From California to North Carolina, transit agencies have declared September to be “Transit Month.” “This month is all about celebrating the vital role of public transit for our communities,” says one transit agency, which means “getting elected leaders to make transit a priority issue.”

In fact, transit plays a vital role in only one community, and that’s New York City, where more than half of all residents who had a job took transit to work before the pandemic. Transit has also influenced the development of about a half-dozen other large downtowns, namely Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington. These downtowns have more than 200,000 jobs and more than 10 percent of workers in their urban areas take transit to work.

Nowhere else in the United States has such job concentrations and transit carries less than 10 percent of workers in every other urban area. In fact, outside of New York and these six downtowns, transit could disappear tomorrow and, while a few people would be inconvenienced, the main economic repercussion would be that taxpayers would save tens of billions of dollars a year.

The average American traveled more than 16,000 miles by automobile in 2019 but just 164 miles by urban transit.

Transit has become obsolete because it follows a nineteenth-century business model that assumes most people work in big-city downtowns when in fact less than 8 percent of people do. As a result, transit carries less than 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States.

Compared with driving, transit’s utility to travelers is low. According to the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory, in 2019 auto users in America’s 50 largest urban areas could reach 12 times as many jobs as transit riders in 60 minutes of travel, 15 times as many in 50 minutes of travel, increasing to 67 times as many in 10 minutes of travel. In fact, transit’s utility is so poor that bicycle riders could reach more jobs than transit riders in trips of 50 minutes or less. Even in the New York urban area, auto drivers could reach at least four times as many jobs as transit riders in trips of any length and bicycle riders could reach more jobs than transit riders in trips of 35 minutes or less.

Transit is also super expensive. Americans spend about 25 cents a passenger-mile driving their cars, and subsidies to highways add another penny per passenger mile. Transit agencies, however, spent $1.31 per passenger-mile carrying people in 2019, more than five times as much as the cost of driving. Costs in 2020 are likely to rise to more than $3.00 per passenger-mile.

Despite transit’s high cost and low utility, Congress to give transit agencies nearly $70 billion in “relief” funds in three different bills during the pandemic for 2020 and 2021. Transit ridership fell by more than half, reducing transit fares that make up only 22 percent of transit spending. State and local tax revenues also fell, but by less than predicted: the Census Bureau says 2020 state tax revenues were only 2.5 percent less than in 2019. Together, the decline in transit fares and tax revenues reduced transit agency funds by only about $10 billion per year in 2020 and 2021.

This means transit agencies earned a $50 billion windfall in 2020 and 2021, effectively giving them a 34 percent increase in funding for carrying less than half their pre-pandemic riders. On top of this, the Biden-Senate Republican infrastructure bill would give transit another $40 billion so that transit agencies can build more obsolete light-rail lines that we don’t need and that they won’t be able to afford to maintain.

Yet transit agencies are hungry for more. The American Public Transportation Association recently sent a letter to congressional leaders asking them to add $10 billion for transit into the infrastructure bill. Transit has truly become a bottomless money sink.

A recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Analysis predicted that the number of people working at home after the pandemic will be quadruple the number before. Transit’s only growth market before the pandemic was among people earning more than $65,000 a year, precisely those who are more likely to be working at home. This and other factors are going to reduce transit’s post-pandemic ridership to less than 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels. This will make the cost per rider so high that it would literally be less expensive to give most transit commuters new cars than to keep subsidizing transit.

The reason why we have a Transit Month and not a Highway Month is that transit is completely dependent on political funds for its survival. Without subsidies, private transit companies would continue service in New York City and some high-use corridors elsewhere, but most of what is provided by transit today would be fulfilled at a lower cost by taxis and ride-hailing services. 

For the most part, transit is as obsolete today as manual typewriters, rotary telephones, and slide rules, and Congress should stop subsidizing this out-of-date form of transportation. For more information, see my recent policy brief on this subject.