By Chris Zeilinger
Does Great Transit Run on Rails?
December 19, 2024
Over the past four chapters, we’ve established several key spotting features in our quest to identify communities whose greatness reflects the greatness of their transit. These features are indicative of great transit, but they’re neither determinative nor necessary to establish greatness through transit. The factors we’ve explored so far include:
- A high number of unlinked passenger trips (UPT) per capita using transit;
- At least a moderately high population density;
- Transit operating budgets supported mostly by non-federal sources, including significant farebox receipts and/or local government funds;
- An intensive use of the transit system’s fleet in revenue service;
- Fixed-route bus service accounting for a large share of transit service supply, (which is a premise behind this chapter);
- Being in a Canadian urban area, as discussed briefly in the last chapter; and
- Having a high proportion of population between the ages of 18 and 24, and/or having at least one 4-year college or university of 10,000 or more students within the urban area.
Along the way, we’ve learned that transit is at its greatest when it’s presented, and used, as a key component of middle-class mobility across an urban area. This is essential.
What about steel rails?
But let’s think about another possible spotting feature: do places with great transit have subways, streetcars or other forms of rail transit linking origins and destinations within the urban area? Sometimes, this is the case, but not always.
Looking at the 50 US urban areas with the highest UPT per capita in 2023 (ranging from 167.85 for NYC-Jersey City-Newark to 19.37 UPT per capita in Miami-Ft Lauderdale; a full ranked list can be found at https://ctaa.org/press-release-new-data-presentation-urban-ridership/), some interesting things stand out:
(i) all 15 urban areas on that short list with populations over 1 million have some degree of rail transit;
(ii) 30 of the remaining urban areas on this top-50 list are “collegiate” areas with populations between 50,000 and 1 million, in which more than 10 percent of the population is in the 18-24 age range or within which there is at least one 4-year college or university with at least 10,000 students (interestingly, there are only three collegiate urban areas under 1 million population with rail transit in that group: Honolulu, Morgantown and Tucson); and
(iii) There are 5 “non-collegiate” urban areas in the US with populations under 1 million with more than 19 UPT per capita, but without a 4-year college or university within the urban area having more than 10,000 students, and in which persons age 18-24 make up less than 10 percent of the population:
- Hanford, Calif.
- Kahului, Hawaii
- Trenton, N.J.
- Spokane, Wash.
- Seaside-Monterey, Calif.
While Trenton has a lot of commuter rail service connecting it with NYC, Philadelphia, Camden, N.J., and intermediate points, the four River Line stops within its urban area make a marginal contribution to Trenton’s urban mobility, so we’ll regard New Jersey’s capital as a “non-rail” urban area for this discussion.
Let’s take one of these cities, along with two of its peers that didn’t make the top-50 list, and see what we can discern about rail transit’s contribution to cities with great transit.
Three Cities, Three Transit Platforms
As urban areas go, Spokane, Wash., (pop. 450K), Rochester, N.Y. (pop. 700K), and Virginia Beach-Norfolk, Va., (pop. 1.5m) are quite different from one another. But they have two things in common: all have had some form of rail transit, and all posted ridership numbers in 2023 of between 7.5 million and 10 million unlinked passenger trips.
These three aren’t alone; other urban areas in that same transit cohort with current ridership between 7.5 and 10 million include Albuquerque, N.M., Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn., Champaign, Ill., Fresno, Calif., Lansing, Mich., Madison, Wis., Nashville, Tenn., Raleigh, N.C., Springfield, Mass., and Trenton, N.J.
Flower City by Subway
Until the 1950s, workers in Rochester, N.Y., could take the city’s subway to get to and from their jobs in downtown and nearby industrial areas. Built in a former bed of the Erie Canal, the Rochester Subway connected the southeastern portion of Rochester with General Motors’ Rochester Operations facility northwest of downtown. Although the city’s streetcars made the last of their runs in 1941, Rochester’s subway kept running until 1956.
Today, there’s no subway in Rochester. Last year, the area’s Regional Transit Service (RTS) offered up more than 9 million UPT, translating to 14.04 UPT per capita. They do this by providing a lot of bus service on the streets of the Rochester urban area – nearly 600,000 vehicle revenue-hours in 2023. That level of service requires a lot of cash, which RTS derives from fares and other direct revenues (16 percent of their operating budget) and other local government revenues (20 percent of their operating budget). New York State provides robust state-generated transit operating assistance, supporting 52 percent of the RTS operating budget. The urban area is moderately dense, with about 2,400 residents per square mile. Nearly a quarter of Rochester’s residents are in the 18-24 age range, as reflects an area with a number of 4-year colleges and universities, including the 12,000-student University of Rochester (served by transit) and the 20,000-student Rochester Institute of Technology (not served by transit).
Light Rail to the Beach? Maybe Another Time
The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is a large, complex region that includes the cities of Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach. Because its 1.5 million residents are hemmed in by water on nearly every side, population density is a respectable 3,000 persons per square mile. As previously noted, a combination of geography and high density is transit-favorable. Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) provides a fairly robust level of service around the region, running 345 buses along 71 routes.
Norfolk’s last streetcar ended its run in 1948, but starting in the 1980s, local leaders began pushing for a light rail system that would connect downtown Norfolk with the Virginia Beach oceanfront. Following a 1999 referendum, Virginia Beach pulled out of the light rail arrangement; nonetheless, construction of what’s now “The Tide” began in the early 2000s, and revenue service began in 2011 to the Norfolk city limit, but no further. The Tide’s ridership accounted for just over 10 percent of HRT’s passenger trips in 2023, compared to the bus service’s 81 percent share of HRT ridership.
Lining Up in the Lilac City
Spokane hasn’t had any local rail service since 1936. Nonetheless, the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) provided 9.4 million unlinked passenger trips (UPT) last year. Not that we’re keeping score, but the Spokane urban area’s population is only 30 percent of Hampton Roads’ population, yet transit ridership is 25 percent greater in Spokane than Hampton Roads. On a per capita basis, Spokane has 21.02 UPT per capita, while Hampton Roads has 5.15 UPT per capita. Why the big difference?
It’s not the modality: STA considered a light rail line in the early 2000s, but opted instead for a bus rapid transit (BRT) service. However, STA’s “City Line” didn’t launch until July 2023, so the BRT service has barely had a chance to boost ridership. It’s worth noting, though, that STA and its partners only had to spend a bit more than $90 million constructing their BRT line, in contrast to the $318 million price tag for building The Tide’s route in Norfolk.
Is it the student population, even though college-age people make up less than 10 percent of Spokane’s population? That’s probably part of the picture: STA runs frequent, high-capacity bus services from various points of Spokane to Eastern Washington University’s (EWU) campus in the outlying rural community of Cheney, with headways of 15 to 30 minutes.
In comparison, HRT serves the Old Dominion University (ODU) campus in Norfolk with two of its bus routes, each having hourly headways. Perhaps “supply and demand” is at play here: although EWU has 20,000 students, compared to ODU’s 30,000, the frequent, high-capacity supply of buses may create more opportunity to serve more of the collegiate market in Spokane.
In any event, there definitely is a greater supply of transit in Spokane, compared to its ostensible peers in Rochester and Hampton Roads. For the final numbers in this chapter:
- Spokane (BRT, no rail) – 1.50 vehicle revenue hours per capita
- Rochester (no BRT, no rail) – 0.83 vehicle revenue hours per capita
- Virginia Beach-Norfolk (rail, no BRT) – 0.69 vehicle revenue hours per capita
This underscores a point we’ve made several times: you need to put a great amount of transit service on the street if you want enough transit to help your urban area be great. But it’s possible.
In our next chapter, we’ll look at rural America, and see some small places made great by rural transit.
The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) and its members believe that mobility is a basic human right. From work and education to life-sustaining health care and human services programs to shopping and visiting with family and friends, mobility directly impacts quality of life.