Having lived through the destruction of mass transit in the Los Angeles area and driving a city bus for 5 years in Las Vegas, this story hit home to me. I also experienced the outstanding mass transit of German and Austrian cities.
This article outlines the rise of mass transit in the very early years to its demise with the coming of automobiles and super highways. It also outlines where attempts at renewing mass transit are underway.
It all depends upon convenience to the rider.
San Diego has a light rail service from the border into the inner city that is most successful as it runs every 15 minutes. A lot of people park their cars along the line to get onto the trolley cars, saving fuel and money.
And lets not forget the billions being spent to build new systems above and below ground. A subway in earthquake-prone California? Sorry, but you’ll never catch me riding one.
The problem is that while there has been ample federal funding to build these lines (at least until the current administration, which has halted the flow of even allocated transit funding), there are no such resources for operations. This means that trains on these expensive showpiece lines may only run every half hour or less. (At the most extreme: For several years Cleveland’s $70 million Waterfront line only had trains running two days a week.)
More importantly, the light rail lines often operate as isolated systems, with little connecting bus service to provide access to people not within walking distance of their stops. And though cheaper to build, light rail lines are often too slow and have too low capacity to make a truly meaningful dent in a city’s auto orientation.
How well I remember the lack of connectivity of buses here in Vegas.
A focus on improving local service is all the more important in an era where the White House and Congress are not very favorably disposed to transit, and well-funded lobby groups like those of the Koch brothers are spending millions to fight transit infrastructure spending. Even if the money to build new light rail lines isn’t coming from Washington, states and local governments absolutely can afford the comparatively small annual expenditure to run buses reasonably often, all day, every day, so that transit is a viable mode of transportation for all kinds of trips—not just 9-to-5 commuting. That has been proven around the world to be the way to attract riders to transit.
And transit companies are begging for people to learn and then operate their vehicles.
Much more @ Why Is American Mass Transit So Bad? It's a Long Story. - CityLab
