Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California

The authors examine pre-COVID declines in transit ridership, using Southern California as a case study. They first illustrate Southern California’s unique position in the transit landscape: it is a large transit market that demographically resembles a small one. They then draw on administrative data, travel diaries, rider surveys, accessibility indices, and Census microdata for Southern California, and demonstrate a strong association between rising private vehicle access, particularly among the populations most likely to ride transit, and falling transit use. Because they cannot control quantitatively for the endogeneity between vehicle acquisition and transit use, our results are not causal. Nevertheless, the results strongly suggest that increasing private vehicle access helped depress transit ridership. Given Southern California’s similarity to most US transit markets, they conclude that vehicle access may have played a role in transit losses across the US since 2000.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-021-10245-w
• Record URL:
  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-021-10245-w
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00494488
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022.
• Authors:
  • Manville, Michael
  • 0000-0002-4218-6427
  • Taylor, Brian D
  • 0000-0002-1037-2751
  • Blumenberg, Evelyn
  • 0000-0001-6767-2686
  • Schouten, Andrew
  • 0000-0003-4152-7223
• Publication Date: 2023-2

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 303-329
• Serial:
  • Transportation
  • Volume: 50
  • Issue Number: 1
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISSN: 0049-4488
  • EISSN: 1572-9435
  • Serial URL: http://link.springer.com/journal/11116

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automobile ownership; Demographics; Transit riders; Travel behavior
• Geographic Terms: Southern California
• Subject Areas: Highways; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01872212
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jan 31 2023 9:22AM