was a nice idea, but unsafe due to exposure to germs, etc. Well, now we see it; just the beginning.
3
Here in the Bay Area, the rise of Uber and Lyft, endless construction, and crime have contributed to increasingly crowded streets and slow, inhospitable public transit. A lot of the public transit systems cost too much as well, particularly BART. If people have other options, they use them.
6
The article mentions that bike sharing leans toward wealthier white people and links to Vox articles describing the disparity--using only Capital Bikeshare data.
I'm amazed that they don't mention scooters. I live in the poor, mostly black area of northeast DC described in the articles--no, Bikeshare doesn't have as much presence, but scooters and electric bikes are all the rage here. Teens love them, and you don't have to look for docks.
On a side note, 9 times out of 10, when I search a route on Google Maps, biking is faster than mass transit. Drivers might find people on scooters and bikes a nuisance, and bus ridership might decline, but the more vehicles off the roads, the better. It's great that people farther from the metro are getting faster transportation and kids are having fun.
3
@DC
Completely agree. The buses in DC can be useful for getting around the city for the elderly or disabled, but in general, walking to the nearest metro station, biking, or even walking(!) can be more efficient. I walk 1.5 miles to work everyday. It's maybe 5 minutes longer than taking the bus (and I don't have to deal with a bus stuffed to the gills).
8
@DC Yes! After giving up on Baltimore's public transportation, I took up biking. However, the bike lanes in Baltimore City by far favor the wealthier, white neighborhoods. I know that when the scooters were initially unveiled in Baltimore, they had a similar problem, but I think there's a more equitable distribution now.
1
In Boston the reason is simple. The MBTA infrastructure is crumbling. Constant service delays, serious accidents, fires, you name it. They happen on the T, which serves as a connector to the bus system. Many of the suburban residents (myself included) who have the resources have abandoned the bus and train system for cars, which exacerbate the traffic problem in the Greater Boston Area. It has gotten so bad, many employers in the City can't penalize their staff for being late.
12
@Jim Maybe employers don't penalize staff for being late. But doctors at hospitals charge over $100 for being more than 15 mins. late as a "missed appointment". This happened to me at Boston's Beth Israel twice because my train was broken down. So after the second "fail", I had to stop going to therapy altogether. Also I had been going to Tufts Dental School for major dental problems but they "fired" me after my train was broken down 2x and I was late/ No excuses they said. Good luck being poor living in the suburbs with medical problems.
1
Here's a factor in bus ridership that isn't mentioned in this article - parents of young children. If you have to drop your child off at a day care center or preschool or preschool program and then pick them up at the end of the day by a prescribed time or pay a penalty, this makes taking the bus - assuming buses are available in your area - highly impractical.
46
@Brielle ' s mom agree and now that it's more common for both members of a couple to work, daycare itself is more common.
2
@Brielle's mom
People had young children years ago as well, so that is unlikely a part of this trend.
3
@Brielle ' s mom -- I well remember the anxiety I felt being stuck on a bus at my child's daycare deadline, which would cost me $10 for every 15 minutes I was late for pickup. Terribly frustrating! Once I jumped off early and ran the last few blocks to get there sooner.
2
My experience is limited to NYC. The buses here take forever for new passengers to board. The buses have to share traffic with all other trucks and private cars. I will exhaust all my other options before taking the bus: subway, walking, biking, taxi/uber before I take a bus. Many times it is actually faster or moderately longer to just walk to your destination and you end up saving $2.75 and getting some exercise.
Until we have actual dedicated bus lanes, not just a painted road, with little to no enforcement of the rules, I doubt this will change.
155
@Eddie The Select Bus Service in Manhattan is the exception. I used to take the M15 up First Avenue at night, when I got off work. It was faster than the subway, it got me closer to home, and it was way cheaper than a cab. I loved it! But during the day, when it's crowded, it's snail-like. Still, the fast service at nights (also on weekends) is a shining example of what bus service could be.
2
@Eddie Yup. I'd love to take the bus (to the subway), and often I do, but many times I opt for a Lyft TO the subway instead. And the only reason I am forced to do this is 1) lack of foresight and misplaced priorities by the MTA 2) the perverted car culture that puts cars first and public transit buses last 3) NYPD and DoT not ticketing double-parked cars.
There've been times where my MTA bus sitting in traffic was so tortuous (and actually infuriating, because I could see all the double-parked cars ahead of the bus, all up and down Steinway Street), that I actually got Off the bus at the next stop, and then had to get a Lyft or Green taxi to take me the rest of the way to the subway station.
It's all the more infuriating to me because it doesn't need to be this way. It's so fixable. Designate certain narrow streets for delivery trucks and buses Only. No private vehicles. For wider streets, add Bus Only lanes. Pre-paid boarding/SBS service on every single bus line means no more long lines to board, nor will disambarking passengers have to fight purposefully heavy back doors in order to exit. And local Pols need to come down hard on the corrupt NYPD and DoT, who totally look the other way when it comes to 'cultural' double-parking.
6
Many transit systems seem to waste absurd sums of money and are wildly subsidized. People who can opt out often do.
Many bus routes are no help on climate change. Cars are getting very efficient, so it takes many bus passengers to make a real differrence. Sparse buses mean little impact on pollution, crowded buses mean an unpleasant and slower ride. Rail just means losing giant sums of money almost everywhere (though "heavy" rail that shares tracks has its place).
Articles about "declining revenue from coronavirus" illustrate the problem. The idea of cutting service because of lower ridership is insane. There is low ridership because people are avoiding crowds. Fewer trains and buses make each more crowded and with longer wait times, making fewer people comfortable using them. It represents the psychology of a for-profit monopolist, but one that comes for handouts as often as trick-or-treaters.
If a system wants to operate for profit, fine, and if it wants to operate as a public service, fine. When transit tries to be both all the time, it ends up serving the captive customers who have no other choice and few others wanting to ride.
9
@Alan No, it does not take many passengers to make a real difference. A statistic I recall from years ago is a bus with as few as 9 passengers on it is equal in efficiency to a single-occupant car. Bus fuel efficiency has paralleled that of cars. Much of the fleet in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are diesel-electric hybrids.
There is also the issue of space efficiency. A bus takes the space of about 4 cars. Take a full bus with 60 passengers and put all or even half of them in single-occupant cars. That is a serious detriment to peak traffic congestion as well as where all those people are supposed to park.
13
I love taking the bus. I hate driving. I like watching people get off and on the bus. I love listening to music on the bus. I even love waiting for the bus as it forces me to stop and watch everything.
Some ideas. To increase ridership -- socialize it, dare I say. Make it Freeeee, Bernie Sanders style.
Also, maybe look to ways to personalize the buses. Maybe make them smaller in the future. Uber-type buses. With the advancement of tech a personalized pick-up could be routed. Say 10 people are going downtown form suburbia. They text for a pick-up and the mini electric bus picks them up at designated spots, or even at their home, or near home, takes the 10 downtown. Group public Uber mini-buses paid for with taxes. Cut down traffic, pollution, congestion.
56
@PE
I applaud the out of the box thinking but the very last think I'd want to do is get any closer to the fellow public. Especially now...eek.
3
@PE Portland's transit system has been unofficially experimenting with free service for awhile because of absolutely no fare enforcement. It means the mentally ill, homeless, and drug addicted are making up a larger and larger percentage of riders, and a concomitant deterioration in cleanliness & safety have become quite apparent to this rider.
3
Purely anecdotal, but in my experience, the bus has become less 'secure' over the past 5-10 years. METRO used to be somewhat vigilant about making passengers pay, but over the past few years a 'de facto' free ride has been implemented for those who don't want to pay (payment is often a middle finger to the driver). As you can imagine, this can lead to some very intimidating passengers. On the other hand, our rail system has maintained fare enforcement, which greatly reduces problem riders, which makes for a relatively pleasant journey.
112
@MichaelD
Interesting. In Portland it is the opposite. One can’t board a bus without paying or tapping a transit card, but the MAX train is essentially an honor system. I feel safer on the bus. Also, the bus is quite pleasant, with many riders thanking the driver as they exit. Pam, driver of afternoon bus route 19 - - you’re the best!
8
@Dwight I'm not sure where you've been Dwight, but in Portland passengers get on buses all of the time without paying fares. Bus drivers are instructed not to demand them due to management fear of employee injury.
Trimet believes in minimalism when it comes to recouping revenue from riders apparently.
5
@MichaelD
Interesting. In Portland it is the opposite. One can’t board a bus without paying or tapping a transit card, but the MAX train is essentially an honor system. I feel safer on the bus.
I am a bit perplexed by the story's leading graph. A number of cities show trend lines that, starting at zero in 2010 eventually wind up well below the zero line. And yet the pop-up for each line's info states a positive result. For example, Philly shows a line fluctuating but eventually winding up about 12% below the origin. And yet the pop-up states a "6% rise".
As an aside, and as someone who has seen decades of crises over SEPTA's funding and upkeep, I've long wondered some things. Noting how, even as fare increases inevitably begin to chip away at ridership, the actual public subsidy for each ride (especially when considering the number of people who ride for free or for reduced fares) makes up the lion's share of the fare. At some point, why not just make the rides a free public service? Such socialism of public service seem to work at least as efficiently as the present pretend market system and avoids the problems of social discord tied to means tested assistance. This is generally the method used by the Nordic nations is what America's "democratic socialists" say they want our country to be more like. Unfortunately, our propensity for using favorites and resentment in the politics of how public services are apportioned seems to have a strong hold on us.
7
@Bob I was confused by the pop-ups on the graph as well. I think that where (horizontally) you mouse over matters. If you're over the left end of the line, you see the values for the early years, when there were some increases. I finally realized this by chance, mousing over the left vs the right portions for Chicago.
This proves an assertion I've been making for many years: interactives need USER TESTING. (In fact, many non-interactive infographics could use it as well.)
4
It's not complicated -- bikes and Uber cannot compete with the speed and comfort of rail but they easily compete with the extreme discomfort and sluggish pace of buses.
Note that the above is not as pronounced in Canadian cities, where weather, costs, density and acceptance of transit mean bus ridership is still increasing.
18
@North I think safety is a big part of it. Taking the bus in downtown Vancouver is awesome. Buses are clean, people polite, and they run like every 5 minutes in a small geographical area. I've never felt unsafe on the bus, but a lot of people on this comment section seem to cite that as a reason not to take it.
5
@North I live in Toronto and I hardly ever take transit anymore because Amazon Prime brings me everything.
@North Canadians are also substantially poorer than Americans and fewer of them can afford cars.
I retired from NYC to Miami 5 years ago and really tried to use the bus system. It’s unreliable and most lines run infrequently. Half the year you are waiting in heat and humidity.
The newest option in the urban core is shared electric scooters which are cheap, fast, and door to door for short trips.
12
I'll tell you why, It doesn't go where people need to go, the schedules don't meet people's needs, when you get off you still may have a long walk ahead of you, it takes forever to get anywhere. Any other questions?
183
@Bruce1253, the problem is the low density of the area. This is a land use problem. I don't know what you can do about existing low-density suburbs. But you can at least stop building more.
34
@Robert so... Cabrini green or Soviet bloc? Coupled with Mussolini's trains? Sounds great!
6
@Robert So the people are meant to serve buses rather than the other way around?
11
About the beginning of the timeframe shown, the Atlanta MARTA system shut down a number of bus routes as being unpractical or not cost effective. Their idea was to have more "centralized" bus lines, with fewer feeder lines. The suburban routes were somewhat reduced. I found this as a parent trying to have my high-school teen take MARTA and become more familiar with the area outside the family minivan. The change meant a much longer commute for him and a walk of over a mile to the nearest bus stop.
The idea behind removing easy access was more of a "if you build it they will come" and guess what - passengers won't go out if their way to take a more centralized bus route that requires 40 minutes to get to a subway station for transfers.
The MARTA "leadership" appears to consist of political cronies with the addition of equal opportunity seats for one or two disadvantages patrons; the expertise and judgement seen in other transit systems is non-existent.
28
I have to assume that the correlations and causes discussed in this article come from some more complicated regression analyses that can explicitly show which factors are related to the decline in bus ridership and to what degree. Trend lines are only a coarse representation of the issue, more of a starting point or justification for rigorous research.
2
90 per cent of job growth in Dallas metroplex has been in the suburbs, beyond the suburbs that are part of a very wide reaching transit system. TOD simply does not work where land is both cheap and still available. We have some successes, e.g., new State Farm back office complex, but all are near huge freeway intersections that happen to have a rail transit station. Another problem is rail is expensive and must serve as a backbone with busses as feeders. People that once took a cross city bus now take 2 bus rides and a rail ride, assuming job is near a bus stop. That process takes more time. Transit can work, but for 96 per cent of commuters, they have better options.
9
"And quick trips to the store that bus riders once took are no longer being made."
Is it possible to take a "quick trip to the store" using transit?
45
@Rocky
When a bus ride costs $2.50 each way I doubt it
1
Pricing gasoline to include it's true costs, eliminating all of the wide range of subsidies to the Fossil Fuel industry, would create immediate changes to the way we move ourselves around.
80
@Miss Anne Thrope I live in a small rural community and my wheels are, basically, the only way I can get around to shopping, doc appointments, etc. Fortunately, in my case most required services are nearby. It's a way of live I've chosen and intend to maintain.
3
@thad Price gasoline to include its true cost and eliminate subsidies to the industry.
That is great that is a way of life that you have chosen and intend to maintain. Just don't expect other people to pay for it.
10
@Miss Anne Thrope
"Pricing gasoline to include it's true costs."
Military, The wars, The eternal vigil to protect fossil fuels.
The Climate disasters. I'm sure there are more.
11
I've been a bus rider most of my adult life, mostly in Ohio, but also in other parts of the country. In different cities not even far apart the service can be drastically different.
I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and took the bus often even though it was often slow and crowded not to mention expensive. Quite often going across town especially in to the suburbs it meant empty buses and very long wait times in the cold, rain, snow and other conditions. Contrasted with Columbus, Ohio where there are far more buses and much faster services it was night and day.
I enjoy most bus rides, but I'm really not wild about waiting an hour in the freezing cold at a stop with no shelters or benches. Forget the bus at night in the cold. It's easier to just walk more often than not.
63
I can only talk about my experiences here in Brooklyn. A bus is only good if you are traveling 1-3 miles. Over that it takes too long. A subway or car is the faster way to go or even a bike.
42
Fascinating. Thank you for taking up this issue, which is so central to solving the climate crisis.
17
The bus in NYC is so slow. I took it across 125th Street west one morning and it took 30 minutes to get to 110th Street (west and then south) traffic, pedestrians, ubers have all slowed above ground traffic to a crawl. The other day I took the no 6 from 51st street to 28th street and the ride took 5 minutes with stops. I did not wait for the train it literally pulled in as I was going through the turnstiles. The bus is like riding a turtle. Sooooo slow.
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@Meighan Corbett Well you'll be pleased to know that that M60 bus that goes across 125th is now a Limited Stops/SBS bus. It's now far faster than it used to be, and with the addition of Bus Only lanes as well...
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Buses are probably loosing ridership to rapid transit. The problem with buses are that they a really slow. When a bus sist in traffic and is stopping every block or so, it is only tolerable for a short trip and for short trips it is losing to uber, etc.
Anyone given a choice would choose rapid transit over a bus it that is an option. Cities need better planning on the roles of the various transit systems. May be best to limit car traffic in congested areas and have buses for service
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@pat
Yeah, and many times the bus that you depend on doesn't come because someone called out or something. The thing that gets me too is when it breaks down because the wheelchair ramp malfunctions or there is a blockage on the street and the bus just has to sit there...your employer doesn't care about that stuff.
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