Despite what you might think, public transit
is a very popular idea in cities across the
United States, and not just in the northeast
corridor. From Durham, North Carolina, to
Austin, Texas, a ton of cities have come out
swinging with big ideas for new electric
rail networks, connecting important
destinations and neighborhoods across the
cities with great public transit. But, and I
don't say this lightly, there is a crisis —
the US can't build anymore. Both Austin
and Charlotte's plans had tons of cold water
thrown on them, from funding issues to
community and political problems, and cost
blowouts. That means that North Carolina's
GoTriangle light rail system might never
happen, and Austin's light rail system has
been massively scaled back when it probably
should have been scaled up into a full metro
or suburban rail system. Even cities which
managed to convince voters to sign up for
tax increases for big transit expansions —
which in my humble opinion, is very weird
way to go about getting funding and public
approval for doing a big transit expansion —
costs have ballooned, timelines have slid,
and these cities, LA and Seattle, for
example, face getting a lot less transit a
lot later than they bargain for. And in
places where progress is being made, it's
often debated whether the project is the
right one in the right place, from
Honolulu's HART automated metro to high
speed rail projects. So how can we get
America building and running great public
transit? Let's talk about it.
I'm Reece and this is RMTransit, a channel
about creating great public transit as the
foundation for amazing places.
If you want to tackle housing costs,
mobility, climate change, inequality, and
the fact that there are just way too many
parking lots around, we need to build more
public transit, ideally rapid transit. If
you're watching this video, you're probably
on board with more and better public
transit. And in fact, as it turns out, most
Americans are, which actually isn't all that
surprising. Public transit is just obviously
a good thing to have, and even if you don't
use it, it clearly makes your city a better,
greener, more affordable, and more
interesting place. But there's a big
problem. There's a gap between people's
desire for more and better public transit
and the country's ability to actually
deliver that. I think the inability to
create great transit and upgrade the transit
that already exists, despite what you'll
hear from commentators, is not driven by a
single factor, whether that be consultants,
willingness to sue everything and anything,
or even extremely pricey projects. All of
these things are major issues, and people
need to stop acting like we need to just
solve one of them and everything will be rosy.
Much in the same way that if we want to
manage climate change, we need to
dramatically expand public transport, if we
want to dramatically expand public
transport, then we need to look in the
mirror at where projects, processes and
planning are falling far short and of
course, attack those things. I think of
getting transit built a lot like a pipeline
where you need to open the valves to get
that oh so sweet transit flowing, and you're
never going to get a lot built unless you
get public support, political buy in, and
public agencies capable of delivering major
projects. People often act like all you need
is political and public support. But if that
were the case, then LA and Seattle would be
transit paradises right now with all of the
funding they've approved to build new
projects. But as a byproduct of the often
delayed and usually over budget transit
projects these cities pursue, they're just
getting a trickle rather than a wave of new
transit. While not every advocate needs to
get into the nitty gritty technical details
of why we can't get much done even when we
have political and public support, some
advocates do need to do this, and it's
really important that other advocates don't
undermine them by suggesting that all we
need is more money to spend than more
political support. We need to do all of the
above, and one valve closing is all it's
going to take to stop public transit
expansion in its tracks. And to be clear,
there's a lot of room for different types of
advocates talking about different issues,
because the public transit pipes aren't just
clogged up in one place, but by a wide range
of issues that often means we build the
wrong thing for too much money too slowly,
and then don't manage to get a large number
of people actually using it. So let's dive
into some of these barriers to better
transit and talk about how we might go about solving them.
One big issue is what transit actually gets built
A lot, and probably too much
of the transit discourse
in the US talks about the admittedly great
streetcar systems of old. You'll often hear
things like, if only we kept the streetcars,
we'd be so much better off, maybe even a
transit nation. And this is one of those
things that I think is both a yes and a
probably no. Toronto and a few American
cities did keep their streetcars, and while
Toronto is admittedly better off than most
American cities, it's not exactly a transit
paradise. And some days I feel like transit
in that city succeeds despite the
streetcars, not because of the streetcars.
Another city that has kept the streetcar or
more correctly, tram alive is Paris. This
city has built an entirely modern tram
network since the 90s that has become one of the world's
largest. But Paris's trams still don't
manage to move even 10% of the region's rail
riders. And that's in Paris, a very dense
and tram friendly city. While I think the
idea of US cities keeping their streetcars
is interesting, it's really just a
historical counterfactual. I think people
get so into the idea of what was done in the
past that they forget to think about what
should actually be done in the future.
While there are always going to be
exceptions, I think the US needs to and
should focus on building lots of subways and
lots of electric regional rail. These are
arguably the transit modes of the future.
Far more electric regional rail and subways
are being built around the world right now
than trams, and their higher speeds and
capacities are particularly well suited to
the sprawly and transit light cities of the
US. Not to mention their high frequency and
ability to be automated, which solves two
major problems for American transit:
Low service and an inability to get staff.
It's also possible to build metro at scale.
There are cities in China and India that
have built more metro in the last two
decades than the entire US has, and even
Paris is embarking on a project right now to
build over 120 miles of metro in around a
decade. Fortunately, this is a problem that
has been tackled before. The US was a leader
in cutting edge metros in the late 20th
century with systems like BART and the DC
Metro, and these systems show their value
today with the hundreds of thousands of
people they move, their expansive scale,
their impressive infrastructure, and their
just general popularity. In the future, the
US needs to expand systems like DC Metro,
MARTA and BART, not to mention building more
similar large scale metro systems, ideally
with intercompatible rolling stock in other
big cities like LA, Dallas and Denver.
But the cost of building stuff is also a major
challenge. I covered why subways cost so
much in the US in a previous video, but
suffice to say, like this video, there isn't
a single reason: it's many things. Transit
projects in the US are not always, but often
overbuilt and ill conceived. And that's
especially true when you consider the mode
of transit being built, like Seattle and San
Francisco, who've built deep bore tunnels to
run tram style vehicles in them. Or even
alternative projects like with New York
building a giant underground stub end
terminal instead of building through running
regional rail like so many other cities
around the world. Even for great projects
like the Second Avenue subway, massive
underground office complexes, running tunnel
boring machines with twice the necessary
staff, and underground storage areas for
dirt from the tunnels so residents who were
about to get a subway didn't have to be
bothered by dump trucks at night??
I'm not going to talk too much about costs because I
and others, including recently Nandert,
have covered the issue so much. All I'm
going to say is that the issue is real. And
no, just spending more is not an option. If
it was, New York might have built more than
a handful of new subway stations in the last
several decades. And that's in a place
where, at the very least, people understand
the need for transit and often use it. But
there is a silver lining here. If cost
problems could be tackled, then the
absolutely enormous amounts of money the US
is able to mobilize to build new transit
could do unimaginable things. LA, for
example, would have enough money to build a
New York sized subway system and a modern
electric regional rail system. That is, if
it could build for the prices seen in less
expensive places, which are of course all
PPP adjusted so it doesn't have to do with
higher labor costs in the US.
There's also the issue of where transit is built. Far too
often, transit projects start in low density
areas with not much population, instead of
in denser urban centers. This risks losing a
project in the cradle when it opens and
people don't get onboard en masse. One
example of this is HART in Honolulu, which
is very expensive but a good transit line,
but one that won't provide a ton of benefit
if it doesn't actually end up getting to the
dense places where most people live. It's
pretty common and obvious practice to build
the most useful parts of a transit project first.
For example, most subway systems grow
out from the city center, and most high
speed rail systems start by connecting two
major cities like Tokyo and Osaka or Paris
and Lyon. I think because of the lack of
transit construction experience and the
political want of getting something built
quickly, transit projects often start where
it's easier, even if they still end up
costing a ton of money for the same reasons.
But with projects that start where it's
easy, still costing a ton of money even
compared to international examples, you
might as well start where transit is
actually needed so you get an expensive but
at least useful project. Projects like
Denver's electric regional train system and
Brightline West show that the US can build
technically modern projects, but often away
from where they really should be built. But
I don't think this is necessarily an issue
of understanding where to build transit so
much as a healthy understanding of the trade
offs. For example, sometimes building
transit along highways might be worth it if
it means connecting more people at the other
end. But that's the kind of trade off that
you won't be able to judge if you aren't
building a lot of transit. I'd argue that
again, the US used to be pretty good at
this. Many old transit lines in the country
were fairly technically advanced and weaved
through all kinds of different urban
contexts. PATCO in Philadelphia is a great
example of this, and there's a great Alan
Fisher video on it that you can check out.
Modernized systems like PATCO across the
United States are exactly the type of thing
the country needs. And then there's the way
the systems are actually run. Far too often,
leaders of transit systems in the United
States are chosen internally, despite the
success of people like Andy Byford, who live
and breathe transit but aren't from the US.
And while it's certainly not true of every
system, and there really are great leaders
at some transit systems, it's also way too
common for transit agency leadership to not
actually use transit and instead drive.
Plus, and while this isn't necessary, and I'm the
first to call out credentialism, it is
disappointing that more leaders aren't
planners or engineers. Service is also a big
issue. While the US often doesn't implement
the same technologies seen around the world
to allow more service for less, like, for
example, automated trains, governments are
also way too stingy and inconsistent with
operating funds. That stinginess and a
general willingness to cut service on a whim
means transit systems often have service
which comes in waves. It's possibly good
when the economy is doing well and then it
goes into a nosedive and then it starts to
recover. But people don't get used to a good
transit service always being available.
While it's great when transit is running
well, if you can afford a car and you know
transit service might be cut at any time,
you might get that car. And once you have
the car, you might get the suburban house.
And once you have the suburban house,
you're probably not using transit. Part of
what leads to inconsistent service is all
over the place funding, because transit is
often treated like a nice to have that is
funded when the economy is running well,
that is with things like sales taxes. But
that means that when the economy isn't doing
well and people aren't going out and buying
things, transit might not have funding. And
if transit doesn't have funding, there isn't
good service, and when there isn't good
service, people don't want to rely on
transit. This idea of thinking about how
service is delivered is really important,
especially as companies like Brightline
become a bigger part of transit in the US.
While I like the service that Brightline provides,
it shut down for over a year during COVID.
Transit should be seen a lot
like sewers, electrical grids, or yes,
highways, in that it doesn't shut down
unless things are truly on fire. Unless of
course it's in Chicago, in which case
transit being on fire is just perfectly
normal. At the end of the day, you're never
going to build the transit culture if
systems shut down when they're not making
money and service levels ebb and flow with
the phase of the moon. And speaking of
culture, the culture of transit agencies and
industry needs to change. North American
transit agencies often participate in their
own North American industry groups rather
than international ones like the UITP. I
can't help but think that this closed off
nature, which is especially weird when you
realize that North America isn't
particularly good at public transit, is
probably a big factor in why we always need
a made in North America solution when there
are better ones overseas. A bigger classroom
where we could learn from systems around the
world is obviously a good idea. Now, full
disclosure, I have worked with the UITP in
the past, but I think the logic here is
pretty obvious. We also need to build up
more of a public transit ecosystem. If we
want more transit, we need to teach and
train people about every aspect of it.
While there are entire universities in
Europe and Asia dedicated to public
transport and railways, such institutions
are few and far between in North America.
But they shouldn't be. If we want great
public transit, people need to live and
breathe it. They need to speak its language.
And being able to be educated at a
university or college that is about public
transit is one of the ways you do that. And
on top of building new stuff, deciding what
to build and changing the culture and
service levels of our transit systems, we
need to modernize. That looks like making
systems fully accessible, automating
subways, adding platform screen doors,
upgrading stations, and building new transit
oriented development. If this all seems like
a lot, it is. But better transit for the US
isn't some insurmountable task. Really the
biggest challenge is that there are so many
smaller challenges. Tackling them won't be
easy, but it's the kind of great effort that
solving issues like climate change,
inequality, and affordability will take,
and we should do it.