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6 Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, transit ridership in the United States declined for the fifth consecutive year in 2019. In that year, every transit mode except commuter rail dropped in ridership. Buses were the most affected, with the lowest rider- ship levels since at least the 1970s. Even heavy rail ridership declined after an upward trend that began in 2009 (see Figure 1-1). As transit ridership declines, agencies lose fare revenue, which often results in reductions in service to meet budgets, which further results in ridership losses. While these trends are consistent across U.S. cities, transit ridership in other countries has increased in the last several years. Canadian transit agencies have experienced a steady rise in transit ridership, which has closely followed increases in service since the mid-1990s (Miller et al., 2018). Freemark (2019) points out that French transit agencies have also increased in ridership during the same period when ridership at U.S. agencies has declined. According to the 2017 report by the International Association of Public Transport, or UITP, on urban public transport in the 21st century, 24 out of 39 countries in the study âexperienced an increase or at least maintained a stable rate of public transport use (journeys per capita) over the past 15 yearsâ (International Association of Public Transport, 2017). Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey, Belgium, China, New Zealand, Malta, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and France all saw mild or even large growth in transit ridership. The United States is not alone in its ridership losses, but most countries with similar losses have poor economic conditions or substantial changes in demographics. 1.1 Research Approach The objectives of the research are threefold: 1. To understand the factors contributing to the recent decline in transit ridership in the United States and quantify the relative contribution of each factor, 2. To identify strategies to mitigate or reverse those declines and to evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies, and 3. To develop recommendations for how public transportation agencies can respond to the ridership challenges they have been facing. A mix of factors is contributing to recent transit ridership trends, and several of these factors will push ridership in competing directions. Therefore, it is insufficient to address the topic with only an exploratory data analysis or through a qualitative assessment. Such exercises quickly become speculative, as can be found in much of the literature on the topic over the past few years. Instead, it is necessary to combine detailed data with robust statistical methods to separate out these competing factors, as was done for this project. This research was conducted in a two- phase, top-down approach that considered ridership changes first at the system level and then at C H A P T E R 1 Introduction
Introduction 7Â Â the detailed route and stop levels. This allowed the research team to both consider the diversity of transit systems in the United States and take advantage of more detailed data assembled for specific cities. The research was divided into the various tasks shown in Figure 1-2. This project also builds on TCRP Research Report 209: Analysis of Recent Public Transit Ridership Trends. 1.2 Report Contents Chapter 2 contains a review of the literature and current research regarding transit ridership change. Chapter 3 is a multicity evaluation of ridership change, in which longitudinal models of the change in system-level transit ridership by mode across many cities were developed. This high-level analysis ensures that the trends captured here are broadly applicable across the Year An nu al R id er sh ip (m illi on s) Figure 1-1. U.S. transit ridership by year. Figure 1-2. Flow of tasks in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of research.
8 Recent Decline in Public Transportation Ridership: Analysis, Causes, and Responses nation. The analysis includes National Transit Database (NTD) ridership data, U.S. Census data, and other data sources that enabled some of the hypotheses developed about ridership change to be tested; these hypotheses are presented in additional detail in Appendix A of TCRP Web-Only Document 74: Recent Decline in Public Transportation Ridership: Hypotheses, Methodologies, and Detailed City-by-City Results. Although the system-level analysis identified some important factors in transit ridership declines, as discussed in Chapter 3, many factors and strategies cannot be assessed at the national level due to inconsistencies in data from transit agency to transit agency or due to phenomena that are occurring at a more disaggregate level. The purpose of the second phase of the research is to use more detailed data from specific cities to conduct deep dives into both the causes of transit ridership change and strategies to reverse declines. As shown in Table 1-1, these results in Chapters 4 through 9 provide a more detailed route- and stop-level analysis. In addition, simulations were used to look at future strategies in Chapter 10. Finally, Chapter 11 summarizes the research findings and identifies strategies to build rider- ship. Chapter 11 also describes the results of circling back to transit agencies to present prelimi- nary results; this circle back allowed the research team to consider existing experience in order to identify key implementation considerations and valuable/practical resources that would aid in the pursuit of these strategies. Factor/Strategy City Transit Agency Chapter Hyper-Local (Stop-Level) Analysis Service changes Portland, OR TriMet Chapter 4 Miami, FL Miami-Dade Transit Minneapolis, MN Metro Transit Atlanta, GA Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Service disruptions San Francisco, CA Bay Area Rapid Transit Chapter 5 Impacts of light rail transit and bus rapid transit Minneapolis, MN Metro Transit Chapter 6 Route-Level Analysis Scooters Louisville, KY Transit Authority of River City Chapter 7 Fare policies Topeka, KS Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority Chapter 8 Bus rapid transit Cleveland, OH Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority Chapter 9 Future Strategies Multiple scenarios Atlanta, GA Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Chapter 10 Oshkosh, WI Go Transit Table 1-1. Factors/strategies and cities for case studies.