Rapid decentralization of population and employment over the past several decades has chipped away at the American transit industry's market share. This paper examines the implications of decentralization on the ridership, operating performance, and fiscal health of the nation's largest transit operators. Based on the results of a national survey, a number of service strategies are explored that offer hope for reversing transit's decline, including: timed-transfers, paratransit services, reverse commute and specialized runs, employer-sponsored vanpools, and HOV/dedicated busway facilities. Land-use options, like traditional neighborhood designs and transit-based housing, are also examined. The paper ends with a discussion of various institutional, pricing, and organizational considerations when implementing service reforms and land-use initiatives. Century-old models involving joint public-private development of communities and transit facilities, it is argued, also deserve reconsideration.

Paratransit has the potential to produce substantial mobility and environmental benefits by attracting large numbers of urban trips that otherwise would be made by private automobile. Experiments with shared-ride taxis and jitney services in Seattle, San Diego, Indianapolis, and several other U.S. cities in the late 1970s and 1980s demonstrated there is a market demand for frequent, on-call, and sometimes door-to-door services that are cheaper than exclusive-ride taxis and sometimes even public transit (Frankena and Paulter, 1984; Cervero, 1985). Importantly these types of services blend the best features of mass transit (i.e., multiple-occupancy) and the private automobile (i.e., flexible, on-call, point-to-point services). Because of allegations of unfair competition and "cream-skimming," however, many local and state authorities introduced or tightened regulations over the past three decades that effectively banned competitive, free-enterprise paratransit from most American cities. In addition, labor protection legislation, such as the 13(c) provision of the Federal Transit Act, as well as capital and operating subsidies to public transit have placed private paratransit operators at a competitive disadvantage, limiting most to specialized, contract services such as for the elderly and disabled.

Transit oriented development (TOD) is a viable model for transportation and land-use integration in many rapidly developing cities of the world, including those in Asia. TOD is a straightforward concept: concentrate a mix of moderately dense and pedestrian-friendly development around transit stations to promote transit riding, increased walk and bicycle travel, and other alternatives to the use of private cars. In a way, Asian cities have historically been transit oriented, featuring fine-grain mixes of land uses, plentiful pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, and ample transit services on major roads. However, the recent ascendancy in car ownership and rising incomes are unraveling the historical transit-supportive urban forms of many Asian cities, giving rising to an increasingly car-dependent built form. By focusing new construction and redevelopment in and around transit nodes, TOD is viewed as a promising tool for curbing sprawl and the car dependence it spawns. By channeling public investments into struggling inner-city settings, some hope TOD can breath new life and vitality into areas of need. And by creating more walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with good transit connectivity, TOD is thought to appeal to the lifestyle preferences of a growing demographic, like childless couples, young professionals, and empty-nesters.

At the risk of appearing fashionable, I decided to stick “smart growth” in the title of my talk. I confess this is because I find smart growth to be a nice shorthand for “transport and land-use integration”. Stripped to its essentials, smart growth is mainly about better coordinating and integrating transportation and land development. “Smart growth” is a compressed (two-syllable) way of saying this.

In the United States, “smart growth” has gained a momentum of its own, fueled by progressive legislation in states like Maryland and Florida which ties infrastructure dollars to land-use management. No longer just a local issue, smart-growth rhetoric is today even heard on the national campaign trail.

Transit oriented development is shown to produce an appreciable ridership bonus in California. This is partly due to residential self-selection – i.e., a life-style preference for transit-oriented living – as well as factors like employer-based policies that reduce free parking and automobile subsidies. Half-mile catchments of station areas appear to be indifference zones in the sense that residents generally ride transit regardless of local urban design attributes. Out-of-neighborhood attributes, like job accessibility and street connectivity at the destination, on the other hand, have a significant bearing on transit usage among station-area residents. The presence of self-selection, shown using nested logit modeling, underscores the importance of removing barriers to residential mobility so that households are able to sort themselves, via the marketplace, to locations wellserved by transit. Market-responsive zoning, flexible residential parking policies, location efficient mortgages, and adaptive re-use of parking lots are also promising tools for expanding the supply of transit-based housing.

Within a fairly short period of time, traffic congestion has eclipsed virtually every other concern -- be it crime, unemployment, or air pol­ lution -- as America's number one urban problem. Public opinion polls in San Francisco, Atlanta, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and at least a dozen other urbanized areas show citizens are more fed up with con­ gestion than with anything else. In the Bay Area, congestion has been pegged by areawide residents as the number one public menace for four years straight, outdistancing its closest rival -- air pollution -- by more than two-to-one.

Such widespread dissatisfaction reflects, in part, the fact that con­ gestion now afflicts nearly all commuters to some degree, whether headed downtown, reverse-commuting, or traveling on a secondary road. While only a decade ago congestion was the scourge of down­ town commuters, today it pervades the freeway networks of most large and medium-sized cities.

Most studies of induced travel demand have been carried out at a fine to medium grain of analysis - either the project, corridor, county or metropolitan levels. The focus has been on urban settings since cities and suburbs are where the politics of road investments most dramatically get played out. The problems assigned to induced demand - like the inability to stave off traffic congestion and curb air pollution - are quintessentially urban in nature.

This paper reviews, assesses and critiques the state-of-the-field in studying induced travel demand at metropolitan and sub-metropolitan grains of analysis. Its focus is on empirical and ex post examinations of the induced demand phenomenon as opposed to forecasts or stimulations. A meta-analysis is conducted with an eye toward presenting an overall average elasticity estimate of induced demand effects based on the best, most reliable research to date.

Most studies of induced travel demand have been carried out at a fine to medium grain of analysis- either the project, corridor, county, or metropolitan levels. The focus has been on urban settings since cities and suburbs are where the politics of road investment most dramatically get played out. The problem assigned to induce demand- like the inability to stave off traffic congestion and curb air pollution- are quintessentially urban in nature.

This paper reviews, assesses, and critiques the state-of-the-field in studying induced travel demand at metropolitan and sub-metropolitan grains of analysis. Its focus is on empirical and ex post examinations of the induced demand phenomenon as opposed to forecasts or simulation. A meta-analysis is conducted with an eye toward presenting an overall average elasticity estimate of induced demand effects based on the best, most reliable research to date.