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Senior Member
What Really Matters for Increasing Transit Ridership
May 21, 2012
By Eric Jaffe
Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/co...ly-matters-increasing-transit-ridership/2059/
At first glance Broward County, Florida, doesn't look like the friendliest place for public transportation. The metro area just north of Miami has a couple downtown areas — Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood — but lacks a strong central business district. It also lacks much transit-oriented development. On the contrary, Broward has a very typical postwar, auto-oriented design marked by wide highways and sprawl. Looks can, of course, be deceiving. As it happens, Broward County has one of the strongest transit systems among other mid-sized metro areas in the United States.
- Compared to 26 other bus-only metros in its class, Broward trails only Orlando and Las Vegas in terms of cost-effectiveness, outperforming higher-profile places like Austin, Charlotte, Indianapolis, and Phoenix. Its buses are full, as measured by per capita ridership, and they've stayed that way in recent years, even as transit in general has struggled.
- The analysis of transit work trip demand in Broward County indicates that the reason BCT [Broward County Transit] performs so well compared with most of its peers is that its multidestination route structure directly connects the county’s residential areas with the dispersed jobs to which they travel. … In Broward County, workers use transit to get to jobs in a multitude of locations that do not possess the built environment characteristics long thought to be important by most scholars in determining transit ridership.
- In the 1970s the county's bus routes focused on getting people to Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and later down to Miami, as per the conventional transit wisdom of the day. When ridership failed to increase, the transit authority restructured the system into a grid that traversed high-density (if not the highest) employment areas. The shift made sense considering that most Broward residents are so-called transit-dependents: among riders, 60 percent are from households that make under $20,000 a year, and about half don't own a car.
- In a word, Broward County de-centralized its transit system. Instead of clinging to the belief that all jobs were downtown, it accepted that people need to access jobs in all kinds of places throughout a metro area. We've seen this before: Tallahassee recently reached this conclusion, as Emily Badger points out; Atlanta's transit system also demonstrates the effectiveness of a multi-destination approach, as Thompson and colleagues have found. But since this realization remains the exception and not the norm, it bears repeating. Thompson and colleagues use their findings to make an intriguing policy point. At a time when cities are struggling to attract transit riders, many policy options focus on the need to increase smart growth.
- Simply put, the results of this study suggest that most US transit managers of bus-only transit systems and urban planners interested in transit are focusing on the wrong policy variables for improving transit ridership. More walkable, more mixed use environments are important amenities to encourage more transit use, but the most important consideration is easy access to employment. … Before we try to change the built environment, we need to make sure transit takes riders where they need to go.
.....
May 21, 2012
By Eric Jaffe
Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/co...ly-matters-increasing-transit-ridership/2059/
At first glance Broward County, Florida, doesn't look like the friendliest place for public transportation. The metro area just north of Miami has a couple downtown areas — Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood — but lacks a strong central business district. It also lacks much transit-oriented development. On the contrary, Broward has a very typical postwar, auto-oriented design marked by wide highways and sprawl. Looks can, of course, be deceiving. As it happens, Broward County has one of the strongest transit systems among other mid-sized metro areas in the United States.
- Compared to 26 other bus-only metros in its class, Broward trails only Orlando and Las Vegas in terms of cost-effectiveness, outperforming higher-profile places like Austin, Charlotte, Indianapolis, and Phoenix. Its buses are full, as measured by per capita ridership, and they've stayed that way in recent years, even as transit in general has struggled.
- The analysis of transit work trip demand in Broward County indicates that the reason BCT [Broward County Transit] performs so well compared with most of its peers is that its multidestination route structure directly connects the county’s residential areas with the dispersed jobs to which they travel. … In Broward County, workers use transit to get to jobs in a multitude of locations that do not possess the built environment characteristics long thought to be important by most scholars in determining transit ridership.
- In the 1970s the county's bus routes focused on getting people to Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, and later down to Miami, as per the conventional transit wisdom of the day. When ridership failed to increase, the transit authority restructured the system into a grid that traversed high-density (if not the highest) employment areas. The shift made sense considering that most Broward residents are so-called transit-dependents: among riders, 60 percent are from households that make under $20,000 a year, and about half don't own a car.
- In a word, Broward County de-centralized its transit system. Instead of clinging to the belief that all jobs were downtown, it accepted that people need to access jobs in all kinds of places throughout a metro area. We've seen this before: Tallahassee recently reached this conclusion, as Emily Badger points out; Atlanta's transit system also demonstrates the effectiveness of a multi-destination approach, as Thompson and colleagues have found. But since this realization remains the exception and not the norm, it bears repeating. Thompson and colleagues use their findings to make an intriguing policy point. At a time when cities are struggling to attract transit riders, many policy options focus on the need to increase smart growth.
- Simply put, the results of this study suggest that most US transit managers of bus-only transit systems and urban planners interested in transit are focusing on the wrong policy variables for improving transit ridership. More walkable, more mixed use environments are important amenities to encourage more transit use, but the most important consideration is easy access to employment. … Before we try to change the built environment, we need to make sure transit takes riders where they need to go.
.....
