IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v157y2022icp126-143.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What’s eating public transit in the United States? Reasons for declining transit ridership in the 2010s

Author

Listed:
  • Lee, Yongsung
  • Lee, Bumsoo

Abstract

Despite ever-increasing public and financial support for public transportation in recent decades, transit ridership has dropped substantially in the 2010s across the United States. While many theories that explain the reasons behind the decline in ridership have been proposed, no consensus on the primary causes has been reached. By employing gradient boosting decision tree and counterfactual simulations, we examine the complex relationships between transit ridership and key internal and external factors from 2002 to 2017 in 85 of the largest urbanized areas in the US. Among several contributing factors, the declining cost of driving, measured by the decreasing share of carless households combined with lower gasoline prices, was the salient, most influential factor behind the recent decline. Neighborhood change in high-density neighborhoods also led to a moderate net loss in ridership. The only factor that has been mitigating further decline was an increase in transit services. Had this increase not occurred, loss of ridership would have been more than double the actual loss during the study period.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee, Yongsung & Lee, Bumsoo, 2022. "What’s eating public transit in the United States? Reasons for declining transit ridership in the 2010s," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 126-143.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:157:y:2022:i:c:p:126-143
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2022.01.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856422000027
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2022.01.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Young, Mischa & Farber, Steven, 2019. "The who, why, and when of Uber and other ride-hailing trips: An examination of a large sample household travel survey," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 383-392.
    2. Reid Ewing & Robert Cervero, 2010. "Travel and the Built Environment," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(3), pages 265-294.
    3. Dowell Myers, 2016. "Peak Millennials: Three Reinforcing Cycles That Amplify the Rise and Fall of Urban Concentration by Millennials," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(6), pages 928-947, November.
    4. LEE, Sungwon & LEE, Bumsoo, 2020. "Comparing the impacts of local land use and urban spatial structure on household VMT and GHG emissions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Grisé, Emily & Maguire, Meadhbh & Veillette, Marie-Pier & Deboosere, Robbin & Berrebi, Emma & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2018. "Invest in the ride: A 14 year longitudinal analysis of the determinants of public transport ridership in 25 North American cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 434-445.
    6. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Hartley, Daniel, 2020. "Accounting for central neighborhood change, 1980–2010," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    7. Couture, Victor & Handbury, Jessie, 2020. "Urban revival in America," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    8. Mi Diao & Hui Kong & Jinhua Zhao, 2021. "Impacts of transportation network companies on urban mobility," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 4(6), pages 494-500, June.
    9. Young, Mischa & Farber, Steven, 2019. "The Who, Why, and When of Uber and other Ride-hailing Trips: An Examination of a Large Sample Household Travel Survey," OSF Preprints x7ryj, Center for Open Science.
    10. Yash Babar & Gordon Burtch, 2020. "Examining the Heterogeneous Impact of Ride-Hailing Services on Public Transit Use," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 820-834, September.
    11. Clewlow, Regina R. & Mishra, Gouri S., 2017. "Disruptive Transportation: The Adoption, Utilization, and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt82w2z91j, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    12. Jonathan Levine, 2013. "Is Bus Versus Rail Investment a Zero-Sum Game?," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(1), pages 5-15, January.
    13. Luyu Liu & Harvey J Miller & Jonathan Scheff, 2020. "The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on public transit demand in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    14. Egu, Oscar & Bonnel, Patrick, 2021. "Medium-term public transit route ridership forecasting: What, how and why? A case study in Lyon," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 124-133.
    15. Malalgoda, Narendra & Lim, Siew Hoon, 2019. "Do transportation network companies reduce public transit use in the U.S.?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 351-372.
    16. Tobias Kuhnimhof & Dirk Zumkeller & Bastian Chlond, 2013. "Who Made Peak Car, and How? A Breakdown of Trends over Four Decades in Four Countries," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 325-342, May.
    17. Friedman, Jerome H., 2002. "Stochastic gradient boosting," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 367-378, February.
    18. Hall, Jonathan D. & Palsson, Craig & Price, Joseph, 2018. "Is Uber a substitute or complement for public transit?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 36-50.
    19. Shao, Qifan & Zhang, Wenjia & Cao, Xinyu & Yang, Jiawen & Yin, Jie, 2020. "Threshold and moderating effects of land use on metro ridership in Shenzhen: Implications for TOD planning," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    20. Ding, Chuan & Cao, Xinyu & Liu, Chao, 2019. "How does the station-area built environment influence Metrorail ridership? Using gradient boosting decision trees to identify non-linear thresholds," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 70-78.
    21. Bumsoo Lee & Yongsung Lee, 2013. "Complementary Pricing and Land Use Policies: Does It Lead to Higher Transit Use?," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(4), pages 314-328, October.
    22. Yongsung Lee & Bumsoo Lee & Md Tanvir Hossain Shubho, 2019. "Urban revival by Millennials? Intraurban net migration patterns of young adults, 1980–2010," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 538-566, June.
    23. Matson, Grant & McElroy, Sean & Lee, Yongsung & Circella, Giovanni, 2021. "Longitudinal Analysis of COVID-19 Impacts on Mobility: An Early Snapshot of the Emerging Changes in Travel Behavior," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt2pg7k2gt, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    24. Chuan Ding & Donggen Wang & Xiaolei Ma & Haiying Li, 2016. "Predicting Short-Term Subway Ridership and Prioritizing Its Influential Factors Using Gradient Boosting Decision Trees," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-16, October.
    25. Holmgren, Johan, 2007. "Meta-analysis of public transport demand," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 41(10), pages 1021-1035, December.
    26. Young, Mischa & Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2020. "Measuring when Uber behaves as a substitute or supplement to transit: An examination of travel-time differences in Toronto," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    27. Glaeser, Edward L. & Kahn, Matthew E. & Rappaport, Jordan, 2008. "Why do the poor live in cities The role of public transportation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-24, January.
    28. Jackelyn Hwang & Jeffrey Lin, 2016. "What Have We Learned About the Causes of Recent Gentrification?," Working Papers 16-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    29. Bereitschaft, Bradley, 2020. "Gentrification and the evolution of commuting behavior within America's urban cores, 2000–2015," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    30. Shaheen, Susan & Cohen, Adam, 2020. "Chapter 3 - Mobility on demand (MOD) and mobility as a service (MaaS): early understanding of shared mobility impacts and public transit partnerships," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt5030f0cd, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    31. Erick Guerra & Robert Cervero, 2011. "Cost of a Ride," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(3), pages 267-290.
    32. John D. Landis, 2016. "Tracking and Explaining Neighborhood Socioeconomic Change in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Between 1990 and 2010," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 2-52, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yu, Chengcheng & Dong, Wentao & Liu, Yunhao & Yang, Chao & Yuan, Quan, 2024. "Rethinking bus ridership dynamics: Examining nonlinear effects of determinants on bus ridership changes using city-level panel data from 2010 to 2019," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 85-100.
    2. Yiyuan Wang & Qing Shen, 2024. "A latent class analysis to understand riders’ adoption of on-demand mobility services as a complement to transit," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 1043-1061, June.
    3. Xin-Wei Li & Hong-Zhi Miao, 2023. "How to Incorporate Autonomous Vehicles into the Carbon Neutrality Framework of China: Legal and Policy Perspectives," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-24, March.
    4. Yang, Chao & Yu, Chengcheng & Dong, Wentao & Yuan, Quan, 2023. "Substitutes or complements? Examining effects of urban rail transit on bus ridership using longitudinal city-level data," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    5. Ziedan, Abubakr & Lima, Luiz & Brakewood, Candace, 2023. "A multiple mediation analysis to untangle the impacts of COVID-19 on nationwide bus ridership in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Zhaolin & Zhai, Guocong & Xie, Kun & Xiao, Feng, 2022. "Exploring the nonlinear effects of ridesharing on public transit usage: A case study of San Diego," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    2. Brown, Anne, 2022. "Not all fees are created equal: Equity implications of ride-hail fee structures and revenues," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 1-10.
    3. Barajas, Jesus M. & Brown, Anne, 2021. "Not minding the gap: Does ride-hailing serve transit deserts?," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    4. Brown, Anne, 2021. "Not All Fees are Created Equal: Equity Implications of Ride-hail Fee Structures," OSF Preprints cpsqu, Center for Open Science.
    5. Erhardt, Gregory D. & Hoque, Jawad Mahmud & Goyal, Vedant & Berrebi, Simon & Brakewood, Candace & Watkins, Kari E., 2022. "Why has public transit ridership declined in the United States?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 68-87.
    6. Simon J. Berrebi & Kari E. Watkins, 2020. "Whos Ditching the Bus?," Papers 2001.02200, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2020.
    7. Yan, Xiang & Liu, Xinyu & Zhao, Xilei, 2020. "Using machine learning for direct demand modeling of ridesourcing services in Chicago," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    8. Oded Cats & Rafal Kucharski & Santosh Rao Danda & Menno Yap, 2022. "Beyond the dichotomy: How ride-hailing competes with and complements public transport," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-17, January.
    9. Soria, Jason & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2021. "Investigating socio-spatial differences between solo ridehailing and pooled rides in diverse communities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    10. Zou, Zhenpeng & Cirillo, Cinzia, 2021. "Does ridesourcing impact driving decisions: A survey weighted regression analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-12.
    11. Zgheib, Najib & Abou-Zeid, Maya & Kaysi, Isam, 2020. "Modeling demand for ridesourcing as feeder for high capacity mass transit systems with an application to the planned Beirut BRT," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 70-91.
    12. Bereitschaft, Bradley, 2020. "Gentrification and the evolution of commuting behavior within America's urban cores, 2000–2015," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. Rezwana Rafiq & Michael G. McNally, 2023. "An exploratory analysis of alternative travel behaviors of ride-hailing users," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 571-605, April.
    14. Tirachini, Alejandro & del Río, Mariana, 2019. "Ride-hailing in Santiago de Chile: Users’ characterisation and effects on travel behaviour," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 46-57.
    15. Xiaoxia Dong & Erick Guerra & Ricardo A. Daziano, 2022. "Impact of TNC on travel behavior and mode choice: a comparative analysis of Boston and Philadelphia," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1577-1597, December.
    16. Berrebi, Simon J. & Watkins, Kari E., 2020. "Who’s ditching the bus?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 21-34.
    17. Meredith-Karam, Patrick & Kong, Hui & Wang, Shenhao & Zhao, Jinhua, 2021. "The relationship between ridehailing and public transit in Chicago: A comparison before and after COVID-19," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    18. Wenting Li & Amer Shalaby & Khandker Nurul Habib, 2022. "Exploring the correlation between ride-hailing and multimodal transit ridership in toronto," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 765-789, June.
    19. Alejandro Tirachini, 2020. "Ride-hailing, travel behaviour and sustainable mobility: an international review," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 2011-2047, August.
    20. Li, Shengxiao(Alex) & Zhai, Wei & Jiao, Junfeng & Wang, Chao (Kenneth), 2022. "Who loses and who wins in the ride-hailing era? A case study of Austin, Texas," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 130-138.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:157:y:2022:i:c:p:126-143. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.