Solvency Extensions - Safety

Solvency Extensions - Ridership

Within the context of transit (and depending on the consumer’s location), the ability to select between viable substitutes becomes an issue where policy makers wish to use transit options as part of an overall greenhouse gas reduction program. Personal freedom and cost play a large role in guiding the consumer’s preferences, but those preferences begin to change when certain population densities and price points make mass transit more competitive with other readily available alternatives.204 In achieving the proper price point for mass transit, the expense of constructing the project and the on-going operational costs can overburden these options, making them unaffordable choices in the consumer’s eyes when other important factors, such as population density, weigh against them.205 However, in these situations, the government can strategically provide financial incentives that can level the opportunity costs and give consumers viable alternatives, despite the drawbacks from other important aspects.206 Thus, a variety of market factors like personal freedom, population density, and cost must reach critical levels whereby consumers are willing to consider meaningful substitute modes; but the financial model for the entity providing the service needs to be viable, with adequate funding from all of its sources.

A final analysis was completed to estimate the effect of an expansion of public transportation service and use. Total ridership, as measured in unlinked trips, was doubled. Growth in public transportation use was assigned to two major sources: improvements to an existing route or system, and extensions and new routes. By conducting an analysis of growth on public transportation systems from 1999 to 2004, the research team found that approximately one-third of ridership growth is associated with improvements to existing routes, while two-thirds has resulted from new routes and modal extensions. The necessary growth in route miles and modal extensions was estimated using recent improvements to public transportation systems in the U.S., using the average increase in ridership relative to the route miles built. Figures from several recent rail and high-quality bus projects were collected directly from public transportation agencies. Most major improvements and extensions to public transportation systems currently operate either light rail, commuter rail, or high-quality bus systems.For households, an increase in the number of route miles served by high-quality public transportation service would increase the total number of households with the option to use public transportation, as well as the total number of employment sites served by public transportation networks. The number of households that would have improved or new public transportation service is estimated using some basic assumptions about the distribution of residences:

• Residential density is assumed to be the average for urbanized areas across the U.S. Current urbanized areas were defined by the 2000 Census, and generally represent cities and suburbs that have a combined population of over 50,000 people. This is a conservative estimate because public transportation alignments are generally targeted to areas that have been zoned and built up at a higher density than other areas in the city.

• The area served by new routes are assumed to overlap with areas served by parallel or nearby routes by 25 percent. Existing public transportation availability was estimated using the NHTS 2001 data. NHTS 2001 staff provided a special data set to the research team that uses the geographic location of each respondent and a 1994 database of bus lines and rail stops to calculate the distance between each respondent and public transportation services. Relative increases in total public transportation route mileage is based on existing services from 2004.