Public Transit
Updated February 2010
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| Evaluating Public Transit Benefits and Costs |
This guidebook describes how to create a comprehensive framework for evaluating the full impacts (benefits and costs) of a particular transit service or improvement. It identifies various categories of impacts and how to measure them. It includes examples of transit evaluation, and provides extensive references. |
| Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits - Executive Summary |
This summarizes results of Rail Transit In America. |
| Rail Transit In America: Comprehensive Evaluation of Benefits - Full Report |
This report evaluates the benefits of rail transit based on a comprehensive analysis of transportation system performance in major U.S. cities. It finds that cities with larger, well-established rail systems have significantly higher per capita transit ridership, lower average per capita vehicle ownership and mileage, less traffic congestion, lower traffic death rates and lower consumer transportation expenditures than otherwise comparable cities. |
| Raise My Taxes, Please! Evaluating Household Savings From High Quality Public Transit Service |
This report uses data from U.S. cities to investigate the incremental costs and benefits of public transit service improvements. It indicates that high quality service typically requires about $268 in additional subsidies and $104 in additional fares annually per capita, but provides vehicle, parking and road cost savings averaging $1,040 per capita, plus other economic, social and environmental benefits. This indicates that residents should rationally support tax increases if needed to create high quality public transit systems in their communities. |
| Smart Congestion Reductions II: Reevaluating The Role Of Public Transit For Improving Urban Transportation |
This report investigates the role that public transit can play in reducing traffic congestion and achieving other transportation improvement objectives. It evaluates criticism that urban transit investments are ineffective at reducing traffic congestion and wasteful. |
| Evaluating Rail Transit Criticism |
This report evaluates criticism of rail transit. It examines claims that rail transit is ineffective at improving transportation system performance, that rail transit investments are not cost effective, and that transit is an outdated form of transportation. It finds that critics often misrepresent issues and use biased and inaccurate analysis. This is a companion to the report Rail Transit in America |
| Transit Performance Spreadsheet |
This spreadsheet contains transportation system performance data used in the Rail Transit In America report. |
| 2009 Urban Transport Performance Spreadsheet |
This spreadsheet contains various urban transportation system performance data, including vehicle travel, mode split, and consumer expenditures for 130 U.S. cities. |
| Evaluating New Start Transit Program Performance: Comparing Rail And Bus |
This study by Lyndon Henry and Todd Litman compares public transit performance between U.S. cities that expanded rail systems and those that expanded bus systems. |
| Valuing Transit Service Quality Improvements: Considering Comfort and Convenience In Transport Project Evaluation |
This report investigates the value travelers place on qualitative factors such as comfort and convenience, and practical ways to incorporate these factors into travel time values for planning and project evaluation. It describes how service quality improvements can increase transit ridership and reduce automobile travel.
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| Terrorism, Transit and Public Safety: Evaluating The Risks |
This paper evaluates the overall safety of public transit, taking into account all risks, including recent terrorist attacks. It indicates that transit is an extremely safe mode. Travelers would increase their total risk if they shift from transit to driving in response to terrorist threats.
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| Evaluating Public Transit Accessibility |
This paper by Todd Litman and Tom Rickert provides guidance for selecting “inclusive design” performance indicators to evaluate the ability of public transport services in developing countries to accommodate people with disabilities and other special needs. |
| Financing Transit Systems Through Value Capture: An Annotated Bibliography |
This paper summarizes the findings of nearly 100 studies concerning the impacts of transit service on nearby property values, and the feasibility of capturing this additional value to finance transit improvements. The results indicate that proximity to transit often increases property values enough to offset much or all of transit system capital costs. |
| The Value Capture Approach To Stimulating Transit Oriented Development And Financing Transit Station Area Improvements |
This paper by Thomas A. Gihring evaluates land value taxes to promote transit oriented development (TOD) and raise revenue to finance transit station area improvements. A Seattle-area case study demonstrates how changing the general property tax to a land value tax (LVT) would provide incentives to utilize sites more intensively. The paper discusses various value capture mechanisms, and offers two possible land value capture methods to support public bond financing. |
| Renaissance of Public Transit in the United States? |
This paper by John Pucher investigates factors that caused U.S. public transit use 1995 to 2000 and the implications for transport planning.
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| Measuring The Performance Of Transit-Oriented Developments In Western Australia |
This report by Professor John Renne summarizes factors to consider when evaluating TOD transport, economic social and environmental impacts. It recommends longitudinal measurement of performance indicators in six categories, including travel behaviour, the local economy, the natural environment, the built environment, the social environment and the policy context. |
| Identifying the Value of Long Distance Rail Services: Current Issues in Transport Assessment and Evaluation |
This paper by R. Boulter and D. Wignall identifies international good practice in the assessment and evaluation of rail investments and services. It argues that a sustainable, integrated, effective and efficient transport system requires decision-making to be supported by strategic assessment and detailed evaluation. It identifies various distortions in current rail planning practices and reforms that can correct these problems. |
| Intermodal Surface Public Transport Hubs: Harnessing Synergy for Success in America’s Urban and Intercity Travel |
This paper by Lyndon Henry and David L. Marsh describes intermodal public transport hubs and their potential role in creating more integrated and attractive public transportation systems. It describes numerous examples of such hubs, often consisting of redeveloped older rail stations. |
| A Review of 'On the Social Desirability of Urban Rail Systems' by C. Winston and V. Maheshrib |
This paper by Haynes Goddard evaluates economic analysis by Clifford Winston and Vikram Maheshri which attempted to make a definitive statement about the social desirability of urban rail transit in the United States. Their argument is deficient on several analytic and statistical grounds. |
| Reassessing “The Social Desirability of Urban Rail Transit Systems”: Critique of Winston and Maheshri |
This paper, by Jay Warner, evaluates the 2006 article, “The Social Desirability of Urban Rail Transit Systems," by Winston and Maheshri, which concluded that most U.S. urban rail systems have a negative social desirability. |
| Transit Price Elasticities and Cross-Elasticities |
This paper summarizes price elasticities and cross elasticities for use in public transit planning and modeling. It finds that commonly used transit elasticity values tend to be lower than appropriate to model long-run impacts, which understates the potential of transit fare reductions and service improvements to reduce problems such as traffic congestion and vehicle pollution, and understate the long-term negative impacts of fare increases and service cuts. |
| Employer Provided Transit Passes: A Tax Exempt Benefit – Benefit/Cost Analysis |
This report by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute for the Transit Advocacy Project, evaluates a proposal to make employer contributions toward employee transit commuting expenditures exempt from Canadian income tax. It describes this proposal, discusses the context in which it has been recommended, estimates its impacts on travel and resulting benefits and costs, and investigates potential barriers and problems. |
| Tax Exempt Status For Employer-Provided Transit Benefits |
This report by IBI for the National Climate Change Process and Transport Canada, evaluates the economic and environmental impacts of employee transit tax exemptions. |
