Why is American Public Transport so bad?
The Lack of Public Transport in America.
In 2019, 84.78% of working Americans drove to work and only 4.95% took a form of public transport, according to the US census. It’s not uncommon to hear that America is a stereotypically car-centrist country. And even when public transport options have been implemented, they are usually done so poorly that it has very little impact. Across the United States, most of the public transport use is in major metropolitan areas — the majority in New York (a rare case of majority use of public transit). This leaves a noticeable dent across the country, where communities in suburbia are deprived of cheap public transport options. This obviously creates a plethora of problems for those who live in these communities, including the proliferation of American food deserts, pollution-based pulmonary diseases and the further entrenchment of American society into the hands of car companies. And among all these issues, one question rises to the top: why is American public transport so bad?
The first logical question is: how did the state of public transport get so poor? And overall, this can be summarised into one overarching culprit: shortsighted capital investment into car-based infrastructure. Pre-1956, most inner-city areas were built on a grid layout, which is potentially advantageous for public transit systems such as buses or light rails, due to them being useful for routing purposes. However, the death warrant for American public transport was signed regrettably in 1956. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 appropriated funding for the infamous interstate highway system. One of the largest infrastructure projects at the time, it was a large and sprawling network of highways spreading from coast to coast. And when these large multilane highways interrupted inner city areas, the highways themselves managed to stunt public transport growth. The grid system, so famously a large benefit for inner city public transit, was broken. Infrastructure began to be designed around the highway and how well it could accommodate its presence. And for any suburb bisected by the highway, households that live in that segment area began to require a car as a minimum to be able to access the rest of the city. This created an unfortunate problem for urban planners; ridership on the road increased due to the presence of highways forcing families to drive and no viable public transport options, so more money is appropriated for maintaining car-based infrastructure, leaving very little for any other transport options, therefore causing more families to drive. So, a twisted feedback loop had been established. This established car-based transport in America as the norm.
Around the same time, another phenomenon was brewing in and around cities: suburbanisation. Post World War II America saw the biggest baby boom ever; instead of investing in high-density city housing due to social, environmental and economic factors, the preferred alternative was large-scale low-density housing developments known as suburbs. However, these new encroachments into unused countryside away from the city centre (known as urban sprawl) were not separate urban environments from their parent city. The land these new builds were constructed on is usually only zoned for single use family homes meaning the people that inhabit them still rely on the suburbs around and closer to the city for basic amenities and work. And travelling between these winding roads and cul-de-sacs has made car ownership a requirement to live in these areas, due to the lack of funding for buses and space for rail travel. All in all, living in an American suburb is extremely costly and a car is the second largest expense for Americans behind home ownership, and the lack of public transport available will only drive-up prices locally.
It is categorically untrue to say that an attempt hasn’t been made to implement urban public transport in America. Across multiple different suburbs, cities, and states, an attempt has been made to try and implement forms of public transport, for 13 cities even heavy metros. But while being implemented they fail to address the core of the issue; good public transport should be a viable substitute for a car under all circumstances. Whereas in America when looking at any kind of heavy metro map, one clear trend emerges; most lines converge on a city’s central business district (CBD) without servicing suburb to suburb journeys, which according to the Washington post, is the largest proportion of journeys made by Americans. For example; Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles Washington DC all have heavy metro systems that use this radial design. In fact, in Boston all four lines cross one another within 1.7km of each other all in the district of central Boston near downtown. The same is almost applicable for every heavy metro system in the US (with the largest and most obvious exception being New York). While this may be of use to young professional workers in a traditional white-collar job, this means that for anyone wanting to move between suburbs, the proportion of their journey time is spent moving in the wrong direction making the journey unnecessarily long. This means in practice, these types of heavy metro systems do not sustainably work as a replacement for a car in a city, they work in tandem with cars at best, and at their worst add time to a journey discouraging people from using them, and incentivising more people to drive.
Overall, it's clear to see that American urban public transport is in a poor state. Not to mention that this serious contemporary issue creates several problems both socially, but also physically for the health of Americans. Areas become isolated from even their closest neighbours and their residents trapped, creating another plethora of problems considering access to food and service equality. But all in all, it’s clear that this problem will only metastasise into another generation of problems for our children. But with the current gridlock is Washington DC I’m quite sure to say that its clear we are not going to see any improvements any time soon.
Commuting by Public Transportation in the United States: 2019
Edward Hancox
