Should we let public transit die? | Urban-rural hostility is fueling a public transportation crisis in US cities. But demands to abandon bus and train riders ignore the economic and social costs of cutting service

Don’t be fooled by the first part of the title, it’s a very pro-transit piece. Jarrett Walker’s great.

# The problem

> By the end of 2026, if things go on as they are, many US cities will have lost large parts of their public transit systems. Philadelphia is on track to lose almost half its transit service in the next year. The Chicago area could lose over a third. The Portland, Oregon, area could eventually lose a quarter of its bus service and a tenth of its rail service.

> Unlike most other wealthy countries, the US has chosen to keep transit going without ever letting it thrive. Most American urban areas have not funded transit so that it can grow as population grows, and many have been falling behind that growth rate for decades. In the Chicago suburbs, for example, the transit network focuses mostly on the areas that were built out over 70 years ago, because there has been so little funding to expand service even as newer suburban cities have grown explosively over those years.

> Why are transit operations so expensive? Why does transit often seem to be in an endless emergency? Why is it so easy for more business-minded leaders to assume that transit’s financial situation is hopeless? Because in the US we have constructed our transportation funding streams to make transit’s costs visible, while the costs of car dependence are mostly concealed. Car dependence costs us in the time lost in congestion, in the harm from pollution and accidents, and in countless other ways that we don’t consider.

> Even the cost of car infrastructure tends to be hidden from local officials. The federal government has long helped states with 80% of the cost of highway construction but only 50% of the cost of transit projects, so it’s not surprising which investments local governments choose. Car costs are also baked into almost all the prices we pay: If you take the bus to a suburban shopping mall, the prices you pay include all the costs of the vast parking lot you didn’t use. If you drive to the mall, bus riders subsidize you.

# The solution

> What, then, is a fair investment in transit? It depends on how we feel about car dependence, and that is always going to vary by density. We can never expect rural areas to enthusiastically support such an intrinsically urban service, any more than you can expect urban voters to be excited about agriculture subsidies or rural road construction.

> That’s why, in my view, the future lies in making these decisions as locally as possible. The transit funding crises now unfolding in Pennsylvania, Oregon and Illinois are happening because in these states, too much taxing power is in the state instead of in the cities. The same problem bedevils the politics of urban regions, whose suburbs will never support transit the way the inner city does. That’s why Seattle, Salt Lake City and many other core cities have taxed themselves to offer higher levels of service within their city limits than the regional transit agency could afford.

> It’s a good solution, but only if cities have that power. In too many places, especially in red states, cities have been stripped of the power to govern themselves according to their own values. North Carolina law, for example, allows counties but not cities to increase sales taxes. Some cities are ready to lead, and ready to pay, but instead they must laboriously build support from the hinterland before they can offer a service that city residents will always value most. This requirement makes no sense except as part of a culture war.

!ping YIMBY&TRANSIT