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There are a few issues standing in the way of the US ever being able to adopt European or Japan-levels of rail effectiveness.
The most glaring is that our population centers sprawl out haphazardly. In Europe (less familiar with Japan), there are very dense city centers, and slightly less dense (but still very dense compared to the US) "suburbs" within a few miles of the center. Then there is typically some type of urban growth boundary, effectively cutting off sprawl as we would recognize it here. So, it is easy to serve a high % of the population with rail that residents can walk/bike to because they only need to cover a relatively small area. Even our "dense" cities have not-dense suburbs, making it a requirement to drive to commuter rail nodes in most places.
The other issue is the decentralization of the employment centers. Transit works most effectively when it converges on a single point. But in many (most?) cities, there are nodes set up all over the metro area, but not large enough to redirect rail lines to. Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA could be an example of this: it has is an exploding employment cluster for biotech/tech/education. But all of the commuter rails terminate in Boston (believe one passes through Cambridge, but not Kendall?) It makes commuting to Kendall inefficient because for most people it will not be a direct shot. The DFW area has dozens of examples of this: most offices aren't in downtown Dallas, but that's where all of the transit lines go.
It pains me to say, as I am a big believer in public transit and reducing our carbon footprint. But it's hard for me to see any way that these systems could work and not be a complete financial boondoggle for most cities. Heck, they barely function in our largest & densest cities compared to other western nations.
James Kunstler once was quoted as saying that the American suburb was perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources in human history. Kinda hard to disagree.
Admittedly I agree. It’s much more difficult to functionally serve American suburbs in terms of transit, although we do have a few outliers that have done fairly well at it, like Chicago.
If that happened would it run northbound to say Ft. Collins and south to dare I say Colorado Springs?
The extension of I believe the N line is supposed to run to Boulder and then stop in Longmont. I have seen plans for a complete regional rail system encompassing the whole front range up to Ft. Collins to the Springs.
I think that's more reflective of the sad state of transit in American cities. Regions with 2M+ elsewhere would have better transit networks. In the U.S., the standards are lower. San Diego is sad, Austin is sad, U.S. cities are generally sad. Nice quip though!
If you look at the website you referenced, it literally says "Most travel is not work-based travel, but data on such journeys is not readily available." Your single data point was insufficient and really didn't capture transit use for workers (regionally) or just generally for households inclusive of all trip purposes. There's also zero info for non-residents, which actually is a big trip generator for tourist cities...like San Diego.
There are a few interesting metrics in addition to the ones below: ttps://htaindex.cnt.org/map/
Transit Ridership % of Workers (region)
- Baltimore 9%
- SD: 7%
- Portland: 7%
- Salt Lake City: 6%
- Cleveland 4%
- Pittsburgh: 3%
- Austin: 3%
Annual Average Transit Trips per Household (region)
- San Diego: 229
- Baltimore: 142
- Salt Lake City: 134
- Portland: 129
- Cleveland: 72
- Austin: 56
- Pittsburgh: 43
In the case of San Diego, this doesn't even cover all the transit trips by non-residents. Comic Con alone alone produces 200-300K additional trolley trips by itself...that's approximately one-third of Austin Metrorail's annual ridership. And all the Amtrak trips down to San Diego too. Also, a lot of SD locals do in fact use transit to attend events, go to school, or go to the beach. None of that is capture by the limited "commute trips" data point.
I ranked Austin very highly because Project Connect is very ambitious and impressive. In general, metros that are around 2 million in size embark on larger transportation plans. Austin's is significantly more impressive than almost every region and its worth mentioning. The vision sells itself--no need for cherry-picked data points. It's very exciting to see Austin make this investment and I hope other cities will take their lead by investing in better & more mobility options. I love that Austin is using its moment in the spotlight to demonstrate that investments in urban infrastructure & multimodal transportation systems is critical to promote and accommodate growth. Maybe places like Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, etc. will make those decisions too after seeing what the competition is doing!!!
There is something wrong with the data, at least for Pittsburgh I'm sure. city of Pittsburgh has 18.6% who use transit to commute to work. For the Pittsburgh metro area, it is 6%. Not sure if there are problems with the other cities data from the source above too, or not.
I also looked up commuter rail history in these cities, and it's interesting that all had at least some commuter rail in the last century. Pittsburgh actually had a VERY extensive commuter heavy rail system, but it died off starting in the 1960s-1980s. Pittsburgh had at least TEN (!!) commuter rail lines at one point, run by various railroads.
There are a few issues standing in the way of the US ever being able to adopt European or Japan-levels of rail effectiveness.
The most glaring is that our population centers sprawl out haphazardly. In Europe (less familiar with Japan), there are very dense city centers, and slightly less dense (but still very dense compared to the US) "suburbs" within a few miles of the center. Then there is typically some type of urban growth boundary, effectively cutting off sprawl as we would recognize it here. So, it is easy to serve a high % of the population with rail that residents can walk/bike to because they only need to cover a relatively small area. Even our "dense" cities have not-dense suburbs, making it a requirement to drive to commuter rail nodes in most places.
The other issue is the decentralization of the employment centers. Transit works most effectively when it converges on a single point. But in many (most?) cities, there are nodes set up all over the metro area, but not large enough to redirect rail lines to. Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA could be an example of this: it has is an exploding employment cluster for biotech/tech/education. But all of the commuter rails terminate in Boston (believe one passes through Cambridge, but not Kendall?) It makes commuting to Kendall inefficient because for most people it will not be a direct shot. The DFW area has dozens of examples of this: most offices aren't in downtown Dallas, but that's where all of the transit lines go.
It pains me to say, as I am a big believer in public transit and reducing our carbon footprint. But it's hard for me to see any way that these systems could work and not be a complete financial boondoggle for most cities. Heck, they barely function in our largest & densest cities compared to other western nations.
James Kunstler once was quoted as saying that the American suburb was perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources in human history. Kinda hard to disagree.
True, rail by itself isn't a panacea, and can only serve a small percentage of transportation needs in most US cities.
But rail doesn't need to be by itself. Two other ingredients are (a) a good bus network feeding the rail stations and corridors not served by rail, and (b) managed growth that focuses development near transit.
There is something wrong with the data, at least for Pittsburgh I'm sure. city of Pittsburgh has 18.6% who use transit to commute to work. For the Pittsburgh metro area, it is 6%. Not sure if there are problems with the other cities data from the source above too, or not.
There's nothing wrong with the data, to my knowledge. You are not incorrect--almost 19% of Pittsburgh city residents commute via transit, but this specific H+T metric considers how all commuters traveling to jobs in Pittsburgh are commuting. They are different calculations. I stuck with the regional comparison because jurisdiction boundaries aren't super useful.
There's nothing wrong with the data, to my knowledge. You are not incorrect--almost 19% of Pittsburgh city residents commute via transit, but this specific H+T metric considers how all commuters traveling to jobs in Pittsburgh are commuting. They are different calculations. I stuck with the regional comparison because jurisdiction boundaries aren't super useful.
It didn't really have anything to do with international references. Also, Japan has superior transit systems to western/northern Europe in just about every aspect except maybe late night service.
The reality is that Austin is simply following in the footsteps of other cities that have initiated transformational investments in urban rail systems. it's not an outlier, it's actually more common that not for a region of 2+ million people.
Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and others were further ahead than Austin was at similar points in their histories. Generally, I'd agree that Austin is in the top quartile in terms of timing, but again, the hype with Austin is without context as always to make it seem a lot more impressive than it is.
The real outlier is Salt Lake City, which has built a pretty extensive rail network for a region of its size.
From what I experienced, you can add South Korea to the list as well and China in superior transit systems.
From what I experienced, you can add South Korea to the list as well and China in superior transit systems.
I would say that the high-speed rail systems are pretty much on par with Japan, but the regional & local Japanese rail systems are better and more varied than China and Korea.
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