Transit Investments Research Articles

Cost–Benefit Analysis of Rural and Small Urban Transit in the United States

The true value of transit systems in rural and small urban areas in the United States has been largely unmeasured, and there are often effects that go unidentified. Many studies have documented the benefits of urban transit systems with benefit–cost analysis. However, not many have looked into the benefits of transit in rural and small urban areas, where there is a great need for public transit, especially for transportation-disadvantaged individuals. This study focused on evaluating the qualitative and quantitative benefits of rural and small urban public transit systems and analyzed the benefit–cost ratio for rural and small urban transit areas for fixed-route and demand-response services in the United States. Data for rural and small urban transit systems from the national transit database (NTD) and rural NTD were used for calibrating the transit benefits and costs. Results were presented at a national level to show the effects of transit investments in rural and small urban areas nationally. Transit benefits in the United States for 2011 were found to be $1.6 billion for rural transit and $3.7 billion for small urban transit, not including the economic effects. Results showed a benefit–cost ratio of 2.16 for small urban transit and 1.20 for rural transit in the United States. Sensitivity analysis showed that increasing the percentage of forgone trips to 50%, increasing the cost of forgone medical and work trips by 25%, and increasing the percentage of medical trips to 30% substantially increased the total transit benefits by 88%, 20%, and 158%, respectively.

Residential Preference and Choice of Movers in Light Rail Neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Light rail transit (LRT) has advocated for ridership growth, but not all residents move to LRT corridors because of transit. This study explores motivations of people moving to the Hiawatha LRT corridor in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area and how their preferences factor into location choice. Few differences in residential preferences, except for transit preferences, are found between people moving to the Hiawatha and urban control corridors. Transportation-disadvantaged people and people who prefer transit are more likely to live in a location that is mismatched with their preferences for transit characteristics. Good transit service and job accessibility are important for urban and suburban residents, but affordability and safety dominate location choice. These findings highlight the importance of neighborhood design in addition to rail transit investment.

Exchange Rate Variability and Foreign Direct Investment – Consequences of EMU Enlargement

The aim of the paper is to analyze theoretically and empirically the likely impact of the reduction in exchange rate uncertainty, due to the EMU accession, on the intensity of FDI inflow into candidate countries. Theoretical models give an ambiguous picture of how exchange rate uncertainty and volatility affect direction and magnitude of FDI inflows. The main contribution of this paper is in finding that exchange rate uncertainty and volatility may negatively influence the decision to locate investment in transition and accession countries. Nominal exchange rate uncertainty seems to particularly hamper FDI inflows in accession countries. The key finding of this paper is that euro adoption is likely to exert a positive influence on FDI inflows in accession countries.

Analysing the fiscal sustainability of transit investment projects: The case of the metropolitan railway of Brasília

This paper aims to analyze the fiscal sustainability (FS) of an infrastructure investment infrastructure project. This issue becomes progressively more relevant, as reinforced transport infrastructure investment, albeit being recognized as an important condition for economic growth, may drive public finance into dire straits. Therefore, after consolidating a concept of FS for infrastructure investment and its evaluation parameters (solvency, liquidity and robustness), they are tested in a case study (Metropolitan System in Brasília). The execution of this project and of the Águas Claras neighborhood took place simultaneously. The study shows that the potential revenue from real estate would be enough to cover the public expenditures for the rail project and for the urban infrastructures of the township, meeting the solvency condition. However, it could not comply with the liquidity and the robustness conditions, due to incidents and management problems in its execution, which suffered several interruptions. The paper finishes with some lessons for the policy, requiring the mandatory and thorough analysis of economic and fiscal impacts of infrastructure investment projects, but also suggesting that they should be put together with other private and public investment projects which foster directly growth, so that their joint effect would result fiscally sustainable.

Joint impacts of Bus Rapid Transit and urban form on vehicle ownership: New evidence from a quasi-longitudinal analysis in Bogotá, Colombia

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has become popular as a means to provide non-automobile-based mobility and alleviate the impacts of rising traffic congestion in cities around the world. However, there is little empirical evidence supporting BRT’s potential to meet these objectives. This research improves our knowledge of BRT’s potential as an alternative to vehicle ownership at the household level and provides new evidence of the role of urban form in supporting transit investment. We use a difference-in-differences research design to examine the change in vehicle ownership from before to after implementation of Bogotá, Colombia’s TransMilenio BRT system. Our results indicate access to TransMilenio’s main trunk system is significantly and negatively associated with vehicle ownership for higher wealth households. Among lower wealth households, access to the trunk system and the complementary feeder system (designed to bring passengers from peripheral neighborhoods into the main trunk system) are both associated with an unexpected increase in the odds of vehicle ownership; however, that increase appears to be reversed in neighborhoods where the built environment supports transit and non-motorized travel. This research contributes a methodology for joint analysis of urban form and transit availability on vehicle ownership, and demonstrates that urban form and transit access can have a synergistic effect. Neglecting this synergy would be a missed opportunity to further leverage the benefits of BRT investments. Our findings also suggest that, in the case of Bogotá, the vehicle ownership impacts of BRT investment may not accrue to lower income households unless that investment is coordinated with policies to promote supportive urban form.

BRT TOD: Leveraging transit oriented development with bus rapid transit investments

Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems have gained prominence worldwide as a cost-effective alternative to urban rail investments. However, some question the city-shaping potential of BRT, in part due to a belief it delivers fewer regional accessibility benefits than rail, but also to the social stigma some assign to bus-based forms of mass mobility. Notwithstanding the successes of cities like Curitiba and Ottawa at integrating BRT and land development (Cervero, 1998. The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry, Island Press, Washington, D.C.), doubt remains over BRT’s ability to promote less car-dependent, more sustainable patterns of urban growth in rapidly motorizing and suburbanizing cities.This paper probes the opportunities and challenges of leveraging transit-oriented development (TOD) through BRT investments. The policy context of BRT and urban growth is first described. Evidence on the influences of BRT on urban development and land values is then presented followed by discussions on density and ridership performance of BRT cities. Attention next turns to the fundamental tension of mediating between the logistical and place-making functions of BRT stations. Failure to do so has generally resulted in low-cost, high-performance investments at the expense of suppressing TOD opportunities. Case experiences in Bogota Colombia and Ahmedabad India underscore that near-term mobility gains took precedence over shaping urban growth over the long-term. The paper closes with discussions on implementation. Based on a survey of 27 global cities with BRT systems, tools introduced to date to leverage TOD are reviewed. Survey respondents also commented on barriers that stand in the way of BRT TOD in their cities. While BRT is often viewed as being suited to serving lower density, outlying settings, it is believed that under the right conditions, BRT can also be as influential in inducing urban redevelopment and shaping urban growth in more sustainable formats.

Planning and Social Media: A Case Study of Public Transit and Stigma on Twitter

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How media portray public transit services can affect the way voters and stakeholders think about future transit investments. In this study, I examine social media content about public transit from a large sample of Twitter comments, finding that they reflect more negative sentiments about public transit than do the comments about most other public services, and include more negative material about transit patrons. However, transit agencies may be able to influence the tone of those comments through the way they engage with social media. Transit agencies that respond directly to questions, concerns, and comments of other social media users, as opposed to merely “blasting” announcements, have more positive statements about all aspects of services and fewer slurs directed at patrons, independent of actual service quality. The interaction does not have to be customer oriented. Agencies using Twitter to chat with users about their experiences or new service also have statistically significantly more positive sentiments expressed about them on social media. This study's limitations are that it covers only one social media outlet, does not cover all transit agencies, and cannot fully control for differences in transit agency service.Takeaway for practice: Planners committed to a stronger role for public transit in developing sustainable and equitable cities have a stake in the social media strategy of public transit agencies; moreover, they should not let racial and sexist slurs about patrons dominate feeds. Planners should encourage interactive social media strategies. Even agencies that only tweet interactively a few times a day seem to have more civil discussions surrounding their agencies and announcements on Twitter than agencies that use their feed only to blast service announcements.

Spatial mismatch in Beijing, China: Implications of job accessibility for Chinese low-wage workers

The spatial mismatch literature has historically been U.S.-centric. This paper offers a theory of how spatial mismatch may have become a growing problem in China. The research uses Beijing, China as a case study to empirically examine the magnitude and geography of spatial mismatch across low-wage workforce segments. It finds a significant jobs-housing mismatch among low-wage workers in Beijing, particularly for blue-collar workers and workers without local hukou (registered permanent residence). The degree of spatial mismatch increases after accounting for worker access to transit. The results indicate that spatial mismatch in Beijing is more due to a greater dispersion of workforce residences than job locations and a central city-focused public transit system incapable of serving the dispersed low-wage workforce. The research findings suggest that Chinese cities should be more strategic in where they build affordable housing and where they make future transit investments.

The station access task in Melbourne

This paper reviews rail station access outcomes and potentials across the Melbourne metropolitan area. Assumptions and discussions around rail transit access tend to emphasise the issue of park and ride (P&R) to a degree that is not borne-out by the reality of access to stations in usage statistics. Equally, a great deal of energy is invested in discussion of sustainable planning and ‘integration’, without making the vital connection between mass transit and new investments in walking and in cycling infrastructure for access to transit. In this paper, we critically review the level of performance in station access mode shares across Melbourne – using techniques such as cluster analysis, in combination with mapping and cross-references to broader demographic and land-use trends. We find that P&R in Melbourne are sometimes a ‘poor fit’ by being heavily utilised in some middle-suburban locations. Melbourne's bus–rail connectivity is patchy – with some locations delivering high levels of bus-based access to rail and other locations under-playing this important option. Trams are found to be a surprisingly important and high-impact mode of access to heavy rail, and implications from this finding are put forward. Melbourne demonstrates poor outcomes in generating trips to the station by bicycle – and the paper delivers discussion and suggestions around a potential new direction for cycling policy and infrastructure in Melbourne.

Travel Emission Profile of Iskandar Malaysia Neighbourhoods from Pre-1980s to 2000s

Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT), an indicator of travel levels on the roadway system mainly by private vehicles, has been widely used in urban planning to help indicate CO2 emission due to changes in built environment. Bordering Singapore to the south, neighbourhood development has been constantly happening in Johor Bahru since 1980's. These neighbourhood developments are believed to have undergone a continuous layout design evolution affecting its land use distribution, road network design, and density. Thus, this paper investigates the quiet influence of neighbourhood design, as it evolves over the decades on VMT and eventually travel carbon emission. Twenty two residential neighbourhoods representing several decades from pre-1980s to the 2010s were selected and travel diaries of their randomly selected households were recorded. Findings from this study reveal that travel carbon emission for pre-1980s residential areas is only 8.7 kilograms/household/day with a daily travel range of 40 km/day. However, the amount increases up to 21.8 kilograms/household/day for 2010s houses with daily travel range of 100 km/day. Car usage among residents in Iskandar Malaysia is undoubtly increasing as car ownership proportion increases from 0.8 in pre-1980s to 2.37 in 2010s. Number and distance of vehicles trip can be reduced by organizing activities in compact communities rather than in auto dependent suburbs. In addition, a carbon emission reduction of up to 10 percent may result from a change in land use approach alone while additional reductions will result from employing other strategies such as transit investment, fuel pricing, and parking charges.

A volatile relationship: The effect of changing gasoline prices on public support for mass transit

The determinants of public opinion toward public transit is a little-researched topic, though a better understanding of what makes consumers willing to support transit may reveal which attributes of transit consumers value most. One determinant of people’s willingness to support investments in mass transit may be the price of fuel for transit’s principal competition, the private automobile. In this paper, I examine the relationship between the cost of gasoline and stated willingness to invest public money in mass transit improvements. I hypothesize that fuel price volatility—in addition to price itself—is a determinant of support for more mass transit funding, controlling for other factors. As the price of gasoline becomes more uncertain, the public should, all else equal, support investment in mass transportation, a form of transportation that may provide some measure of protection from the price of fuel. Results suggest a strong effect of price volatility on consumers’ willingness to support transit expenditures.

Bypassing Equity? Transit Investment and Regional Transportation Planning

Regional planning may require a better understanding of multijurisdictional planning and equity within intergovernmental context. This research explores how intergovernmental context and metropolitan planning organization (MPO) activities impact rail proposals for low-income and minority communities. In two case studies, Boston and Miami, other government agencies determined the projects within MPO plans. In Boston, however, advocates leveraged agreements and federal rules to secure rail, and the MPO has developed extensive equity analyses. The cases exemplify the fiscal paradox that MPOs face—they have fiscally constrained plans but control little funding. Findings indicate the need to better relate multijurisdictional planning ambitions to intergovernmental context.

Mexico City's suburban land use and transit connection: The effects of the Line B Metro expansion

Over the past half century, government agencies in Mexico City have invested heavily in high-capacity public transit, particularly the 225-km Metro system. Nearly all of this investment has been in central locations of the metropolis. Only recently has service coverage been extended into the periphery, which has accounted for the majority of postwar metropolitan population growth. The Metro's Line B, which opened in phases in 1999 and 2000, significantly expanded Metro coverage into the densely populated and fast-growing suburban municipality of Ecatepec. Comparing travel behavior and land use measures at six geographic scales, including the investment's immediate catchment area, across two time periods—six years before and seven years after the investment opened—this paper investigates the effects of one of the first and only suburban high-capacity transit investments in Mexico City. While the investment sparked a significant increase in local Metro use, most of this increase came from people relying on informal transit, rather than cars. This shift reduced average transit expenditures and travel times for local residents. However, it also increased government subsidies for the Metro and had no apparent effect on road speeds. In terms of land use, the investment increased density around the stations but appears to have had little to no effect on downtown commercial development, where it might have been expected to have a significant influence. In short, the effects of Line B demonstrate much of the promise and problem with expanding high capacity transit service into the suburbs. Ridership is likely to be high, but so too will be the costs and subsidies, while the effects on car ownership and urban form are likely to be modest.

Modeling transit technology selection in a linear transportation corridor

SummaryThis paper proposes an analytical model for investigating transit technology selection problem from a perspective of transit authority. Given a transit technology alternative (e.g., metro, light rail transit, or bus rapid transit), the proposed model aims to maximize the social welfare of the transit system by determining the optimal combination of transit line length, number of stations, station location (or spacing), headway, and fare. In the proposed model, the effects of passenger demand elasticity and capacity constraint are explicitly considered. The properties of the model are examined analytically, and a heuristic solution procedure for determining the model solution is presented. By comparing the optimized social welfare for different transit technology alternatives, the optimal transit technology solution can be obtained together with critical population density. On the basis of a simple population growth rate formula, optimal investment timing of a new transit technology can be estimated. The proposed methodology is illustrated in several Chinese cities. Insightful findings are reported on the interrelation among transit technology selection, population density, transit investment cost, and transit line parameter design as well as the comparison between social welfare maximization and profit maximization regimes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Effect of Gasoline Taxes and Public Transit Investments on Driving Patterns

This paper analyzes how driving patterns are affected by gasoline taxes and the availability of a substitute for driving—public transportation. We develop a measure of transportation substitutability based on the difference between individuals’ predicted commute times by private and public transit, conditional upon their demographic characteristics and geographic location. Improved substitutability decreases annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by inducing modal shifts to public transit, though gasoline taxes are found to have a much larger impact on VMT. Our results imply that a policy that raises gasoline taxes and recycles the revenues into public transit improvements can have even larger impacts on driving patterns than either policy alone.

Impact of Bus Rapid Transit and Metro Rail on Property Values in Guangzhou, China

An effective transport system can increase access and raise land values; thus, governments should be able to capture part of this price premium for transit access. These revenues could be used to fund further investments in public transit or other projects. Reliable measures of the price premium for transit access can help guide governments in setting policies to capture value. Guangzhou, China, has an extensive metro rail system and the highest-capacity bus rapid transit line in China. This study examines the effects of these two public transport systems on the prices of apartments in the city by using a unique set of data collected from a mainstream Chinese real estate website. Ordinary least squares, spatial regression models, and quantile hedonic regression were used to estimate the price premium for transit access. The findings suggest that proximity to the metro and the bus rapid transit line has a substantial and statistically significant effect on apartment prices that varies by district and the amenities provided.

Capitalization Effects of Rail Transit and Bus Rapid Transit on Residential Property Values in a Booming Economy

This research investigated the capitalization effects of proximity to rail transit and bus rapid transit (BRT) in fast-growing Beijing. Few related studies have been conducted for Chinese cities because the real estate market has only recently been established. Data were collected on apartment homes sold in the Beijing metropolitan area during 2011, and hedonic price modeling was employed to gauge the price premiums or discounts associated with proximity to transit stations. Overall, the authors identified an average price premium of around 5% for properties near rail transit stations, but no statistically significant effects were detected at BRT station areas. Moreover, the authors found that station proximity effects increased both in magnitude and spatial extent at stations located farther from the city center and those surrounded by low- and middle-income neighborhoods. For example, the price premium was as high as 10% in some suburban and low-income areas. The conclusion drawn was that rail transit investment was an effective strategy for Beijing to reshape its urban spatial structure, and local governments in China might consider a rail and property development model as a financing solution for rail transit investment. This study contributes to the evidence of capitalization effects of public transit from a booming and transitional economy.

Performance of Australian Light Rail and Comparison with U.S. Trends

After a decade of busway investment, light rail transit (LRT) has reemerged as an inner-city transit investment in Australia. In the next decade, Australian LRT network size will grow by about 25%. Analysis shows that Australian LRT is dominated by the streetcar network in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (one of the largest in the world). Although LRT networks have not expanded much, ridership growth has been substantial (more than 46% between 2001 and 2012) and well above systemwide (all mode) growth of public transport ridership in most cities. In general, the service level (i.e., frequency and span of hours) on Australian trams was low compared with that of European and U.S. systems. Also, service levels did not keep pace with ridership growth, which acted to increase the ridership productivity of most Australian LRT. Melbourne led Australia in terms of ridership productivity (passengers per vehicle kilometer); Melbourne Tram Route 109 had the highest ridership (935,000 annually) and service effectiveness (11.5 passengers per vehicle kilometer). Between 2006 and 2013, Australian LRT ridership growth was higher than ridership growth in the United States. However, U.S. service levels grew substantially more than service levels in Australia did during this same period. The outcome was that, although Australian service effectiveness grew by 20%, service effectiveness in the United States fell by 8%. Recently, Australian LRT planning has focused on the so-called streetcar struggle (i.e., the action taken to reduce the congestion effects of growing road traffic on LRT performance). Medium-term plans for new system development identified LRT as a solution to facilitate urban access, urban redevelopment, and reliable and higher-capacity transit in congested inner-urban bus transit contexts.

‘New’ versus ‘Old’ Urbanism: A comparative analysis of travel behavior in large-scale New Urbanist communities and older, more established neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado

New Urbanist development is often characterized by higher densities, mixed land uses and various transportation options – characteristics often evidenced by older, pre-automobile neighborhoods. This is no accident; New Urbanism aims to closely approximate many qualities of ‘old urbanist’ neighborhoods to support, among other things, increased transportation options beyond the automobile. However, existing research is mixed as to whether new urbanist developments are reaching their transportation goals. This study employs multiple methods to examine the degree to which travel behavior in New Urbanist neighborhoods is comparable to that of old urbanist neighborhoods in the same region. Mode choice models show distance to work as a significant predictor of walking and cycling, while availability of free parking at work significantly predicts driving. Despite the fact that the New Urbanist neighborhoods are further from the central business district (CBD) than the old urbanist neighborhoods, average distance to work is similar across all neighborhoods – suggesting that employment locations are decentralized. We conclude that while New Urbanist communities may not currently be reaching their transportation goals, they have the ability to provide a supportive context for parking policy reforms and transit investments that disincentive auto travel and prioritize walking, cycling and transit.

Democratizing Wealth, Democratizing Power

Democratizing Wealth, Democratizing Power