|
Number 50 -
20 July 2002
Dallas Transit Down, Car-Pooling, Telecommuting Up:
Implications for Urban Transport Policy
Dallas: Transit Share and Ridership Drop Despite Opening $1 Billion in
New Rail Lines
During the
1990s, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) opened three new light rail lines and
one new commuter rail line. DART has pursued a successful public relations
strategy to portray the new lines as a success, to the point that the system
is being cited internationally as a model. The local monopoly daily
newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, has been uncritically
complimentary of DART’s rail system in both its editorial and news pages.
Local transit officials and editorial writers have commented on the role that
DART’s rail system has played in attracting people out of their cars. By
2000, 30 miles of line were in operation.
The Texas
Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), relying on the work of Thomas A. Rubin and
Wendell Cox has raised questions about the effectiveness of the DART rail
system. For example, TPPF Senior Fellow Wendell Cox has estimated that the
DART light rail system removed so few automobiles from the road that the natural
growth rate would have replaced the reduction within nine days.
Transit
Losses: It came as some
surprise to local transit officials and the media
when 2000 Census journey to work data
showed that both transit’s journey to work market share and the number of
commuters using transit had dropped in the areas served by the rail lines.
- All light rail stations open
in 2000 were in the city of Dallas. Transit journey to work ridership
dropped 4,000 in the city from 1990 to 2000. Transit’s market share (share
of total employment) dropped 17.9 percent.
- All commuter rail stations
open in 2000 were in Dallas County, and the main terminus (Union
Station) is in the city. Thus, all light rail and commuter rail stations
were within Dallas County. Transit journey to work ridership dropped
3,199 in the county from 1990 to 2000. Transit’s market share (share of
total employment) in the county dropped 16.2 percent.
- In the Dallas-Fort Worth
Metroplex outside Dallas County, transit journey to work use actually
increased, from 6,500 to 8,800, though market share dropped 5.9 percent.
However, transit use outside Dallas County is miniscule, at 0.6 percent
of the 1,500,000 employees.
- Overall, transit use dropped 700
in the Metroplex, and transit’s work trip market share dropped 23.0
percent.
Longer Term Transit Trends: The transit losses of the 1990s are a continuation of the 1980s trends. Transit's journey to work market share fell in Dallas County from 5.3 percent in 1980 to 3.6 percent in 2000, a drop of 33 percent. This is particularly significant because of the large investment that has been made by local taxpayers in transit. In 1983, voters in the DART district (generally Dallas County) approved sales tax funding to expand transit and build the rail system, the latter to be built without federal funding. In fact, federal funding is being used, and the rail system has been reduce considerably in length due to cost overruns. Bus service was expanded more than 100 percent, and a comprehensive express bus network provides service from most of the area to downtown. The local tax has generated more than $4.5 billion (not inflation adjusted), yet transit's competitive position is considerably less than before the DART tax. This leads to two conclusions. The first is that, despite a huge investment, little if any impact has been achieved and virtually no traffic congestion reduction (which was the principal promise in the 1983 referendum). The second is that, as noted below, transit principally serves only downtown and little transit competitive service is provided to elsewhere.
Car Pool
Gains: The Dallas area
was much more successful in attracting people out of their cars through
car-pooling.
- In the city of Dallas, 54 percent
of new commuters used car pools, as use of that mode increased 19,600.
This represents a 17.2 percent increase in market share. By comparison,
driving alone represented only 47.9 percent of new commuting. This is a
stunning accomplishment, and may represent the most successful diversion
of new commuters away from driving alone during the last census period.
For example, Portland’s anti-automobile, anti-urban sprawl (misleadingly
labeled "smart growth") and transit rail policies were rewarded
with more than two-thirds of new commuters choosing to drive alone.
Seattle (King County), with what may be the nation’s most extensive HOV
lane system also achieved substantial success, keeping the percentage
new commuters driving alone to 48.7 percent, slightly more than that of
Dallas.
- Overall, car-pooling added
79,600 new users in the Metroplex, though the car pool market share
gained only 1.0 percent. Driving alone accounted for 78.9 percent of new
commuting, while only 14.4 percent were in car pools.
Dallas’ success
in attracting people into car pools may result from the addition of
high-occupancy vehicle lanes (HOV) during the period on many of the area’s
freeways. Approximately 35 miles of HOV lanes were opened, largely
concentrated in the city of Dallas.
Working at
Home Gains: Substantial
gains were also made in telecommuting, or working at home in the Metroplex.
Now more than 30,000 people work at home, a 31 percent market share increase
from 1990.
Implications:
The Dallas-Fort Worth
data indicates that intense transportation investments do not necessarily
encourage people to leave their cars at home.
- The most expensive
investments, urban rail lines, did nothing in Dallas to stem the
historic transit market share losses. The addition of 30 miles of rail
was associated with a loss of 3,100 commuters in Dallas County. This is
not surprising, because virtually all-new US urban rail systems cost
more to build and operate than it would to lease each a new car.
Besides the intensely high cost of rail systems, this inferior
performance is driven by the fact that transit systems can only
effectively serve downtown areas, while, on average, 90 percent of
employment is no longer downtown.
- More moderate investments,
such as car pool lanes, appear to have paid off, so much so that more
people started using car pools than driving alone in the city of Dallas,
where the new HOV lanes were concentrated. The addition of approximately
the same number of miles of HOV lanes was associated with a gain of
19,600 car pool riders in the city of Dallas. HOV lanes have two
distinct advantages; they are less costly and by virtue of their
movement of private automobiles, can provide an alternative to driving
along throughout the downtown area, not just to downtown (which,
even if cost were not a factor, would nonetheless render rail a strategy
with little potential).
- The least costly investment
seems to have paid off the most. Working at home increased approximately
40 percent as much as car-pooling, and required virtually no government
investment.
This suggests
the following implications for public policy.
- Less intense transport
investments, such as HOV lanes are likely to be more successful, both
because of their lower cost and their ability to serve the entire area, rather
than just downtown. But HOV lanes are not enough. There is great
potential for high-occupancy-toll networks (HOT Networks), as suggested
by C. Kenneth Orski of the Urban Mobility Corporation and Robert Poole
of the Reason Foundation. These lanes allow car-pools and transit buses
(Bus Rapid Transit) to operate without charge, while charging people who
drive alone a toll. Region wide HOT lanes would not only encourage more
car-pooling, but they would make it possible for transit agencies to
provide cost effective rapid transit service to virtually any location
in the urban area (This would not reduce traffic congestion, but it would surely provide
more transit service and more in mobility opportunity, see The Illusion of Transit Choice). Federally sponsored research has generally shown that
bus rapid transit is one-fifth as costly as urban rail systems per
passenger mile.
- There may be substantial
potential for encouraging telecommuting. Gains in working at home were
substantial around the nation. Market share increased more than 10
percent, and the number of people working at home increased 780,000,
more than transit’s loss since 1970. Given the excessive cost of rail
systems, it would make sense to establish a pilot program to provide
financial incentives to companies and employees to work at home; using
Federal Transit Administration funding that would otherwise be used to
build the excessively costly and ineffective
new rail systems.
For the most
part, the local media has failed to report on this story.
The Public Purpose: One of National Journal's Top 4 Transport Internet Sites
|
NAVIGATION & PUBLICATION SERIES
|
The Public Purpose WENDELL COX CONSULTANCY
Demographia
P. O. Box 841 - Belleville, IL 62269 USA
Telephone: +1.618.632.8507 -
Facsimile: +1.810.821.8134
|
To facilitate the ideal of government as the servant of the people
by identifying and implementing
strategies to achieve public purposes
at a cost that is no higher than necessary.
|
|