When I joined my organization in 2016, one of the issues we were working on was mass transit. I was astonished to learn that in the Twin Cities, transit ridership peaked in the first years of the 20th century, the era of the streetcar, and has been declining ever since. Transit ridership is now down to a risibly low level. Despite this record covering more than a century, Minnesota’s urban planners persist in a futile effort to recreate the past–an urban environment in which mass transit is actually a mass phenomenon.
The same thing is happening across the country, as spending on mass transit, fueled largely at the federal level, continues to increase even as transit utilization continues to decline. From the Unleash Prosperity Hotline:
Our latest UP policy study from senior fellow and ace demographer, Wendell Cox, finds that the more money the feds spend on urban transit, the fewer the percentage of commuters who ride them. Transit funding for big blue cities has negative productivity as shown by this key chart from the study:
That chart tells the story. There is no reason why many billions of dollars should be spent to support inefficient urban transit systems (and public unions) that supply fewer than 4% of commuter trips.
