"Evaluating Household Savings From High Quality Public Transit Service"

Today's TARC topic is the paper from Todd Litman at Victoria Transport Policy Institute. The whole paper is a fascinating collection of previous studies, and its worth reading the whole thing, but I wanted to bring out one or two particularly telling examples from it.

One new approach Litman takes it compare the total household transportation costs when high quality transit is put into the mix. Even though there's a higher tax rate, the overall personal transportation expenses go down:

Residents of communities with high quality public transportation spend significantly less on average on motor vehicles and transport overall, even taking into account additional subsidies.

Next interesting tidbit is the summary of benefits of supporting transit, even if you personally for some reason will never ride it no matter how great it is:

• Reduced traffic congestion delay. High quality, grade separated transit tends to reduce traffic congestion on a corridor by offering travelers an attractive alternative to driving during congested conditions. As congestion increases more travelers shift mode so congestion is never as severe as would otherwise occur, that is, it reduces the point of congestion equilibrium (Winston and Langer 2004). Per capita congestion delays are 30- 50% lower in urban regions with high quality public transit than in otherwise comparable cities (Litman 2004 and 2007b).
• Road and parking facility cost savings. People who live and work in areas with high quality public transit tend to own fewer cars and make fewer trips, reducing parking and traffic generation rates. By reducing traffic congestion, high quality public transit tends to reduce the need to expand roadways. This reduces road and parking costs to governments and developers.
• Improved mobility for non-drivers, and reduced chauffeuring burdens for drivers. People who for any reason cannot drive tend to be severely disadvantaged if they live in an automobile-dependent community. High quality public transit and transit oriented development significantly improve accessibility for non-drivers, and so reduce the need for motorists to chauffeur non-driving family members and friends.
• Increased traffic safety. Public transit is a relatively safe travel mode, and because residents of communities with high quality public transit drive fewer total annual miles, per capita traffic fatality rates are substantially lower in communities with high quality public transit, as illustrated in Figure 5.

Per capita traffic fatalities tend to decline with increased transit ridership. Since cities with rail have higher average transit ridership, they tend to have fewer traffic fatalities. These values include deaths to transit passengers, automobile passengers, and pedestrians.

That's all I'm going to quote, but its an interesting read all around. You can download the whole thing here.