The Public Transport Revolution – Why does it never Arrive?

auckland-train.jpg

Since the oil spike in the early seventies, enthusiasts for public transport have predicted that high prices for petrol would trigger a public transport revolution as people finally broke their “addiction” to the motor car and changed their travel mode to buses and trains.

Since then, price bubbles have increased public transport use, and lowered car miles traveled. But these changes have proved to be short-lived. More drive more.

Yet standard theory says that people respond to prices. Surely people should respond to increased petrol prices by changing their mode of travel.  But why hasn’t it happened in the past? More importantly, will it magically happen in the future?

The answer is that most drivers do respond to increased oil prices but they have many choices as to how to respond..  You may switch to public transport provided it takes you where you want to go at a reasonable price. The problem is that part of the “reasonable price” includes the price of the increased time it takes to get to the final destination. Also, surveys reveal that when people climb into their car at the end of the day they feel they have actually arrived at “home.” Bus and train travel significantly defers their arrival in their own private space.

So, given time, people change their behaviour in many ways, so as to maintain the comfort, convenience, and overall efficiency of the car. For example:

  1. They may decide to buy a smaller or more fuel-efficient car.
  2. They may relocate either their home or their job to reduce travel costs and times – provided the land market is flexible.
  3. If the local land-market is inflexible they may move to another town, or another country.
  4. They may modify all their travel behaviour by better trip planning, commuter car-pooling (with prioritized parking) and general ride and task sharing.
  5. They may choose to telecommute, car-pool, park-share, and ride-share.

Fuel costs are only a small component of total motoring costs. Cars today are lasting longer, are more reliable, are cheaper to run, and are kept in use longer. When oil was cheaper total costs of motoring were higher. That’s one reason why we are driving more.

Sudden spikes in petrol prices do affect the transportation modal split, but these spikes carry less significance than media reports would suggest, and tend to be of much shorter duration than the advocates of transportation revolution predict. People know how they want to live and they value their personal mobility.

This is not a trivial issue because councils – and the Auckland Council for example – are demanding that Government funds massive investments in public transport because of the current oil spike, the upward blip in public transport use, and of course “Peak Oil.”

The Peak Oil pessimists seem to believe no alternative to the petrol driven car exists. They also seem to ignore the increasing evidence of vast oil and gas reserves being discovered from everywhere the eastern Mediterranean to the shores off Brazil and the American Great Plains.

A host of emerging technologies will more than compensate for any increase in the price of oil-based fuels – even for vehicles that continue to run on fossil fuels. Think of the hybrid car topping up the batteries from solar panels in the roof. Robot cars and electronically convoyed trucks hugely increase lane capacity. There are so many it would need another column to list them. The pessimists complain that it will take far too long to ring such changes in the vehicle fleet. In the next breath they talk about reshaping the urban-form, mainly by the densification of our major cities. Short of another Luftwaffe arriving on the scene, such urban renewal is hardly likely to happen overnight. Technology churns faster than cities. Try buying a Gestetner, a Telex machine, a slide rule, or a film for your camera.

Urban economist, Anthony Downs, writing in “Still Stuck in Traffic?” reminds us:

"....trying to decrease traffic congestion by raising residential densities is like trying to improve the position of a painting hung too high on the living room wall by jacking up the ceiling instead of moving the painting.”

Yet the Auckland Council, like their counterparts throughout the affluent world, seems determined to raise the ceilings – with no regard for costs.

One of the arguments used against building more roads – and especially against more motorways – is that as soon as they are built they become congested again because of “induced demand.” Such “induced demand” is surely the natural expression of suppressed demand. It seems unlikely that motorists will mindlessly drive between different destinations for no other reason than they can.

However, let us accept for a moment that “induced demand” is real, and suggests that improving the road network is a fruitless exercise. Advocates of expensive rail networks claim they will reduce congestion on the roads and improve the lot of private vehicle users as a consequence.

But surely, if the construction of an expensive rail network does reduce congestion on the roads then induced demand will rapidly restore the status quo. Maybe the theory is sound after all. It would explain why no retrofitted rail networks have anywhere resulted in reduced congestion.

This is the time to invest in an enhanced roading network while making incremental investments in flexible public transport. Roads can be shared by buses, trucks, vans, cars, taxis, shuttle-buses, motor-cycles and cyclists – unless compulsive regulators say they are for buses only. Railway lines can be used only by trains and if we build them in the wrong place they soon run empty. The Romans built roads and we still use them.

In a techno-novel published in 1992, Michael Crichton pauses in his narrative to explain what an email is. That’s not long ago.

The one certainty is that the internet/computer world will have the same impact on transport as it has already had on communications. Transport deals with bits while communication deals with bytes.

The end result will be a similar blurring of the line between public and private transport that has already happened between public and private communication. The outcomes are beyond our imagination.

We should get used to it, and realise that making cities more expensive and harder to get around in does not make them more liveable.

Owen McShane is Director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand.

Photo by Mark Derricutt



















Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Metrics

Care to show some evidence?

What factors, aside from gas cost (you know because no one pays for repairs, maintenance, insurance, loss of productivity due to congestion, costs of disposing the vehicle, etc) that led to your conclusion?

You also forgot to mention that investments in rail alter the built environment around the station as well as the access to the station and their destinations making the use of other modes like walking and biking practical. If you actually factor in all the quantitative elements and the substitutions rail offers, you will probably come to a different conclusion.

High Gas Prices won't make cars cos tmore than transit

J Hoff Care to show some evidence?
JK: Sure. This article is about transit, not rail, so lets primarily bus numbers:
1a) Operating cost of bus transit in ten biggest cities per FTA = $0.85/passenger-mile
1b) Operating cost of LRT transit in ten biggest cities per FTA = $0.$0.52/passenger-mile
for details see: http://www.portlandfacts.com/top10bus.html

2) AAA variable cost/mile of a car = 16.74 cents. Using 1.59 people/car gives 10.5 cents/passenger-mile. For details see http://www.portlandfacts.com/aaa_cost.html

3a) Compare to bus:
85 - 10.5 = 74.5 cents/passenger-mile difference. This is 46.9 cents/vehicle mile

The average USA car gets 23 mpg, so to spend 47 cents/mile at 23 mpg gas would have to INCREASE by 23 x $0.47 = $10.81/ gal over the reference gas price of $2.603 = $13.41/gal.

3b) Compare to LRT:
$0.52 - $0.105 = 41.5 cents.passenger-mile difference. This is 26.1 cents/vehicle mile

The average USA car gets 23 mpg, so to spend 26 cents/mile at 23 mpg gas would have INCREASE by 23 x $0.26 = $5.98/ gal over the reference gas price of $2.603 = $8.58/gal.

Note that this is an apples to apples comparison of operating costs only. To add in other costs greatly complicates the matter but mass transit with some, not all, capital costs is around $1/passenger-mile for bus and $1.38 for rail, based on the ten largest bus and rail systems in the USA, so other car costs would have to be astronomical to be that expensive.

If gas gets to $13.40/gal, transit system costs will also go up and their revenue will drop as their ridership goes way down because unemployment will be through the roof. So the cost equilibrium point will be above this figure.

In the long term there is an upper limit on the price of gasolene around $3-$4/gal set by the cost of making gasolene from natural gas or coal. The current problem is the lack of refinery.

J Hoff What factors, aside from gas cost (you know because no one pays for repairs, maintenance, insurance, loss of productivity due to congestion, costs of disposing the vehicle, etc) that led to your conclusion?
JK: Operating costs for both transit & cars include repairs, maintenance, insurance (and licensing for cars.)

It is interesting that you mention the cost of congestion, but not the cost of time wasted on transit which averages about double the commute time of driving a car. See http://www.portlandfacts.com/commutetime.html

You also left out the cost of subsidies to transit (road users pay MORE than their cost - see http://www.portlandfacts.com/roadspaidbyusers.html).

J Hoff You also forgot to mention that investments in rail alter the built environment around the station
JK: You have a strange definition of “investment”. Here in Portland TODs are a welfare expenditure - none got built until the city started shoveling money to the developers. See http://www.portlandfacts.com/transit/lightraildevelopment.htm (Don’t miss the links to videos of the local officials, planners and developers saying TODs do not make economic sense without tax abatements)

J Hoff If you actually factor in all the quantitative elements and the substitutions rail offers, you will probably come to a different conclusion.
JK: I doubt it. Transit has been losing market share for over 80 years. For good reason - it is slower than driving, costs more than driving, is less convenient than driving and doesn’t even save energy. There is a reason people are not choosing transit! Not even in Europe. See http://www.portlandfacts.com/transit/eurotranistshareloss.htm

And why do you appear to think altering the build environment is a good thing? Why not just let people live how and where they to the extent that they will pay their own way?

Thanks
JK

www.portlandfacts.com

The website you reference is just some anti-rail PR machine. The study I referenced was the Florida PIRG Education Fund, a very reputable non-partisan research group.

J Hoff : The website you

J Hoff : The website you reference is just some anti-rail PR machine.
JK: Have you found any specific errors with that web site? Please name them or quit bad mouthing a quality site that presents mostly government data that shows the transit industry lies.

J Hoff : The study I referenced was the Florida PIRG Education Fund, a very reputable non-partisan research group.
JK : “very reputable” !!!! Only among the uninformed that don’t bother to look at real data.

Thanks
JK

We need politicians with balls.

If good intracity and intercity mass transit existed then you wouldn't need to do 1,2,3,4, or 5!

Aside from those of you in NY or Chicago, most of us are doing without transit, or live in cities with very inefficient transit (i.e. it's not viable because there isn't enough of it to connect most people and places).

We need politicians who have the political balls to devote some funds to projects that will save us all money in the long run. What's the point of building new roads and then having to pave both those and the existing ones all the time?

The cost of road maintenance alone is a case for cities, states and the fed to put in place, reliable, common sense, safe, efficient mass transit.

Not owning a car is a good case for using mass transit for the average family (gas, maintenance, insurance costs upwards of $3-5,000/year for most people, per vehicle). Going to the countryside or need to use a truck? Rent one cheaply for a couple of days.

Cars make life better

If good intracity and intercity mass transit existed then you wouldn't need to do 1,2,3,4, or 5!

MAP: Aside from those of you in NY or Chicago, most of us are doing without transit, or live in cities with very inefficient transit (i.e. it's not viable because there isn't enough of it to connect most people and places).
JK: That’s because most people choose to NOT live in dense, expensive congested cities with lousy schools and high crime. Transit require high density to sort of work.

MAP: We need politicians who have the political balls to devote some funds to projects that will save us all money in the long run.
JK: Transit is much more expensive than driving. See above for a hint.

MAP: The cost of road maintenance alone is a case for cities, states and the fed to put in place, reliable, common sense, safe, efficient mass transit.
JK: You have to be kidding! Buses require those roads. Rails require maintenance too.

MAP: Not owning a car is a good case for using mass transit for the average family (gas, maintenance, insurance costs upwards of $3-5,000/year for most people, per vehicle).
JK: Most people consider that a good investment because it saves them time and allows them to get a better job and is more convenient.

A transit pass in Portland costs $968/yr, so the added $2,000 is not very much to pay for the freedom to travel when and where you want. You also don’t have to deal with drug dealers, crazies and other city vibrancy in your car.

The transit vs. car battle was fought 80 years ago. Transit lost.

MAP: Going to the countryside or need to use a truck? Rent one cheaply for a couple of days.
JK: Need to go shopping at the low cost, big box store - rent a car.
Need to go to the beach - rent a car!
Need to drop off the kids on the way to work and pickup the kids and some dinner on the way home - rent a car!

Or just give up on transit and get a car like the average American did almost a century ago!

Thanks
JK