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Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257 (2001)

Chapter: Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

2
Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns

Early in the 20th century, American cities led the world in the introduction and use of many transit technologies. The size and shape of several American cities would be much different today if not for the advent of rapid rail and electric streetcar service that could carry thousands of workers into and out of their centers each day. This vital role continues in some very large U.S. cities. Yet in most American urban areas, a small share of residents and workers use bus and rail transit regularly, and among those who do, many are poor, elderly, or disabled, dependent on public transportation for mobility.1 At the beginning of the 21st century, all measures indicate that transit is used to a much greater extent in Western Europe, and even Canada.

A number of factors help explain why trends in public transit have unfolded so differently in North America and Europe. To be sure, the scale and timing of urbanization have differed in each region, as have the breadth and pace of suburbanization. Transit tends to work best in compact cities with strong downtowns and central business districts that concentrate activity and minimize travel diffusion. While American central cities have lost thousands of residents and businesses to suburbs, Western European and Canadian cities have retained higher levels of both.

With few exceptions, the cities of Western Europe and Canada remain dominant centers of employment, retailing, and entertainment, providing natural focal points for transit service. Meanwhile, the centers of many older American cities have relinquished much of their economic, political, and cultural dominance, losing residents and businesses even as the urban

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

regions around them have continued to grow. In many other cases, whole urban regions have emerged and matured without distinguishable centers. Thus the population and employment densities needed to support transit ridership have dissipated in many older American cities, while in many others they were never there to begin with.

Western European and Canadian urban areas have also decentralized and spread out, but on a more modest scale. Indeed, in nearly all industrialized nations, urban areas have grown in population, and income development patterns and economic activity have become less concentrated around a single center. As in the United States, the private automobile has played a major role in decentralization by increasing residential and commercial development of once-remote land around central cities. Whereas automobiles were mass introduced in North America a full generation earlier than in Western Europe, the international gap in car ownership has been shrinking over time. Car ownership levels in much of Western Europe are now similar to those in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.

As these trends in automobility have taken hold, however, national, regional, and local governments in Western Europe and Canada have taken steps to retain and even increase transit ridership, in part to preserve their city centers and to protect the environment in and around cities. Aided by a host of complementary policies—from high motor vehicle taxes to restrictions on downtown parking and suburban development—transit systems have managed to maintain an important, if not central, role in the transport systems of most cities and entire urban regions. Thus even as automobiles continue to proliferate throughout Western Europe, transit continues to enjoy ridership levels not experienced in the United States in more than 40 years.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

The current status of transit in the United States is in marked contrast to the situation much earlier in the century when American cities pioneered new mass transportation technologies. Indeed, it is often forgotten that many new forms of public transportation were first introduced widely in the United States. Beginning with the first successful installation of cable cars in San Francisco during the 1870s and electric rail street lines in Richmond a decade later, the burgeoning American cities of the late 19th century were quick to adopt, and adapt, the latest innovations in urban mobility (Middleton 1987; Pushkarev et al. 1982, 4–5).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Rise and Decline of American Mass Transit

Unquestionably, the heyday of American transit was during the early electric streetcar era, which began in 1890 and peaked in the early 1920s. Almost overnight, American city dwellers became the most mobile people in the world. By the 1920s they were averaging more than 250 streetcar trips per year (Middleton 1987, 77).

Less expensive and faster to build than the rapid rail systems (underground and elevated) found in many Western European cities—and a few large American ones (New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia)—the electric streetcar systems were particularly well suited to the many medium-sized and rapidly growing American cities of the early 20th century. Located on most city thoroughfares, as well as on some dedicated ways for interurban connections, the less than 2400 km of electrified traction in 1890 had grown to more than 32 000 km by the century’s end (Middleton 1987; McKay 1988, 11).

Transit patronage—the vast majority on electric streetcar—escalated during the next two decades, a period that coincided with tremendous migration into American cities (Pushkarev et al. 1982, 4–5). Detroit’s population, for instance, grew from less than 300,000 to more than 1 million in the span of only two decades, from 1900 to 1920. The population of Los Angeles grew from 100,000 to 600,000 during the same period. Even established cities such as Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadelphia were growing at a fast pace as a result of migrants from the countryside and abroad (Warner 1978, 5–14). In 1880 there were only 20 U.S. cities with populations exceeding 100,000; by 1910 there were more than 50 (Middleton 1987, 77). This boom in urban growth created an intense demand for personal mobility, and the private streetcar companies could barely lay track and erect trolley wires fast enough to meet it (Foster 1981; McKay 1988, 5).

From the start, American investors grasped the effect this new transportation technology would have on land values. Real estate investors, as well as electric power companies, provided a large infusion of funds to finance the new rolling stock, track, and conductor lines that would extend out to the city fringes (McKay 1976, 71; Jacobson and Tarr 1996, 13; Middleton 1987). Eager to introduce this new transportation technology widely, American cities opened their streets to multiple transit entrepreneurs, each competing for passengers and hoping to profit from the residential and commercial development their services would spur. As a result, many cities at the turn of

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

the century were served by a dozen or more streetcar companies,2 and by 1920 these mostly private entities had paid for the construction of more than 70 000 km of electric track.

The widespread introduction of electric traction coincided with the advent of many other technologies and networks—from elevators and structural steel to public sewers, electricity, air conditioning, and telephones. These transportation, communications, and other technologies would quickly reshape the scale, scope, and even location of urban America (Tarr and Dupuy 1988; Smith 1984). By channeling new development within their corridors, the electric streetcar lines enabled cities to expand outward to absorb the thousands of new residents they were adding each year without the kind of overcrowding experienced at the beginning of the industrial age (Smerk 1992, 14). Residential growth congregated along the mass transportation lines because riders still needed to reach the service on foot (Smith 1984).

At the same time, the many transit lines radiating out 15 km or more from downtowns spurred intense commercial development of city centers. Traveling 10 to 15 km/h, the electric streetcars could bring in thousands of workers to fill office buildings growing taller with the aid of elevators and steel structures. Thus even as urban areas were spreading out, the cores of many central cities were becoming increasingly important centers of employment and economic activity. Indeed, few American cities during the first quarter of the 20th century would have been able to grow as large or as rapidly without the early help of electric rail (Smerk 1992; Saltzman 1992). In the largest American cities, commuter railroads and rapid rail systems contributed even more to this pattern of intense downtown development and residential decentralization; in most U.S. cities, however, the electric streetcar played this role.

By the mid-1920s, the electric streetcar era in the United States had peaked and was beginning to decline (Levinson 1996, 67). Real estate speculators had long since withdrawn their financial support from the industry, attracted by the more lucrative opportunities created by the automobile (Foster 1981; Altshuler et al. 1979, 396–397). Many of the private streetcar companies that had invested heavily in traction at the beginning of the century had been failing since before World War I and were being purchased at a discount and consolidated by large electric utilities and holding companies (Middleton 1987, 78–79; Hilton 1983, 38–39). Saddled with growing debt and subject to burdensome public fare and service regulations, few private companies could offer the return on capital required to expand their services

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

(Jones 1985). Private automobile jitney operators were attracting riders from the highest-traffic streetcar routes (Middleton 1987, 157–158; Hilton 1983, 40–43). In many small and medium-sized cities throughout the United States, patronage had turned sharply downward, many tracks were being paved over, and streetcars were being replaced with more flexible, free-wheeled trolley coaches and motor buses (APTA 1995, 48; Hilton 1983, 40–43).

In the decade after World War I, the automobile was transformed from a recreational vehicle for the elite and hobbyists into the nation’s most popular mode of transportation. Henry Ford’s Model T and the affordable automobile revolution it spurred were welcomed enthusiastically by many cities dissatisfied with what they perceived as increasingly unresponsive and obsolete electric rail services. By the mid-1920s, private and for-hire automobiles were nearly everywhere, even in the most transit-oriented, large American cities. In New York City, more than 600,000 automobiles had been registered by 1927—equivalent to 1 car for every 12 residents (Schrag 2000, 58). Cars were owned by 1 in 8 residents in Boston and Chicago and by every third or fourth resident in Detroit, Seattle, and Los Angeles (Foster 1981, 59).

To accommodate the new motor vehicles, American cities began widening their streets, paving them with asphalt, and introducing traffic control devices. Some even began planning the networks of urban freeways that would ultimately be built with the help of state and federal aid. Having only recently invested in the world’s largest subway system, even New York City was in the midst of a building boom of new highway bridges, tunnels, and parkways by the 1930s. Although few cities in the midst of the Great Depression could afford to build modern new freeways, automobiles had already become the main mode of travel for most residents of the new and booming cities of the South and West. Miami, Houston, Phoenix, and many other cities that were only small towns when electric streetcars were introduced 40 years earlier were being shaped almost from scratch by automobiles and the highways that accommodated them.

Though still rare at the time in Western Europe, more than 25 million automobiles were registered in the United States by 1935 (AAMA 1997, 8). One in two American households owned a car, and ownership rates were especially high in small and medium-sized cities, where transit ridership was fast declining (Jones 1985; AAMA 1993, 24). Electric streetcar ridership had dropped precipitously in these cities through the 1920s, eclipsed not only by the automobile but also by the more efficient and flexible motor

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

bus (Smerk 1992, 18; Levinson 1996; Saltzman 1992, 26). By the onset of World War II, disinvestment in electric streetcars was well under way, with half the nation’s original electric streetcar network having been taken out of service (Pushkarev et al. 1982).

Buttressed by demand from World War II, public transportation enjoyed a respite during the early 1940s. By decade’s end, however, the downward trend in ridership had resumed at an accelerated pace (see Figure 2-1). Operations were increasingly hindered by downtown traffic, and in the eyes of many motorists and city officials, the lumbering streetcars and rough trolley tracks were a major source of congestion (Middleton 1987, 168; Vuchic 1999, 9–10). Most cities continued to charge private streetcar companies for the street space they used and for a portion of street maintenance costs. On streetcar lines with declining patronage, passenger revenues could not cover these costs, hastening abandonment. Domestic production of streetcars ended in 1951, by which time less than 16 000 km of electric streetcar track remained in service (Middleton 1987, 169). During the next decade, another 10 000 km was abandoned (Pushkarev et al. 1982, 6–7). Most street rails were paved over, while many interurban rail lines were dismantled and rights-of-way sold or converted to highways. By the 1960s, buses had become the main mode of public transportation, except in a handful of American cities that had retained limited streetcar service (Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco) or more extensive rapid rail systems (Middleton 1987, 170; Saltzman 1992, 31; Levinson 1996, 72–73). Most of the remaining rail lines were separated from automobile traffic, operating in tunnels, on elevated track, or on exclusive rights-of-way.

Though too late to save most streetcar lines, federal aid introduced in the mid-1960s enabled many state and local governments to purchase private bus companies and consolidate their operations within metropolitan transit authorities. Nevertheless, patronage continued to decline into the 1970s. By this time, suburban expansion, declining central cities, and the withdrawal of private capital from the transit industry had been under way for several decades. Increasingly dispersed urban populations, retail services, and other businesses, often accompanied by the desertion of many downtown commercial areas, made large concentrations of riders difficult to find. Inner-city crime, racial tensions, and concerns about the quality of city schools further undermined the traditional base of city riders (Meyer and Gómez-Ibáñez 1981, 41, 223).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-1 U.S. trends in annual passenger trips by transit mode, 1920–1998 (APTA, selected years, 1977–2000).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Though women were entering the labor force in record numbers and many maturing baby boomers were reaching adulthood, few would choose transit over automobiles. Indeed, the proliferation of female workers and two-income households during the 1970s enhanced the appeal of office buildings located closer to suburban residential communities accessible almost exclusively by the automobile (Garreau 1991, 112).

Growing federal infusions of funds for new transit infrastructure and equipment, coupled with other government aid to reduce fares, helped stem the absolute decline in ridership during the mid-1970s. Ridership has increased only slightly since, however, and transit’s share of all trips has continued to drop in most urban areas, even where government aid has grown. Having accounted for about 18 percent of urban travel in the United States as late as 1950, transit’s share had declined to less than 3 percent by 1975 (Pushkarev and Zupan 1977; Altshuler et al. 1979, 21–22). Today it is at about 2 percent.

Relative Stability in Western Europe and Canada

Compared with American cities, the more established Western European cities at the turn of the century introduced electric streetcars at a slower pace and on a smaller scale.3 Many Western European cities had strictures against land speculation that made private investment in electric traction less appealing than in the United States (Jacobson and Tarr 1996,13). Streetcar operators often held long-term, exclusive citywide franchises for transit services and therefore were not compelled by competition to invest widely in the new electric technology. Even by the 1890s, transit operators in many Western European cities were heavily regulated or owned outright by local governments. These arrangements provided little incentive and opportunity for private investment in the new electric streetcar technology (McKay 1988, 6; McKay 1976, 191).

Many large Western European cities did invest heavily in underground and elevated rapid rail systems at the turn of the century, and an extensive network of passenger and commuter railroads was in place by this time. Acceptance of electric streetcars was slower, however. The task of planning and installing the lines was more difficult on the narrow and meandering city streets of Western Europe than on the newer, wider, and straighter streets found in most American cities (McKay 1988, 8–9; McShane 1994). Western Europeans in small and medium-sized cities were more reluctant to

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Historic plaza of Amagertov in Copenhagen. (© UITP. Reprinted with permission from Public Transport International, No. 5, 1999, p.43.)

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

permit the conversion of their public squares and “walking” streets into traffic ways for streetcars, while officials in large cities spent much time trying to blend the new tracks and electric wires into their stately boulevards and historic plazas (McKay 1976, 84). They also took seriously the potential hazards of the overhead power lines and carefully studied alternative means of distributing power safely and in an aesthetically acceptable manner (McKay 1976, 84).4 Thus by the turn of the century, electric streetcar use was two to three times higher in the United States and was still higher some 20 years later (McKay 1988; McShane 1988).

By the 1920s, however, the pattern had changed. Transit ridership had risen in Western Europe and was still heading upward as patronage was flattening and about to decline in the United States. The need to attract and retain private capital—a daunting challenge for rail operators in the United States—was less of a factor in Western Europe. One reason is that Western European governments had already become a primary source of transit funding. Although private transit companies were common in Western Europe at first, competition among operators was generally eschewed in favor of publicly owned or subsidized regional franchises. Municipal ownership, tried first in Glasgow in 1894,5 was the norm even before World War I, by which time publicly owned transit systems in Western Europe carried four times more passengers than private operators (McKay 1988; Jacobson and Tarr 1996).

Many Western European transit systems also suffered losses in ridership even before World War II. As in the United States, motor buses replaced service on thousands of kilometers of lightly traveled streetcar lines beginning in the 1930s. In Sweden, France, and Great Britain especially, many entire systems were replaced with buses. Western European bus and rail transit systems, however, did not encounter the same degree of competition from private automobiles after World War II. Hence a number of Western European cities (e.g., Nantes) were successful in reacquiring these old streetcar rights-of-way for modern light rail systems.

Indeed, by the time automobiles arrived en masse in Western Europe during the 1960s, environmental concerns had made road building far more difficult and costly than in the pre- and early postwar years. Preservation of the transit infrastructure that remained in place became a priority for Western European governments as the addition of new infrastructure grew increasingly costly and complicated to achieve.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Luxembourg’s tram system in the 1950s. (© UITP. Reprinted with permission from Public Transport International, No. 4, 1998, A. Groff, Tramways in Luxembourg: The End of an Era and a New Beginning, p. 22.)

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Much as in the United States, transit systems in Canada suffered sharp declines in patronage from the 1950s through the early 1970s (see Table 2-1). Since then, however, Canadian transit systems have experienced gains in ridership as measured on a per capita basis. Such a sharp reversal of fortune—though not accompanied by increased transit mode share—eluded transit agencies in the United States.

TRANSIT USE AND AVAILABILITY TODAY

By all measures, public transit use today remains several times higher in Western Europe and Canada than in the United States. Transit typically accounts for 10 to 20 percent of urban trips in Western Europe, but only 2 percent in the United States (see Table 2-2). Transit’s mode share is highest in Switzerland, where it accounts for about 1 in 5 urban trips and is used about half as often as automobiles. Even in the Netherlands, where biking is popular, transit is used for 7 percent of trips (Pucher and Lefevre 1996, 16). Canadians also use transit about 10 percent of the time, or about once for every 8 urban trips by car. By comparison, about 45 trips are made by automobile for each trip made by transit in the United States.

Of course, transit ridership figures vary from place to place, both within the United States and across Western Europe and Canada. Ridership in New York is exceptionally high by American standards. The more than 16 million people living and working in greater New York average more than 140 transit rides per year.6 Though transit usage in New York compares favorably with that in many large Western European cities, few other large American cities have ridership levels even half that of greater New York. Only five other urban areas—metropolitan Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington (D.C.)—have annual transit ridership levels exceeding 75 trips per capita. Consequently, a small number of large urban areas account for the majority of transit usage in the United States. These six cities generate more than 65 percent of the country’s transit rides even though they account for only 20 percent of its urban population. They are also unusual by American standards since they have retained strong downtowns and extensive urban rail and bus systems that are used by both transit-dependent and discretionary riders.7 Arguably, these city centers could not function as they do now without the rapid transit systems that carry thousands of workers each business day. However, residents of most urban areas in the United States average between

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-1 Total Annual Public Transit Ridership in Canada and the United States, 1950–1995 [Pucher 1994 (for pre-1980 Canadian data); APTA 2000]

Year

Canada

United States

Total Trips (millions)

Population (millions)

Trips/Capitaa

Total Tripsb (millions)

Population (millions)

Trips/Capitaa

1950

1,396

14

100

17,301

150

115

1960

973

17

57

9,395

178

53

1970

980

22

45

7,332

203

36

1980

1,315

25

53

8,567

225

38

1990

1,532

27

57

8,800

249

35

1997

1,379

29

48

8,374

267

31

aTrips per capita is calculated by including the urban population living outside official transit service areas.

bAfter 1977, transit ridership reported in the United States consists of “unlinked” trips, or boardings, whereby passengers transferring between transit vehicles or from one mode to another are counted as having made more than one trip. The American Public Transportation Association estimates that this reporting change has raised passenger trip counts by about 20 percent in the United States since 1977. Canadians have continued to report “linked” trips. A more uniform reporting measure would therefore show an even larger difference in transit ridership between the two countries.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-2 Travel Mode Split for Urban Trips, Selected Countries, 1995 (Pucher 1999)

Country

Percent of Trips by Each Mode, All Purposes

Automobile Trips per Transit Trip

Automobile

Transit

Bicycle

Walk/Other

United States

89

2

1

7

44.5

Canada

76

10

2

12

7.6

Denmark

42

14

20

24

3.0

Great Britain

65

14

4

17

4.6

France

56

13

5

25

4.5

Germany

49

16

12

23

3.1

Netherlands

45

7

28

20

6.4

Sweden

46

11

10

33

4.2

Switzerland

46

20

9

26

2.3

Note: Modal split distributions for different countries are not fully comparable because of differences in trip definitions, survey methodologies, and urban area boundaries. Moreover, in compiling distributions for a few countries without official national surveys, it was necessary to piece together informationfrom various sources and adjust for trip types surveyed and geographic coverage. The percent distributions are intended to show the approximate differences among countries and should not be used for exact comparisons. The “other” category includes motorcycles, school buses, and most forms of paratransit, although even this varies from country to country and could not be fully standardized.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

20 and 60 transit rides per year. In most cities, transit has a relatively small—often niche—role in the overall transportation system.

In contrast, it is nearly impossible to find a Western European city of any size that averages fewer than 100 transit rides per capita each year. Figure 2-2 shows a comparison of annual ridership levels in a sample of 43 American, 10 Canadian, and 42 Western European cities with populations in their urbanized areas ranging from 250,000 to 5 million.8 Urban areas in that population range were sampled because their large numbers allow for meaningful comparisons across several countries. Ridership levels in Western Europe are consistently higher than in the United States by a factor of about five, though with some variability among cities. Even the smaller Western European cities (population of less than 50,000) have ridership levels much higher than those of large American cities.

Ridership levels in Canadian cities are roughly double those of American cities. Toronto and Montreal average well over 100 rides per capita. Whereas transit usage is lower in Western Canadian cities, it is still higher than in most American cities of comparable size and age. Calgary and Winnipeg, for instance, average about three times as many rides per capita (65 to 80 annually) as Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Salt Lake City. Ridership levels in these Canadian cities are comparable with those in much larger American cities with extensive rail transit systems, such as Atlanta and Philadelphia. Whereas fewer than 5 percent of urban Americans use transit for work trips, double-digit transit mode shares for commuters are common in Canadian urban areas, both large and small (see Table 2-3).

Service Availability and Ridership

Transit operators in small and medium-sized U.S. cities tend to have low ridership levels, and very few riders are middle-income commuters. Service in these communities is often skeletal and infrequent as compared with Western Europe. Figure 2-3 shows a comparison of annual transit vehicle-hours on a per capita basis in urbanized areas of Western Europe and the United States. The comparison indicates consistently higher levels of service in the Western European cities, irrespective of city size. Even the smallest Western European cities have more transit service than many larger American cities.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-2 Annual transit ridership levels for selected U.S., Canadian, and Western European urban areas (UITP 1997; Jane’s Information Group 1997; Bureau of the Census 1996; NUREC 1994; 1996 data from National Transit Data Base).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-3 Mode of Travel to Work for Largest Urbanized Areas in Canada, 1996

Urbanized Area

Urbanized Area Population

Mode of Travel to Work (Percent of Trips)

Median Commute Distance (km)

Car

Transit

Walk

Other

Toronto

4,263,000

72

22

5

1

9.3

Montreal

3,326,000

73

20

6

2

8.2

Vancouver

1,831,000

78

14

6

3

7.7

Ottawa-Hull

1,010,000

73

17

7

3

7.8

Edmonton

862,000

84

9

5

2

7.6

Calgary

821,000

80

13

5

2

7.5

Quebec

672,000

82

9

7

1

6.8

Winnipeg

667,000

77

14

6

2

6.1

Hamilton

624,000

85

8

5

1

7.4

London

398,000

85

6

7

2

5.4

Kitchener

383,000

89

4

6

2

5.3

St. Catherines–Niagara

372,000

91

2

5

2

5.3

Halifax

332,000

77

11

10

2

5.2

Victoria

304,000

73

10

10

6

4.7

Windsor

278,000

89

3

5

2

5.9

All

17,864,645

77

15

6

2

7.4

 

Source: Statistics Canada (www.statcan.ca).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-3 Annual transit vehicle-hours of service per capita for selected U.S. and Western European urban areas (UITP 1997; Jane’s Information Group 1997; Bureau of the Census 1996; NUREC 1994; 1996 data from National Transit Data Base).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

In general, per capita transit use is lowest in those cities in which transit has a minor role in serving commuters. These systems concentrate on serving the urban poor; the elderly; and other transit-dependent travelers, such as students, with limited access to cars. About one-quarter of transit riders are from households with very low incomes (under $15,000 in 1995) (APTA 1998). In cities where suburban commuters rarely use transit, the large majority of riders, usually more than 70 percent, are from low-income households (APTA 1998). For the United States as a whole, low-income households use transit for 5 to 10 percent of their trips—two-thirds of the time during off-peak periods (Pucher et al. 1998). As a group, more affluent urban residents (with household incomes exceeding $50,000 per year) rely on transit for only about 1 in 100 trips—mostly during peak commuting times, and often by rail and express bus between the city center and suburban locations.

Though Western Europeans and Canadians also use transit predominantly for work trips, the transit market tends to be less segmented. A broader spectrum of the population uses transit for a wider variety of purposes. Still, Western European transit systems are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with automobiles for nonwork travel, such as shopping and recreation (Korver et al. 1993; Stern and Tretvik 1993). Even in the more compact Western European cities, automobiles offer tremendous flexibility and convenience for such transportation needs.

Funding

State and local jurisdictions provide most operating subsidies in the United States, whereas the federal government contributes mainly to capital equipment and infrastructure (except in small communities, where federal aid covers a large share of operating costs) (see Table 2-4). Public subsidies finance most transit systems in Western Europe except in Great Britain. As in the United States, Western European governments fund nearly all capital requirements. However, funding responsibilities vary by country: in some cases national and regional governments and in others local governments have the main responsibility. In Canada, the provinces have the main responsibility for providing funding aid for transit operations and capital needs.

Revenues from passenger fares cover more than half of the operating costs of most Western European transit systems, which is a higher share

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-4 Sources of Operating Revenue for U.S. Transit Agencies by Size of Urbanized Area, 1996

Population Size of Urbanized Area

Source of Operating Revenue (%)

Passenger Fares

Other Commercial Revenue

Federal Aid

State Aid

Local Aid

Other Dedicated Aid

Under 200,000

21

6

18

24

24

7

200,000 to 1 million

22

6

10

19

27

16

More than 1 million

40

7

3

21

21

8

National average

38

7

4

21

22

8

 

Source: 1996 data from National Transit Data Base, Federal Transit Administration.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

than for most U.S. systems (see Figure 2-4).9 It is important to recognize, however, that U.S. transit systems often must provide service in areas with low employment and population densities, in which there are few, if any, significant concentrations of potential riders. Even large public subsidies cannot compensate for the operating inefficiencies inherent in serving such light transit markets. For the most part, Western European transit operators serve areas with the demographic potential for significant patronage. This fundamental difference in market characteristics reveals the importance of examining factors other than transit funding levels when considering the reasons for lower ridership in the United States.

TRANSIT AND URBAN FORM

In general, as urban employment and residential densities increase, so does transit use. More than 20 years ago, Pushkarev and Zupan (1977) estimated that density explains nearly 60 percent of the variations observed in transit ridership. They found that strong central business districts and high concentrations of employment near transit lines, especially rail lines, are especially critical factors in American cities. With regard to residential densities, they found that about seven dwellings per acre (or three per hectare) are required to maintain transit’s mode share above 5 percent. These empirically derived figures remain oft-cited rules of thumb for transit planning.

The importance of high population and employment densities for transit operations has been recognized for decades. This relationship had become evident by the 1950s when declining urban densities and transit ridership were coincidental in many older American cities (Levinson and Wynn 1963; Meyer et al. 1965). Meanwhile, many newer American cities were maturing without ever having attained the high densities traditionally needed for successful transit services.

As urban historians and geographers often point out, however, declining urban population and employment densities are not a post–World War II phenomenon, but a long-term trend observable in the United States for more than a century. Even earlier evidence of urban household decentralization can be found. The “bedroom” communities that sprang up along Boston’s commuter railroads in the mid-1800s and Manhattan workers commuting by steam ferry from “rural” Brooklyn two decades before are often cited as the beginnings of U.S. suburbanization. Figure 2-5 shows declining densities in

Page 38
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-4 Public operating subsidies and transit ridership levels for selected U.S. and Western European urban areas (UITP 1997; Jane’s Information Group 1997; Bureau of the Census 1996; NUREC 1994; 1996 data from National Transit Data Base).

Page 39
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-5 Historical trends in the density of new residential development in selected U.S. urban areas, 1900–1960 (Pickrell 1999, 413).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

new residential development in several large American cities since at least the beginning of the 20th century.

To be sure, trends toward household decentralization and dispersal in urban areas have been observed in other industrialized countries for many decades;10 however, U.S. urban areas have spread out farther and faster than their counterparts elsewhere. For nearly a half century, the American suburbs, not the central cities, have accommodated nearly all the country’s urban population growth. Retailers, then other businesses, soon followed households outward. In 1950, about 60 percent of urban residents and 70 percent of jobs were located in central cities; by 1990, these figures had declined to 37 and 45 percent, respectively (Mieszkowski and Mills 1993). Over a 40-year period, the population of most central cities fell—despite 3 percent annual growth in the country’s urban population overall (Pisarski 1996, 8–18).11 This pattern of decentralization has undermined many transit systems long configured to serve people working or living in central cities.

As shown in Figure 2-6, net migration has remained negative in U.S. central cities in recent years, even though metropolitan areas as a whole have gained population. Moreover, many of the fastest-growing cities in the United States today—from Phoenix to Tampa—have emerged with no dominant cores, and most can be described as multicentered and suburban in character. Even urbanized areas that have retained strong centers, such as Chicago, Boston, and Washington (D.C.), have become encircled by low-density suburbs and satellite activity centers situated far outside the traditional downtown. Washington lost more than 70,000 residents from 1980 to 1997, while its outer suburbs (counties farther than 30 km from the center) gained more than 400,000. Meanwhile, many suburbs have attracted commercial development, making the central cities even less dominant as loci of employment and further diffusing travel. For instance, the city of Atlanta’s share of jobs in the urban area fell from 40 to 24 percent from 1980 to 1995 (Katz and Bradley 1999).

Whereas much of the suburban office floor space in the United States is clustered in satellite centers, or “edge cities,” a larger share is dispersed throughout the expanding suburbs. According to Lang (2000), more than 35 percent of office space in the 13 largest U.S. metropolitan areas is in solitary (unclustered, low-rise) suburban office buildings, compared with about 43 percent in central city business districts and 20 percent in suburban satellite centers (see Table 2-5). In 1999, New York and Chicago were the only

Page 41
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-6 Net immigration into U.S. central cities and suburbs, 1985–1998. (Source: J. D. Kasarda, unpublished analyses of Bureau of the Census Current Population Survey, Table A-3, www.census.gov.)

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-5 Office Space Locations in 13 Largest Urban Areas of the United States, 1999 (Lang 2000)

Urban Area

Percentage of Total Urban Area Office Space

Central City Primary and Secondary Downtowns

Satellite Office Clusters in Suburbs

Other Suburban Locations

Chicago

54

20

26

New York

64

6

30

Boston

42

19

39

Washington

42

27

32

Denver

34

29

36

Los Angeles

38

25

37

San Francisco

43

14

43

Dallas

26

40

35

Houston

23

38

39

Atlanta

34

25

41

Detroit

21

40

39

Philadelphia

37

9

54

Miami

18

17

66

Average

43

20

37

large urban areas where a majority of the office space was located in the central city’s downtown areas.

The decentralization of both businesses and households has reduced the number of residents and workers located within the service boundaries of major public transit systems. As an example, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority estimates that its system covers about 73 percent of the 4.4 million people in greater Washington, D.C. More than half (39 of 76) of the stations in its rapid rail system—which was planned in the late 1960s—are located within the District of Columbia. When construction began on this system in 1970, 53 percent of the jobs and 26 percent of the residents in greater Washington were located in the District of Columbia; today these shares have fallen to 36 and 13 percent, respectively.12

Although Western European and Canadian cities have not been immune to the forces of decentralization, they have been able to maintain

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

more dominant central cities and urban cores.13 Many retain appealing residential neighborhoods in central areas, as well as functioning commercial districts that attract a large portion of metropolitan workers, shoppers, and others who use transit to get there. To illustrate the differences in urban form, Table 2-6 shows the population densities in 10 American and 10 Western European cities with urban areawide populations ranging from about 1 million to 2 million. The data presented in the table show—as do the accompanying maps in Figure 2-7—that the American urban areas typically cover more land than their Western European counterparts. For the American group, the median urbanized land area is more than 1600 km2, whereas the Western European median is less than 1000 km2 (and only two urban areas exceed 1600 km2).

The Western European central cities also contain a larger share of the urban population—most containing half or more, compared with a median of less than one-third for the U.S. sample. The median density for the Western European central cities is about 3,400 people per square kilometer, compared with about 2,400 for the American cities. The average for the Western European urban areas is about 0.77 km2 per 1,000 people, whereas the average for the American urban areas is about 0.95 km2 (see Figure 2-8). Moreover, what this aggregate data masks is the tendency for Western European suburban populations to be densely clustered, as opposed to the more dispersed suburban development patterns found in the United States.14

TRENDS IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT

In the United States, most urban areas that have experienced static or declining central city populations have been gaining population on the periphery. Even urban areas that have experienced minimal growth during the past three or four decades have been expanding outward, yielding lower population densities on average. For instance, greater Cleveland encompasses one-third more land today than in 1970 even though it has lost 8 percent of its population (Nivola 1999). Similarly, according to the Regional Plan Association, the New York metropolitan area now contains 60 percent more urbanized land than in 1970, even though its population has grown by only 13 percent.15

Suburban areas in Western Europe have also experienced disproportionate residential and commercial growth, although at a more modest scale

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-6 Population Densities and Land Area in Selected U.S. and Western European Urban Areas, 1990 (Bureau of the Census 1994; NUREC 1994)

Urban Area

Central City Population (thousands)

Central City Land Area (km2)

Central City Population Density (persons/km2)

Population of Urbanized Area Outside Central City (thousands)

Urbanized Land Outside Central City (km2)

Population Density Outside Central City (persons/km2)

Land Area (km2) per 1,000 People for Entire Urban Area

Western Europe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lyons

415

48

8,646

891

862

1,034

0.70

Copenhagen

551

97

5,680

765

844

906

0.72

Nice

342

72

4,750

608

764

796

0.88

Munich

1,185

310

3,823

185

222

833

0.39

Marseilles

855

241

3,548

425

943

451

0.93

Glasgow

654

197

3,320

762

1,247

611

1.02

Stuttgart

551

207

2,662

528

431

1,225

0.59

Frankfurt

618

248

2,492

567

512

1,107

0.64

Hamburg

1,592

755

2,109

485

838

579

0.77

Sheffield

499

367

1,360

443

626

708

1.05

United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miami

638

160

3,988

1,276

753

1,695

0.48

Baltimore

735

209

3,517

1,155

1,325

872

0.81

Pittsburgh

370

144

2,569

1,308

1,871

699

1.20

Cleveland

504

199

2,533

1,096

1,448

757

1.03

St. Louis

396

160

2,475

1,544

1,726

895

0.97

Seattle

515

217

2,373

1,225

1,305

939

0.87

Denver

467

287

1,627

1,043

897

1,163

0.78

Phoenix

981

733

1,338

1,019

1,186

859

0.96

Tampa

617

499

1,236

1,083

1,183

915

0.99

Atlanta

394

341

1,155

1,763

2,603

677

1.36

Page 45
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-7 Comparison of urbanized land areas in selected U.S. and Western European cities. [Sources: Bureau of the Census TIGER Map Server (www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer) and European Union’s Atlas of Agglomerations (NUREC 1994) (www.uni-duisburg.de/duisburg/atlas.htm).]

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-8 Population densities for selected U.S. and Western European urban areas, 1995.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

and pace. Except for a few declining industrial regions, the central cities of Western Europe have lost relatively few inhabitants, and some have even gained population.

An examination of historical patterns for 112 urban areas in five Northern and Western European countries (Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany) shows that more than half were still growing faster in their central cities than in their suburbs during the 1950s (see Table 2-7). By the 1970s, most central cities were losing population. During the 1980s, however, many regained population. Indeed, when the 38 largest cities of France are included in the tabulations, more than half (53 percent) of the 150 largest central cities of these six countries of Western Europe (excluding Scandinavia, for which comparable data were not available) gained population during the decade (see Table 2-8).

Though still growing more rapidly than their central cities, the suburbs of Western Europe have not gained population as rapidly as American suburbs. This is explained in part by the fact that urban population growth (and population growth in general) has been more modest in Western Europe during the past 20 years, thereby placing less pressure on suburban land devel-

Table 2-7 Historical Trends in Central City Population in 112 Urbanized Areas of Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany, 1951–1991 (Cheshire 1999, 572–573)

Period

Percent of Central Cities Gaining Population Faster Than Their Suburbs

Percent of Central Cities Gaining Population, But More Slowly Than Their Suburbs

Percent of Central Cities Losing Population

1951 to 1961

55

32

13

1961 to 1971

18

47

35

1971 to 1975

30

8

62

1975 to 1981

4

18

78

1981 to 1991

18

28

54

Page 48
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-8 Trends in Central City Population Change in 150 Urbanized Areas of Western Europe, 1981–1991 (Cheshire 1999, 573)

Cities with Population Exceeding 330,000

1981 to 1991

Central Cities Gaining Population

Central Cities Losing Population

Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg (25 cities)

15

10

West Germany (51 cities)

33

18

France (38 cities)

27

11

Great Britain (36 cities)

4

32

Total (150 cities)

79 (53%)

71 (47%)

opment. Among the 25 largest American urban areas, 16 grew by more than 10 percent during the 1980s, and 7 of these grew by more than 25 percent (see Table 2-9). Growth of this magnitude has been rare in Western Europe. Only 4 of West Germany’s 25 largest urban areas grew by as much as 10 percent during the 1980s, and 11 grew less than 5 percent. On an even longer time scale, no Western European city can match the tremendous growth that has occurred in many American cities, such as Houston, during the past 50 to 100 years (see Figure 2-9).

Canada’s largest urban areas have more in common with those of the United States in both the pattern and magnitude of growth. Many urban areas in Canada have burgeoned in recent decades. For instance, greater Edmonton’s population has increased by more than 500 percent since 1950 and by more than two-thirds since 1970. Likewise, greater Vancouver’s population is 3.5 times higher today than in 1950 and three-quarters higher than 30 years ago. As in many parts of the United States, rapid growth continues in these Canadian urban areas. For instance, in just the 5 years between 1991 and 1996, greater Toronto grew by more than 9 percent, Ottawa–Hull by more than 7 percent, and Vancouver by more than 14 percent.

Although these fast-growing Canadian cities have managed to remain more compact and monocentric than their U.S. counterparts, most of their

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-9 Percent Change in Population in 25 Largest Urbanized Areas of the United States and West Germany, 1980–1992 (Bureau of the Census 1995; NUREC 1994)

Largest 25 Urbanized Areas in the United States

Percent Change in Population

Largest 25 Urbanized Areas in Germany

Percent Change in Population

Phoenix

42

Freiburg

12

San Diego

38

Augsburg

12

Atlanta

34

Stuttgart

10

Dallas–Fort Worth

30

Osnabrück

10

Tampa

28

Ulm

9

Seattle

25

Karlsruhe

8

Washington, D.C.

22

Nuremberg

8

Los Angeles

20

Munster

7

Houston

20

Rhine-Neckar

7

Norfolk

20

Berlin

7

Miami

19

Munich

7

Minneapolis

16

Rhine-Main

6

Kansas City

16

Bielefeld

5

San Jose

15

Cologne-Bonn

5

San Francisco

13

Hamburg

4

Denver

12

Kassel

4

Baltimore

8

Aachen

4

St. Louis

5

Kiel

3

Boston

3

Braunschweig

2

New York

3

Bremen

2

Philadelphia

3

Rhine-Mark

2

Chicago

0

Hannover

2

Detroit

−3

Ruhr

0

Pittsburgh

−7

Lubeck

0

Cleveland

−9

Saar

0

Page 50
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-9 Population trends in Houston and Harris County, Texas, 1900–1995 (Thomas and Hawes 1998, 327).

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

population growth has been outside the central city. Maps of greater Toronto, shown in Figure 2-10, illustrate how Canada’s largest urbanized area is centered by the city of Toronto. They also demonstrate, however, how the outer suburbs have been the site of most of the region’s growth. Indeed, the population of the city of Toronto has fallen by nearly 10 percent since 1950, when it accounted for more than half of the residents in the urban area. Today, with about 650,000 residents, it accounts for about 15 percent of the region’s population, as greater Toronto’s suburban population has grown by more than 3 million in the same period.16

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of Canadian urban development is that population growth in the outer suburbs tends to be in more concentrated and clustered patterns than in the United States. As shown in Figure 2-11, the Ottawa–Hull region has experienced minimal population gains in the central area in recent years, but it has managed to guide significant suburban growth along designated corridors and in planned subcenters. Ottawa’s regional land use plan has designated a greenbelt around the central city, as well as several suburban centers outside the greenbelt that are slated to receive most new public infrastructure to accommodate additional residential and commercial growth.17

Such coordinated land use and infrastructure planning at the regional level differentiates Canadian and American cities (see the discussion later in this chapter and in Chapter 4). Indeed, this difference is often given as the main reason why large Canadian urban areas have managed to remain more conducive to transit usage despite large suburban population gains and the early proliferation of automobiles.

AUTOMOBILES, CITIES, AND TRANSIT

More than any other factor, the automobile has been linked to the dispersed and decentralized urban landscape found in the United States. Whereas the electric streetcar greatly altered the shape and size of many American cities during the first quarter of the 20th century, the automobile has had more profound and lasting effects. Whereas the electric streetcar accelerated the movement of residents away from city centers, most residential areas were clustered along trolley lines that radiated out from downtown employment centers. By enabling faster door-to-door transportation, the automobile greatly reduced the need for such clustering, spawning residential development both beyond and between the

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-10 Metropolitan Toronto’s population density in 1996 and change in population from 1991 to 1996. [Source: Statistics Canada (www.statcan.ca).]

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-11 Ottawa–Hull metropolitan area’s population changes, 1991–1996. [Source: Statistics Canada (www.statcan.ca).]

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

electric trolley lines (Pushkarev and Zupan 1977, 4–5). Retailers and other consumer-oriented businesses soon followed suit. Likewise, larger freight-hauling trucks, introduced widely in the 1930s, permitted land-intensive manufacturers to move farther from city ports and railheads, often to the suburban periphery, spurring further outward movement of workers (Anas and Moses 1979).

Hence while many American urban areas—including many booming “frontier” cities such as Houston and Los Angeles—were shaped initially by the electric streetcar early in the 20th century, all have been fundamentally reshaped by the decades-long dominance of the automobile. Indeed, most large urban areas in the United States have grown significantly since the mass introduction of the automobile during the 1920s. With rare exceptions, even the slowest-growing urban areas have experienced large population gains during this time, all formed in large measure by the automobile.

Meanwhile, urban population growth has been modest in Western Europe since the widespread introduction of the automobile there, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, all of Western Europe’s largest cities of today were mature when automobiles arrived 40 years ago. Certainlynone has emerged in the same manner as Phoenix, Orlando, or Charlotte in the United States—cities that have been thoroughly shaped by the automobile, essentially from their inception.18

When large numbers of Western Europeans began driving cars 40 years ago, they did so mostly in mature cities with infrastructure and settlement patterns influenced largely by walking and later by public transit (Tarr 1984; McKay 1988). Even those Western European cities rebuilt following World War II had to meet the needs of residents who at the time had little access to automobiles. Figure 2-12 shows that less than one-third of all passenger travel was by automobile in Great Britain as late as 1952. Travel by bus and bicycle was more popular then, and cars did not account for more than half of all travel until early in the next decade.

Such sharp differences in the timing of urban development and the mass introduction of transport technologies are important when considering why Western European cities have remained more conducive to public transit. As shown in Figure 2-13, nearly all of the 10 Western European central cities sampled earlier had attained at least half of what would be their maximum population by 1920. Moreover, it was during the electric streetcar era, which lasted from about 1900 to 1950 in Western

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-12 Share of passenger travel by mode in Great Britain, 1952–1996. [Source: U.K. Department of the Environment, Transport, and Regions (www.detr.gov.uk).]

Page 56
Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

FIGURE 2-13 Timing of central city population growth and automobile ownership for selected Western European cities, 1900–1990.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Europe, that these 10 cities grew the most. All had reached 75 percent or more of their maximum population before 1960, when automobiles were just starting to be used widely.

By comparison, only 4 of the 10 sampled American central cities had reached 75 percent of their maximum population by 1930, when automobiles were being introduced widely in the United States (see Figure 2-14). These four—Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Baltimore—are older, industrialized cities. Three of the other six central cities examined—Tampa, Miami, and Phoenix (all three being in their incipiency)—had not even reached 40 percent of their peak population by 1930, and the other three were still 25 to 50 percent short of their eventual maximums.

Such differences in the timing of urban growth in the United States and Western Europe, especially in relation to the widespread use of the automobile, suggest the importance of historical developments in explaining variations in transit usage today. Automobiles have long dominated the urban landscape of the United States, but they are relative newcomers in the older cities of Western Europe (see Table 2-10). Whereas this observation suggests a possible convergence of American and Western European rates of car use and ownership, future trends will undoubtedly be affected by factors in addition to income growth.

More difficult to explain on the basis of historical and economic circumstances is the persistent gap in transit use among U.S. and Canadian cities. Although Canadian central cities have suffered less population decline than American cities, cars were introduced early in Canada. The most rapid growth in Canadian urban areas, as in the United States, occurred after the widespread introduction of automobiles. Yet despite these similarities, transit usage is two to three times higher in Canada.

In the next chapter specific policies and practices employed abroad to promote public transit are reviewed. Although Western Europe is the focus, the discussion also indicates the many factors that differentiate Canada from the United States.

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×

FIGURE 2-14 Timing of central city population growth and automobile ownership for selected U.S. cities, 1900–1990.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

Table 2-10 Historical Trends in Passenger Car Ownership per Capita: United States, Canada, and Selected Western European Countries

Country

Year

1960

1970

1980

1990

1995

Registered Cars (thousands)

Belgium

1,503a

2,059

3,158

3,833

4,239

Canada

4,104

6,602

10,255

12,662

13,182

France

4,950

11,860

18,440

23,010

24,900

West Germany

4,558

13,298

21,454

27,217

40,499b

Great Britain

5,650

11,801

15,632

22,527

24,306

Netherlands

1,272a

2,405

4,240

5,196

5,633

Sweden

NA

2,443

2,882

3,600

3,630

United States

61,671

89,243

121,600

143,459

148,500

Cars per 1,000 Persons

Belgium

167a

210

322

387

424

Canada

241

300

417

455

455

France

110

237

343

405

429

West Germany

83

218

346

439

494b

Great Britain

109

215

278

395

411

Netherlands

116a

185

301

349

368

Sweden

NA

305

347

419

408

United States

352

435

533

563

571

Note: NA = not available.

a1965 data.

bUnified Germany.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
×

NOTES

1.  

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA 1995, 13–14) observes that transit systems in the United States serve the following two distinct markets: (a)nondiscretionary (transit-dependent) riders, consisting of individuals who do not have regular access to a private automobile, including the elderly, disabled, students, and members of households unable to afford a motor vehicle or more than one car; and (b) discretionary (transit-choice) riders, consisting of people who elect to use transit for travel speed, comfort, and convenience, often to avoid traffic congestion and parking difficulties.

2.  

By 1910, however, many of these smaller companies had consolidated into single citywide franchises because of the advantages of having a single coal-powered electric production facility (Hilton 1983, 34).

3.  

Although few Western European cities introduced electric streetcars as rapidly as American cities, German cities were the fastest to do so, while the cities of Great Britain were among the slowest (McKay 1976, 67–73).

4.  

Decorative support poles and underground supply lines were installed in many Western European cities as a result (McKay 1976, 74). A few large U.S. cities, most notably Manhattan and Washington, D.C., also required underground conduits for power lines in certain locations, but such requirements were generally less common (Schrag 2000).

5.  

When Glasgow “municipalized” private streetcar operations in 1894, the streetcar fleet was all horse-drawn. Electric service did not begin until 1898.

6.  

Per capita transit ridership measures are often calculated using the subpopulation within the transit service territory, usually excluding the unserved but fastest-growing populations in the outer urban fringe. To provide a more complete picture of transit’s transportation role for the entire urban region, the ratios used here were derived on the basis of the total population in each urbanized area.

7.  

In the very largest U.S. cities with rapid transit systems, middle- and high-income riders account for a larger portion of ridership, especially during the peak commuting periods. Transit accounts for about 85 percent of the peak-hour entrants in Manhattan; about two-thirds in downtown Chicago; and more than half in the central business districts of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

8.  

Larger cities (population exceeding 5 million) were excluded because of the small number available for comparison. Cities were selected largely on the basis of data availability.

9.  

As shown in Table 2-4, passenger fare revenues accounted for 38 percent of operating costs for the United States as a whole because of the disproportionate effect of New York, Chicago, and several other large systems on national aggregate figures. These systems recover a higher share of their operating costs from fare box revenues.

10.  

For instance, see Mieszkowski and Mills 1993.

11.  

Even in fast-growing central cities in the Western United States, such as Denver,

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×

   

population gains have been greater in surrounding suburbs (Katz and Bradley 1999).

12.  

Although the Metro rapid rail transit system has contributed to the development of some suburban regional centers, the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority is challenged to better serve (with a combination of rail and bus services) the growing amount of suburb-to-suburb travel in the region.

13.  

Still, subcenters, or edge cities, can be found in Western Europe—from the “new towns” outside London and Stockholm to the “metropoles” outside Paris (Meadows 1998).

14.  

It should be recognized in making such cross-national comparisons that varying definitions are used to delineate urban boundaries. The data provided for the Western European cities are based on Western European Union (EUROSTAT) measures of urbanized areas or “agglomerations” (NUREC 1994). Buildings separated by less than 200 m are defined as being part of the contiguous built-up area comprising and bounding an urban agglomeration. American urbanized areas, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, comprise contiguous territory with a density of at least 625 people per square kilometer. Because city parks, greenbelts, and other close-in land that does not meet these density requirements are included by the Census Bureau as part of urbanized areas (to eliminate enclaves or to close indentations in the boundary), the comparability of the maps in Figure 2-8 is limited. Nevertheless, the maps of three American and three Western European urban areas offer visual evidence of how the latter remain more concentric and compact.

15.  

See Regional Plan Association of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, “Building a Metropolitan Greensward,” available at www.rpa.org.

16.  

Initially, the municipal region of greater Toronto consisted of a city center of about 170 km2 and a suburban region consisting of about 600 km2. Many governmental functions and services were shared by the center city and the suburbs that comprised the municipal region. However, most metropolitan-area growth has occurred outside this region during the past 30 years. Today, nearly half the metropolitan population of greater Toronto resides outside the original boundaries of the municipal region.

17.  

See Official Plan for the Region of Ottawa-Carleton, April 1999 (www.rmoc.on.ca/planning).

18.  

Of the 40 largest urban areas in the United States in 1995 (all exceeding 1 million in population), nearly half had urbanized area populations of less than 100,000 in 1900. Moreover, more than one-third barely registered as towns 100 years ago, having a combined population of less than 400,000. Together, these 14 urban areas—Charlotte, Dallas, Greensboro, Houston, Las Vegas, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa—had a total population of more than 25 million in 1995.

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×

REFERENCES

ABBREVIATIONS


AAMA

American Automobile Manufacturers Association

APTA

American Public Transportation Association


NUREC

Network on Urban Research in the European Community


UITP

Union Internationale des Transports Publics

AAMA. Selected years. World Motor Vehicle Data. Washington, D.C.

Altshuler, A., J. P. Womack, and J. R. Pucher. 1979. The Urban Transportation System: Politics and Policy Innovation. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

APTA. Selected years. Transit Fact Book. Washington, D.C.

Anas, A., and L. N. Moses. 1979. Mode Choice, Transport Structure and Urban Land Use. Journal of Urban Economics, No. 6, 228–246.


Bureau of the Census. Selected years. Statistical Abstract of the United States. U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C.


Cheshire, P. C. 1999. Some Causes of Western European Patterns of Urban Change. In Urban Change in the United States and Western Europe: Comparative Analysis and Policy, 2nd edition (A. A. Summers, P. C. Cheshire, and L. Senn, eds.), The Urban Institute Press, Washington, D.C.


Foster, M. S. 1981. From Streetcar to Super Highway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900–1940. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pa.


Garreau, J. 1991. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. Anchor Books/Doubleday, New York.


Hilton, G. W. 1983. The Rise and Fall of Monopolized Transit. In Urban Transit: The Private Challenge to Public Transportation (C. A. Lave, ed.), Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, San Francisco, Calif.


Jacobson, C. D. and J. A. Tarr. 1996. Patterns and Policy choices in Infrastructure History: The United States, France, and Great Britain. Public Works Management and Policy, Vol. 1, July, pp. 60–75.

Jane’s Information Group. 1997. Jane’s Urban Transport Systems Yearbook 1997. London.

Jones, D. W. 1985. Urban Transit Policy: An Economic and Political History. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.


Katz, B., and J. Bradley. 1999. Divided We Sprawl. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 284, Dec., pp. 24–42.

Korver, W., J. Klooster, and G. R. M. Jansen. 1993. Car—Increasing Ownership and Decreasing Use? In A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in Western European Travel Patterns (I. Salomon, P. Bovy, and J. P. Orfeuil, eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands.


Lang, R. E. 2000. Office Sprawl: The Evolving Geography of Business. Survey Series of the Center on Urban Metropolitan Policy, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

Levinson, H. 1996. Cities, Transportation, and Change. Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 4.

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Levinson, H. S., and F. H. Wynn. 1963. Effects of Density on Urban Transportation Requirements. In Highway Research Record 2, Highway Research Board, National Research Council, Washington, D.C., pp. 38–64.


McKay, J. P. 1976. Tramway and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Western Europe. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.

McKay, J. P. 1988. Comparative Perspectives on Transit in Western Europe and the United States, 1850–1914. In Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Western Europe and North America (J. A. Tarr and G. Dupuy, eds.), Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pa., pp. 3–21.

McShane, C. 1988. Urban Pathways: The Street and Highway, 1900–1940. In Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Western Europe and North America (J. A. Tarr and G. Dupuy, eds.), Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pa., pp. 67–87.

McShane, C. 1994. Down the Asphalt Path: American Cities and the Automobile. Columbia University Press, New York.

Meadows, D. 1998. Edge Cities or Expanding Nodes in the Urban Network? A Comparative Analysis of Recent Urban Developments in Western Europe and North America. Ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Meyer, J. R. and J. A. Gómez-Ibáñez. 1981. Autos, Transit, and Cities. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Meyer, J. R., J. F. Kain, and M. Wohl. 1965. The Urban Transportation Problem. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Middleton, W. D. 1987. The Time of the Trolley: The Street Streetcar from Horsecar to Light Rail. Golden West Books, San Marino, Calif.

Mieszkowski, P., and E. S. Mills. 1993. The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 137–147.


Nivola, P. S. 1999. Urban Illusions: Are Europe’s Cities Better? Public Interest, No. 137, Fall, pp. 73–89.

NUREC. 1994. Atlas of Agglomerations in the Western European Union, Vols. 1, 2, and 3. Statistical Office of the Western European Union (Eurostat), Duisburg, Germany.


Pickrell, D. H. 1999. Transportation and Land Use. In Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy: A Handbook in Honor of John R. Meyer (J. Gómez-Ibáñez, W. Tye, and C. Winston, eds.), The Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., pp. 403–435.

Pisarski, A. E. 1996. Commuting in America II: The Second National Report on Commuting Patterns and Trends. Eno Foundation, Inc., Lansdowne, Va.

Pucher, J. R. 1994. Public Transport Developments: Canada vs. the United States. Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 65–78.

Pucher, J. 1999. Transportation Trends, Problems, and Policies: An International Perspective. Transportation Research A, Vol. 33, No. 7/8, pp. 494–503.

Pucher, J. R., and C. Lefevre. 1996. The Urban Transport Crisis in Western Europe and North America. MacMillan Press, Ltd., London.

Pucher, J., T. Evans, and J. Wenger. 1998. Socioeconomics of Urban Travel: Evidence from the 1995 NPTS. Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 2.

Pushkarev, B. S., and J. M. Zupan. 1977. Public Transportation and Land Use Policy. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind.

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×

Pushkarev, B. S., J. M. Zupan, and R. S. Cumella. 1982. Urban Rail in America. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind.


Saltzman, A. 1992. Public Transportation in the 20th Century. In Public Transportation, 2nd edition (G. E. Gray and L. A. Hoel, eds.), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., pp. 24–45.

Schrag, Z. M. 2000. The Bus Is Young and Honest: Transportation Politics, Technical Choice, and the Motorization of Manhattan Surface Transit, 1919–1936. Technology and Culture, Vol. 41, No. 1.

Smerk, G. M. 1992. Public Transportation and the City. In Public Transportation, 2nd edition (G. E. Gray and L.A. Hoel, eds.), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., pp. 3–23.

Smith, W. 1984. Mass Transport for High-Rise, High-Density Living. Journal of Transportation Engineering, Vol. 110, No. 6, pp. 521–535.

Stern, E., and T. Tretvik. 1993. Public Transport in Western Europe: Requiem or Revival. In A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in Western European Travel Patterns (I. Salomon, P. Bovy, and J. P. Orfeuil, eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands.


Tarr, J. A. 1984. The Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure (R. Hanson, ed.), National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Tarr, J. A. and G. Dupuy. 1988. Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Western Europe and America. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pa.

Thomas, R. D., and D. W. Hawes. 1998. Urban Growth Decision Making in the Houston Area. In Metropolitan Governance Revisited: American/Canadian Intergovernmental Perspectives (D. N. Rothblatt and A. Sancton, eds.), Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley.


UITP. 1997. Major Western European Players in Public Transport: New Developments in the Western European Union. Brussels, Belgium.


Vuchic, V. R. 1999. Transportation for Livable Cities. Center for Urban Policy Research Press, Rutgers University, Brunswick, N.J..


Warner, S. B. 1978. Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900, 2nd edition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Suggested Citation:"Transit Use, Automobility, and Urban Form: Comparative Trends and Patterns." Transportation Research Board. 2001. Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10110.
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Next: Policies and Practices Favorable to Transit in Western Europe and Canada »
Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States -- Special Report 257 Get This Book
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TRB Special Report 257 - Making Transit Work: Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States describes the differences in public transit use among U.S., Canadian, and Western European cities; identifies those factors, from urban form to automobile usage, that have contributed to these differences; and offers hypotheses about the reasons for these differences--from historical, demographic, and economic conditions to specific public policies, such as automobile taxation and urban land use regulation.

Travelers often return from major European cities marveling at the ubiquity and efficiency of urban transit services and wondering why U.S. cities fare so poorly by comparison in this regard. With few exceptions, such as its central role in serving New York City, public transit has a far more prominent role in Canada and Western Europe than in the United States. This is true not only in major cities, but also in smaller communities and throughout entire metropolitan areas. Transit is used for about 10 percent of passenger trips in urban areas of Western Europe, compared with 2 percent in the United States.

A number of factors have contributed to this differential, including higher taxes on motor vehicles, steep fuel taxes, and concerted efforts to control urban development and preserve the form and function of historic cities in both Canada and Western Europe. Moreover, both regions have devoted considerably more attention and resources to ensuring that transit services are convenient, comfortable, and reliable.

At the outset of the 20th century, American cities were leaders in introducing and using transit. Today, however, much of metropolitan America is largely suburban in character. The preponderance of suburban development is due to an abundance of inexpensive land available outside of cities, burgeoning metropolitan populations and economies, and perceptions of inner-city economic and social strife, combined with the ubiquity of the automobile. Transit works best in areas with high concentrations of workers, businesses, and households, whereas suburbs are characterized by low-density development.

The committee that studied the issue of making transit work better in the United States concluded that dramatic changes in transportation investments, land use controls, and public attitudes—including much denser settlement patterns, together with Western European–style fuel taxes and other disincentives to driving—would be required to reshape the American urban landscape in ways that would fundamentally favor transit use. Nonetheless, there is ample opportunity for transit to play a more prominent role in meeting passenger transportation demand in many U.S. cities. Although it is not reasonable to expect the modal share of transit in most U.S. metropolitan areas to equal that of European cities, there are many areas in which transit is appropriate and its use can be increased. American cities that have retained high levels of central-city employment and dense residential development and have a history of transit service can learn from and apply the policies and practices used abroad.

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