Where Transit Use Is Growing: Surprising Results

Abstract

This article investigates whether transit’s fate is tied to the last vestiges of old urban forms or whether transit is finding niches in the new, largely suburban urban forms that increasingly have manifested themselves since the 1920s. The hypothesis is that most growth is in census regions with the strongest vestiges of older urban forms centered on CBDs. The hypothesis was tested by documenting how transit performance changed between 1990 and 2000 in U.S. metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people in the year 2000. Results show that, for MSAs with fewer than 5 million people, transit use has been growing faster than very rapid population growth in the West region, but not elsewhere in the country. The conclusion is that transit growth is not tied to old urban forms. A future article will explore causality of transit use growth and service productivity change.