IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/transp/v42y2015i2p303-332.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why do voters support public transportation? Public choices and private behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Manville
  • Benjamin Cummins

Abstract

We examine American support for transit spending, and particularly support for financing transit with local transportation sales taxes. We first show that support for transportation sales tax elections may be a poor proxy for transit support; many voters who support such taxes do not support increased transit spending, and many people who support transit spending do not support increased sales taxes to finance it. We then show that support for transit spending is correlated more with belief in its collective rather than private benefits—transit supporters are more likely to report broad concerns about traffic congestion and air pollution than to report wanting to use transit themselves. These findings suggest a collective action problem, since without riders transit cannot deliver collective benefits. But most transit spending supporters do not use transit, and demographics suggest they are unlikely to begin doing so; transit voters are wealthier and have more options than transit riders. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Manville & Benjamin Cummins, 2015. "Why do voters support public transportation? Public choices and private behavior," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 303-332, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:transp:v:42:y:2015:i:2:p:303-332
    DOI: 10.1007/s11116-014-9545-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11116-014-9545-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11116-014-9545-2?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. Michael L. Anderson, 2014. "Subways, Strikes, and Slowdowns: The Impacts of Public Transit on Traffic Congestion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2763-2796, September.
    2. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2011. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2616-2652, October.
    3. Smart, Michael J., 2014. "A volatile relationship: The effect of changing gasoline prices on public support for mass transit," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 178-185.
    4. Kenworthy, Lane, 2016. "Social Democratic America," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190230951.
    5. Robert Hannay & Martin Wachs, 2007. "Factors influencing support for local transportation sales tax measures," Transportation, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 17-35, January.
    6. Taylor, Brian D & Garrett, Mark, 1999. "Reconsidering Social Equity in Public Transit," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt2bm7b38n, University of California Transportation Center.
    7. 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.
    8. Ralph Buehler & John Pucher, 2012. "Demand for Public Transport in Germany and the USA: An Analysis of Rider Characteristics," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 541-567, June.
    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. Wang, Xize & Rodríguez, Daniel A. & Mahendra, Anjali, 2021. "Support for market-based and command-and-control congestion relief policies in Latin American cities: Effects of mobility, environmental health, and city-level factors," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 91-108.
    2. Mouter, Niek & Chorus, Caspar, 2016. "Value of time – A citizen perspective," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 317-329.
    3. Christiansen, Petter, 2020. "The effects of transportation priority congruence for political legitimacy," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 61-76.
    4. Manville, Michael & Levine, Adam Seth, 2018. "What motivates public support for public transit?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 567-580.
    5. Kim, Jae Hong & Li, Xiangyu, 2021. "Building more housing near transit: A spatial analysis of residential densification dynamics," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 15-24.
    6. Qing Shen & Yiyuan Wang & Casey Gifford, 2021. "Exploring partnership between transit agency and shared mobility company: an incentive program for app-based carpooling," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(5), pages 2585-2603, October.
    7. Michael Manville & Brian D. Taylor & Evelyn Blumenberg & Andrew Schouten, 2023. "Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 303-329, February.
    8. Adam Millard-Ball & Purva Kapshikar, 2024. "How land use patterns keep driving cheap: Geographic support for transportation taxes," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(7), pages 1345-1370, May.
    9. Albrecht, Maxwell & Brown, Anne & Lederman, Jaimee & Taylor, Brian D. & Wachs, Martin, 2017. "The Equity Challenges and Outcomes of California County Transportation Sales Tax," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt39q2758w, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    10. Anne Brown & Jaimee Lederman & Brian D. Taylor & Martin Wachs, 2021. "Analyzing voter support for California’s local option sales taxes for transportation," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2103-2125, August.
    11. King, David A. & Fischer, Lauren Ames, 2016. "Streetcar projects as spatial planning: A shift in transport planning in the United States," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 383-390.

    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. Heilmann, Kilian, 2018. "Transit access and neighborhood segregation. Evidence from the Dallas light rail system," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 237-250.
    2. Jinwon Kim & Jucheol Moon & Dongyun Yang, 2024. "Pigouvian Congestion Tolls and the Welfare Gain: Estimates for California Freeways," Working Papers 2402, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    3. Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López & Ilias Pasidis & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2022. "Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter: evidence from European cities [The congestion relief benefit of public transit: evidence from Rome]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 931-960.
    4. Stephen J. Redding & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2017. "Quantitative Spatial Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 21-58, September.
    5. Hamilton, Timothy L. & Wichman, Casey J., 2018. "Bicycle infrastructure and traffic congestion: Evidence from DC's Capital Bikeshare," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 72-93.
    6. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    7. Stefan Bauernschuster & Timo Hener & Helmut Rainer, 2017. "When Labor Disputes Bring Cities to a Standstill: The Impact of Public Transit Strikes on Traffic, Accidents, Air Pollution, and Health," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 1-37, February.
    8. Davis, Lucas W., 2021. "Estimating the price elasticity of demand for subways: Evidence from Mexico," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    9. Jean Flemming, 2018. "Costly Commuting and the Job Ladder," 2018 Meeting Papers 100, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Zhi (Aaron) Cheng & Min-Seok Pang & Paul A. Pavlou, 2020. "Mitigating Traffic Congestion: The Role of Intelligent Transportation Systems," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 653-674, September.
    11. Mulalic, Ismir & Rouwendal, Jan, 2020. "Does improving public transport decrease car ownership? Evidence from a residential sorting model for the Copenhagen metropolitan area," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. Don Drummond & Evan Capeluck & Matthew Calver, 2015. "The Key Challenge for Canadian Public Policy: Generating Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth," CSLS Research Reports 2015-11, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    13. Brent, Daniel & Beland, Louis-Philippe, 2020. "Traffic congestion, transportation policies, and the performance of first responders," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Kacker, Kanishka & Gupta, Ridhima & Ali , Saif, 2023. "Does Traffic Congestion pose Health Hazards? Evidence from a Highly Congested and Polluted City," EfD Discussion Paper 23-10, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.
    15. Martin Adler & Stefanie Peer & Tanja Sinozic, 2019. "Autonomous, Connected, Electric Shared vehicles (ACES) and public finance: an explorative analysis," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-005/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Meina Zheng & Xiucheng Guo & Feng Liu & Jiayan Shen, 2021. "Contribution of Subway Expansions to Air Quality Improvement and the Corresponding Health Implications in Nanjing, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-19, January.
    17. Song, Yena & Kim, Hyun & Lee, Keumsook & Ahn, Kwangwon, 2018. "Subway network expansion and transit equity: A case study of Gwangju metropolitan area, South Korea," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 148-158.
    18. Jindong Pang & Shulin Shen, 2023. "Do ridesharing services cause traffic congestion?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(2), pages 520-552, May.
    19. Brough, Rebecca & Freedman, Matthew & Phillips, David C., 2022. "Experimental evidence on the effects of means-tested public transportation subsidies on travel behavior," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    20. Legrain, Alexander & Buliung, Ron & El-Geneidy, Ahmed M., 2016. "Travelling fair: Targeting equitable transit by understanding job location, sectorial concentration, and transit use among low-wage workers," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-11.

    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:kap:transp:v:42:y:2015:i:2:p:303-332. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.