July
24, 2002, 12:50 p.m. Mass
Mythology
Transit myths
disguised as science.
By Wendell
Cox
ransit's Washington
lobbying group, the American
Public Transportation Association (APTA) has just released a report
suggesting massive energy-consumption reductions from an "attainable"
increase in transit use. "Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment:
The Role of Public Transit." Characteristically editorializing in
its news pages, the Washington Post fawningly called Conserving
Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transit
"the first scientific analysis that compares mass transit with private
vehicles in terms of the fuel they burn and the pollution they spew."
(Presumably buses and trains don't "spew;" maybe they "ventilate"
pollution.) If the Post had consulted the data it might have substituted
the word "pseudo-scientific."
APTA underestimates
the energy used by electrified urban rail systems (subways an light rail)
by at least 25 percent. According to the U.S. Department of Energy Transportation
Energy Data Book, rail transit uses four times as much energy as APTA
claims. The difference is that APTA conveniently ignores the energy (much
of it oil) required to produce electricity as well as transmission losses.
For the APTA numbers to work would require a massive switch to nuclear
and hydroelectric power. Perhaps a Hudson Valley Authority could build
a series of dams from the George Washington Bridge to Albany. Or, there's
always the Yukon.
APTA overestimates
the amount of energy used by light trucks and sport-utility vehicles (SUV)
by one third. APTA calculates this high-energy-consumption rate by including
millions of commercial vans, vehicles excluded from the Department of
Energy data. Perhaps APTA expects the drivers of commercial vans to ride
transit and leave their deliveries and equipment on the street. Why did
they stop there? Imagine how much energy would be saved if tractor-trailer
drivers switched to transit.
Again proving that
"garbage in" produces "garbage out," APTA concludes
that Americans could reduce energy consumption nearly 50 percent by switching
from cars and SUVs to transit. In fact, the savings is less than one-tenth
the APTA estimate (in fact, autos are more fuel efficient than transit),
at less than five percent. Even for an industry virtually unrivaled in
getting project costs wrong, this magnitude of error is stunning.
But that is just
the beginning of the problem with the APTA thesis. In a fleeting reference
to truth, APTA notes that transit accounts for barely one percent of travel
in the United States. APTA claims that if Americans used transit as much
as Europeans, 40-percent less Persian Gulf oil would be needed. To attain
Europe's 10 percent would require a 900-percent increase in transit ridership.
This seems like an overwhelming challenge for an industry that, according
to Census data, has just reached a 40-year record low in commuter use.
APTA's European goal
is worse than fantasy; it is hallucination. People like transit. They
take it where it is competitive with the automobile. But, auto-competitive
transit service is available to just one location in major urban areas
— downtown. High levels of frequent transit service attract 75 percent
of commuters to Manhattan, 60 percent to Chicago's Loop and from one-third
to one-half to downtown Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia,
Washington (D.C.), and Seattle. It seems unlikely that transit's market
share would rise to 750 percent in Manhattan or 600 percent in the Loop.
But to reach the Europe's 10 percent would require that and more, because
transit displaces so few auto trips elsewhere.
Outside major downtown areas, virtually no employment center has a large
transit market share, because there is little or no auto-competitive service.
Perhaps APTA expects drivers to abandon their cars to take transit service
that doesn't go where they need to go. The usual "take transit"
messages on the nation's freeway transit message boards during ozone alerts
demonstrate that much of the transportation profession really doesn't
understand transportation. Yes, transit makes a lot of sense for the few
who live in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and the small dense
cores of Los Angeles, Chicago, or San Francisco. It also works for many
of the barely 10 percent of metropolitan commuters who work downtown.
But for the overwhelming majority of Americans, auto-competitive transit
service is as scarce as numbers that add up in APTA's energy report.
—
Wendell Cox is principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy and was appointed
to three terms (1977-1985) on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission
by Mayor Tom Bradley.
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ransit's Washington
lobbying group, the 
