Net Effects of Gasoline Price Changes on Transit Ridership in U.S. Urban Areas, MTI Report 12-19

Using panel data of transit ridership and gasoline prices for ten selected U.S. urbanized areas over the time period of 2002 to 2011, this study analyzes the effect of gasoline prices on ridership of the four main transit modes—bus, light rail, heavy rail, and commuter rail—as well as their aggregate ridership. Improving upon past studies on the subject, this study accounts for endogeneity between the supply of services and ridership, and controls for a comprehensive list of factors that may potentially influence transit ridership. This study also examines short- and long-term effects and non-constant effects at different gasoline prices. The analysis found varying effects, depending on transit modes and other conditions. Strong evidence was found for positive short-term effects only for bus and the aggregate: a 0.61-0.62 percent ridership increase in response to a 10 percent increase in current gasoline prices (elasticity of 0.061 to 0.062). The long-term effects of gasoline prices, on the other hand, was significant for all modes and indicated a total ridership increase ranging from 0.84 percent for bus to 1.16 for light rail, with commuter rail, heavy rail, and the aggregate transit in response to a 10 percent increase in gasoline prices. The effects at the higher gasoline price level of over $3 per gallon were found to be more substantial, with a ridership increase of 1.67 percent for bus, 2.05 percent for commuter rail, and 1.80 percent for the aggregate for the same level of gasoline price changes. Light rail shows even a higher rate of increase of 9.34 percent for gasoline prices over$4. In addition, a positive threshold boost effect at the $3 mark of gasoline prices was found for commuter and heavy rails, resulting in a substantially higher rate of ridership increase. The results of this study suggest that transit agencies should prepare for a potential increase in ridership during peak periods that can be generated by substantial gasoline price increases over$3 per gallon for bus and commuter rail modes, and over $4 per gallon for light rail, in order to accommodate higher transit travel needs of the public through pricing strategies, general financing, capacity management, and operations planning of transit services

Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Transp. & Infrastructure, 116th Cong., Feb. 26, 2019 (Statement of Vicki Arroyo)

As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in November, describes, the United States is already experiencing serious impacts of climate change—and the risks to communities all across the country are growing rapidly. These findings, along with those in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)report, are clear and should be a call to immediate action. Even if we manage to limit planetary warming to just 2 degrees C, the world will still face increased chances of economic and social upheaval from more severe flooding, droughts, heatwaves, and other climate impacts as well as devastating environmental consequences, the IPCC report warns. The scientific consensus as described in the IPCC Special Report is that countries around the world must rapidly decarbonize their economies, cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and to near zero by 2050. Yet the current trends are going in the wrong direction. Despite our increasing understanding of the narrowing window to act, U.S. GHG emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018, according to a January report from the Rhodium Group. Clearly more action is needed. The encouraging news is that many states and cities have committed to taking action. They are taking steps to reduce emissions through legislation, executive orders, and pledges made in collaborations such as the US Climate Alliance –now covering roughly half the US population and GDP. In my testimony, I will be focusing on the transportation sector, which is the largest contributor of GHG emissions in the United States, and is already facing significant impacts from climate change. Federal standards have been important in increasing efficiency and reducing emissions, yet transportation-sector emissions are increasing as more vehicle miles are driven, more freight is transported in trucks, and airline travel continues to grow. Transportation is becoming an increasingly large share of U.S. economy-wide emissions as the power sector decarbonizes as a result of market shifts and policy. There is an urgent need, therefore, to transition to a low-carbon transportation system. Such a transition would not only reduce emissions and fight climate change, it also would bring additional important benefits, including protecting public health by reducing conventional air pollution, providing more mobility options, and driving innovation and economic growth through policy action and through public and private investment

The Development of a Common Investment Appraisal for Urban Transport Projects.

In December 1990 we were invited by Birmingham City Council and Centro to submit a proposal for an introductory study of the development of a common investment appraisal for urban transport projects. Many of the issues had arisen during the Birmingham Integrated Transport Study (BITS) in which we were involved, and in the subsequent assessment of light rail schemes of which we have considerable experience. In subsequent discussion, the objectives were identified as being:- (i) to identify, briefly, the weaknesses with existing appraisal techniques; (ii) to develop proposals for common methods for the social cost-benefit appraisal of both urban road and rail schemes which overcome these weaknesses; (iii) to develop complementary and consistent proposals for common methods of financial appraisal of such projects; (iv) to develop proposals for variants of the methods in (ii) and (iii) which are appropriate to schemes of differing complexity and cost; (v) to consider briefly methods of treating externalities, and performance against other public sector goals, which are consistent with those developed under (ii) to (iv) above; (vi) to recommend work to be done in the second phase of the study (beyond March 1991) on the provision of input to such evaluation methods from strategic and mode-specific models, and on the testing of the proposed evaluation methods. Such issues are particularly topical at present, and we have been able to draw, in our study, on experience of:- (i) evaluation methods developed for BITS and subsequent integrated transport studies (MVA) (ii) evaluation of individual light rail and heavy rail investment projects (ITS,MVA); (iii) the recommendations of AMA in "Changing Gear" (iv) advice to IPPR on appraisal methodology (ITS); (v) submissions to the House of Commons enquiry into "Roads for the Future" (ITS); (vi) advice to the National Audit Office (ITS) (vii) involvement in the SACTRA study of urban road appraisal (MVA, ITS

Getting on Track: Good Investments for Pennsylvania's Public Transit System

Provides an overview of the state's transit system and summarizes opportunities for investment in rapid transit, rail, and bus lines in each region. Includes policy recommendations

Exploring the Effectiveness of Transit Security Awareness Campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area, Research Report 09-19

Public involvement in alerting officials of suspicious and potentially harmful activity is critical to the overall security of a transit system. As part of an effort to get passengers and the public involved, many transit agencies have security awareness campaigns. The objective of this research is to learn how transit agencies seek to make security awareness campaigns effective and explore how they measure the effectiveness of such campaigns, if at all. This research project includes data from case studies of five major agencies that provide transit service in the San Francisco Bay Area region. The case study data are comprised of descriptions of the types of security awareness campaigns the agencies have implemented, the goals of the campaigns, and how they seek to make their campaigns effective, as well as whether and how these agencies measure and determine the effectiveness of their campaigns. A positive finding of this research is the consistency with which Bay Area transit organizations address the need for passenger awareness as part of their overall security program. However, none of the five agencies analyzed for this study measures the effectiveness of their campaigns. Whereas they all have a similar goal—to increase passenger awareness about security issues—little evidence exists confirming to what extent they are achieving this goal. The paper concludes with suggestions for using outcome measurements to provide a reasonable indication of a campaign’s effectiveness by capturing the public’s response to a campaign

Does Rail Transit Save Energy or Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

Far from protecting the environment, most rail transit lines use more energy per passenger mile, and many generate more greenhouse gases, than the average passenger automobile. Rail transit provides no guarantee that a city will save energy or meet greenhouse gas targets. While most rail transit uses less energy than buses, rail transit does not operate in a vacuum: transit agencies supplement it with extensive feeder bus operations. Those feeder buses tend to have low ridership, so they have high energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile. The result is that, when new rail transit lines open, the transit systems as a whole can end up consuming more energy, per passenger mile, than they did before. Even where rail transit operations save a little energy, the construction of rail transit lines consumes huge amounts of energy and emits large volumes of greenhouse gases. In most cases, many decades of energy savings would be needed to repay the energy cost of construction. Rail transit attempts to improve the environment by changing people's behavior so that they drive less. Such behavioral efforts have been far less successful than technical solutions to toxic air pollution and other environmental problems associated with automobiles. Similarly, technical alternatives to rail transit can do far more to reduce energy use and CO2 outputs than rail transit, at a far lower cost. Such alternatives include the following: Powering buses with hybrid-electric motors, biofuels, and -- where it comes from nonfossil fuel sources -- electricity;Concentrating bus service on heavily used routes and using smaller buses during offpeak periods and in areas with low demand for transit service;Building new roads, using variable toll systems, and coordinating traffic signals to relieve the highway congestion that wastes nearly 3 billion gallons of fuel each year;Encouraging people to purchase more fuel-efficient cars. Getting 1 percent of commuters to switch to hybrid-electric cars will cost less and do more to save energy than getting 1 percent to switch to public transit. If oil is truly scarce, rising prices will lead people to buy more fuel-efficient cars. But states and locales that want to save even more energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions will find the above alternatives far superior to rail transit

Factors Influencing Voting Results of Local Transportation Funding Initiatives with a Substantial Transit Component: Case Studies of Ballot Measures in Eleven Communities, MTI Report 01-17

This publication is a follow-up study to MTI publication 00-01, Why Campaigns for Local Transportation Funding Initiatives Succeed or Fail: An Analysis of Four Communities and National Data. The earlier publication was case studies of four local ballot tax measures for transportation packages. The current study, Factors Influencing Voting Results of Local Transportation Funding Initiatives with a Substantial Rail Transit Component: Case Studies of Ballot Measures in Eleven communities, uses the same case study methodology as the prior study, and is expanded to 11 communities from the past four years. Some of the important conclusions identified by the study are as follows: 1) The combination of an energetic and credible opposition and a questionable reputation of the transit agency or transit system make it extremely difficult for a ballot measure to be successful; 2) When a community has no prior rail transit system, a comprehensive rail-only package is unlikely to be successful; 3)Without $1 million or more to spend on a combination of direct mail and television advertising it is difficult for proponents to be successful; 4) Developing a consensus transportation package depends on the specific details of the package and it is very difficult to generalize about the needed details; and 5) Under certain circumstances, voters do not appear to place significant importance on the existence or length of the expiration date of the tax used to fund the transportation package

Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy-duty Truck Technology, Markets, and Policy Assessments for California

This report assesses zero emissions medium- and heavy-duty vehicle technologies, their associated costs, projected market share, and possible policy mandates and incentives to support their adoption. Cost comparisons indicate that battery-electric transit buses and city delivery trucks are the most economically attractive of the zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) based on their break-even mileage being a small fraction of the expected total mileage. These ZEVs using fuel cells are also attractive for a hydrogen cost of $5/kg. The most economically unattractive vehicle types for ZEV adoption are long-haul trucks and inter-city buses. Developing mandates for buses and trucks will be more difficult than for passenger cars for several reasons, including the large differences in the size and cost of the vehicles and the ways they are used in commercial, profit-oriented fleets. The best approach will be to develop separate mandates for classes of vehicles that have similar sizes, cost characteristics, use patterns, and ownership/business models. These mandates should be coupled to incentives that vary by vehicle type/class and by year or accumulated sales volume, to account for the effects of expected price reductions with time

Eighth National Garrett Morgan Symposium on Sustainable Transportation, Report MTI 08-03

On April 1, 2008, the Mineta Transportation Institute at San José State University hosted a videoconference that brought together experts in surface transportation and students from middle and high schools across the nation to discuss the importance of sustainable transportation. The goal was to introduce students to future career opportunities in transportation and to inspire them to take the high school and college courses that will prepare them for professional careers. Students from California, Maryland and Virginia participated in the 2008 symposium, during which they heard opening remarks from Vice Admiral Thomas J. Barrett, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Five teams of students presented their ideas on sustainable transportation alternatives for the future. These included a magnetic hover bus that can traverse both land and water, a plug-in electric-biodiesel-solar hybrid car, applications of the Stirling engine, a solar-hydropower bus, and an electric car with back-up power from solar panels and an internal windmill. The formal presentations were followed by a moderated question-and-answer session in which student teams questioned each other about their projects and sought the advice of experts about preparation for transportation careers and the critical issues they will face in the future. This publication is an edited summary of the April 2008 event, named in honor of Garrett A. Morgan, a black American inventor honored by Congress for his contributions to transportation and public safety