It has always seemed obvious that substantial energy savings could be realized by diverting commuters from cars onto rail transit. In fact, the wisdom of this idea has appeared so self-evident, to so many people, that is has been little examined. The only direct analysis (1), calculated the energy-cost of various kinds of transit construction and concluded that the United States could save energy by diverting investment from highways to rail transit. 

Those conclusions were based on three implicit assumptions, but a reasonable modification of those assumptions produces a directly opposite conclusion. Their unstated assumptions were: 1. that Congress often acts as if the expenditure of construction money were an end in itself (while I will assume that the expenditure should be evaluated in terms of the passenger-services it produces); 2. that engineering capacity measures are appropriate for estimating patronage (while I will use observed behavioral data because there is little evidence to support the continued hope that the public's demonstrated dislike of "public transit" can be altered to any significant degree (2)); 3. that modern rail systems would have similar energy characteristics to existing rail systems (but data which became available after their article make it clear that modern systems are actually much less efficient (3)). 

My analysis uses data from the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART), and evidence is presented to show that BART is typical of modern rail systems. I shall first concentrate on the construction energy relationship and will show that for a standarized measure of services, passenger-miles, freeway construction is much more energy efficient than rail transit construction. I will then show that viewed as a total system--looking at the energy involved in propulsion, building automobiles and other transit vehicles, and right-of-way construction--BART should never have been built in the first place if energy saving was the only goal.

A number of current assumptions about transportation and energy have acquired mythical status, because they seem self-evidently true and hence are rarely examined. Taken as wisdom, these myths form the basis for much proposed reform of transportation policy. They appeared in speeches by most of the candidates for the 1976 presidential nomination and are now echoing in Congress as well. Most of the myths I examine here concern urban passenger transportation: "Good transit systems can attract people out of cars, save our scarce energy resources, decrease private automobile ownership, be more economical than cars. 11 Another of these myths concerns freight transportation: "Federal highway subsidies have been responsible for the shift of freight from railroads to trucks and the consequent problems of the railroad industry." And one concerns the supposed economies of railroad passenger operations. 

Belief in these myths has not been confined to the political world: ten years ago, it was almost universal among even city planners and academics (including me). Thus another function of this article is to summarize what has been learned in transportation research in recent years. In the course of discussing these myths I try to point out some areas where changes in federal policy might make a difference in solving our transportation problems.

Imagine that it's January 1993.

Our environmentalist coalition has swept all the national elections and is ready to declare war on the automobile.

We shall make urban life in America as civilized as urban life in Europe.

Starting in the mid-1960's, US government policy encouraged the public takeover and subsidy of what had been a self-supporting, privately owned transit industry. The combination of public ownership and subsidy halted the long-term decline in ridership, but it also led to the growth of an enormous financial deficit.

Using individual data from 62 transit properties to measure the change in productivity (output per dollar of input) over the period 1950-1985, this paper examines the relationship between productivity and government subsidies.

The magnitude of the productivity decline surprising: indeed, if productivity had merely remained constant since 1964, the year the subsidy program began, total operating expenses would be more than 40% lower. To put that figure in perspective, this is enough cost reduction to erase most of the current operating deficit -- without raising fares.

The connection between labor work-rules and transit deficits has received a great deal of recent attention. In particular, the use of part-time labor has been widely advocated as a possible solution to transit's financial problems. Alas, it is not so. 

This paper examines the potential savings from part-time labor and concludes that they cannot make a substantial reduction in the size of the transit deficit. Furthermore, and of greater importance, it seems possible that the contract concessions necessary to win the use of part-time labor will ultimately cost more than a simple continuation of current labor work-rules.

The paper also discusses the factors which have produced transit deficits. It is concluded that broad social forces outside the control of the transit industry are the major factors; hence it is unreasonable to expect the industry to solve the deficit problem.