University of California Transportation Center

For the average American, the overwhelmingly popular first choice in trip mode is to get into the private car at point A and drive it directly to point B. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, 82 percent of all work trips and 76 percent of all non-work trips are solo car trips. The total share of transit trips is 10 percent and steadily declining, in spite of massive operating subsidies for these modes. Short of a drastic change in the cost of car travel (e.g., a long-term doubling of gasoline prices), current transit modes cannot hope to compete with the private automobile for passengers.