Urban Mass Transit system in the US.

I'm an Australian myself but one of my work mates is an American but has not lived there for 9 years. WE both live an work in Thailand full time.

While i was at work this week the issue of mass transport systems came up.

He said that the reason mass transport use is low in the US is due to the lack of high density inner urban areas in American cities. This i assume means that people tend to not live and work in the inner city areas of American cities.

Is this really true?

I really could not imagine what its like to live far from the city and not have access to high frequency mass transport. But all my life i have lived in condos so this has mostly been in the inner city areas.

Also he noted that what passed for a mass transport route in most American cities would be considered a rural commuter service in a lot of other parts of the world. For example 6 trains a day is no where near good enough if your trying to ease traffic congestion. you need to think in terms of how many people per hour per direction. to have any real effect the peak loadings should be around 30000 people per direction per hour.

I read about a project called new mexico rail runner so i looked at its site and found out although its a nice train but the frequency is very poor and no Sunday service makes no sense. This kind of service needs to be at least every 5 minutes during peak periods and every 10 mins off peak/weekends.

I would like to know the reason for why there is so few high frequency mass transport systems in the US?

Is it possiable that most US cities operate tens of thousands of metro buses all hours of the day every few minutes to move the population around?

Unfortunately your friend is right. Here in Atlanta even though 20% of our jobs are located within less than 1% of our land area, our population density is very low. We do have a metro system about 48 miles in length consisting of two lines with branches than run every 5 minutes peak on the trunks and 7.5 on the branches weekdays (10 mins and 15 mins on the branches). However, our bus fleet for the entire region of 4.5 million is only just over 1,000 with most routes operating (at best) 20-30 minutes during the peak and once an hour otherwise. Additionally, we have 5 decent sized bus operators (> 5,000 trips / day), but only 2 run on Sunday, and four on Saturday. One is just a commuter bus, peak hour only service during the weekday. Part of the issue is that operating funds must be provided locally (i.e. by the cities and counties, not the state or federal gov'ts). Additionally, most transit systems have no power over land use, that is under control of municipal or county governments meaning that land use decisions have frequently been made without consideration of transportation decisions. Where transit is part of a city gov't or regional gov't with land use controls, usually it fairs better (see Charlotte, NC and Portland, OR), though Florida (Miami in particular) is an exception.

Sad to say, I actually find myself pleased on the weekends when I get a bus route that operates at a 30 minute headway. Even our heavy rail system operates 20 minutes on the branches during the weekend. While Atlanta might be an extreme example of low service for a region of its population, I don't think low frequency headways are all that unusual in the United States.

thaitransit wrote:He said that the reason mass transport use is low in the US is due to the lack of high density inner urban areas in American cities. This i assume means that people tend to not live and work in the inner city areas of American cities.

Is this really true?

Yes. Most American cities are surrounded by huge areas of low-density suburban sprawl. These areas contain a significant fraction (even a majority in most urban areas) of both people and jobs. Many people live in one suburb and work in another, and seldom visit the central city.

Is it possiable that most US cities operate tens of thousands of metro buses all hours of the day every few minutes to move the population around?

In these suburban areas the vast majority of travel that is not into or out of the central city, is done by automobile. Major roads are lined with mile after mile of shopping malls and plazas, restaurants and other businesses, each surrounded by parking lots. If a road has bus service, it is likely to be only one or two buses per hour.

US urban-rail development has been very patchy, with one city developing it extensively and a nearby city barely developing it at all. I remember posting on this odd phenomenon some months back, and I concluded that it was a result of the whims of local politicians.

THus,

Portland, OR has had a light-rail system for over 20 years now, while Seattle got a commuter-rail line a few years ago and its first light-rail line last month.
Dallas got its first light-rail line over a decade ago, while Houston got its first one only a few years ago, and Austin's is still under construction.
Cleveland has some urban-rail lines, while Columbus and Cincinnati do not.
Chicago has several rapid-transit and commuter-rail lines while Detroit has a goofy "people mover".
St. Louis has some light-rail lines while Kansas City can't even get started.

In many large urban areas, little or no effort has been made to keep up with trends of businesses moving out of city centers into the suburbs. That means urban transit systems are still focussed on getting people downtown, except downtown may no longer be in the large central city. What's needed is a balanced transit system to get people from suburb to central city to the traditional jobs, from central city to suburb (where many jobs now are), and from one suburb to another without first going to the central city.

A prime example is Chicago. Both CTA (rail and bus) and Metra are great at moving large volumes of people from outlying areas to downtown in the morning and vice versa in the evening. CTA is also very good at moving people within the city limits and bordering suburbs. The problem is many large companies no longer operate in the city. Sears, Motorola, etc. are in the suburbs as are many newer companies. Since > 2x as many people live in the combined suburbs as in the city proper, it makes sense that a large proportion will work and shop in some suburb or other. There is a suburban bus system called Pace, but its frequencies are not good, usually every 15-20 minutes during rush and every 30-60 minutes off peak. Also, their routes tend to be very circuitous instead of direct, meaning a trip from point A to point B, say 1.5 miles away, may actually be a 3+ mile route. Because of this, and other factors, for almost everyone in this situation, getting to/from work/school/shopping will mean using a car.

Both CTA and Metra have talked and planned routes to connect outlying areas without going downtown, but its never gone beyond talk and maybe a first draft plan.

Thaitransit, I live near the NM Rail Runner, and it is actually a very good system for a region like this. If you look on maps.live.com or any other high-altitude imagery site, you'll see how the density in and around Albuquerque and Santa Fe is rather light compared to Bangkok or Singapore. The best way to think of it is that in North America, all development is based on the assumption that land is cheap.

Something else to consider in New Mexico is that the largest source of traffic between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is people who live in the north end of Abq and work at state jobs in Santa Fe. Because of their work schedules and the total volume of people, the Rail Runner is actually very well-suited to making a significant impact in auto traffic. This is an important point. In the US, the assumption is usually that people will begin travelling from place to place by private auto and when the density of traffic outstrips the funding for roads (NOT the capacity of existing roads), then government agencies will look at implementing mass transit. Rail Runner was constructed in part because it was cheaper than adding two more lanes of highway along its corridor.

This also explains why we don't use buses. If you're on a public road, it's much faster to drive it in your car than it is to take a bus that makes multiple stops, and the result is that the bus is usually used by people who can't afford a car in smaller cities. In North America, private autos are very affordable relative to wages, and because land is cheap it's easy to find places to park them. Unless parking is extremely expensive relative to people's wages--or in limited supply--people will always prefer a private auto to a bus. Building codes for shopping centers typically require a certain number of parking spaces for a given size of structure; no code mandate exists for mass transit-related issues (similarly, when I worked in downtown Atlanta, the building lease included a free garage parking pass for each employee, but we could not get similar compensation for our mass transit fares). Ergo, rail is more effective as a means of mass transit in this continent because it gets people off of the same rights of way that they would use in a private auto and therefore saves them time. Buses, unless using a dedicated busway, don't.