11 ms·

Why the Media Fixation on “Transit Is Failing” Stories?

67 points by another 10y ago

enraged_camel 10y ago
I have zero evidence of this, but having witnessed Uber and Lyft spending over $8 million dollars trying to pass pro-ridesharing legislation here in Austin (which failed, thankfully), I can't help but wonder if these types of "Transit is Failing" stories might be their astroturfers/PR agencies at work. Think about it: as a ridesharing company, the more you convince people that public transit is in bad shape and getting worse everyday, the more they will clamor for your ridesharing service.
- dkopi 10y ago
  The real winner with anti-ridesharing legislation isn't public transport. It's car ownership. Uber doesn't let you avoid taking the bus/train. It lets you rely on public transport 95% of the time, and use ride sharing the rest of the time. Fighting uber/lyft means forcing people to own a car, and if they already own a car - they aren't going to be riding the bus.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    As I mentioned in my other comment, I'm not against Uber, Lyft or ridesharing in general. I'm against letting them self-regulate with regards to running background checks on their drivers. They have zero incentive to do so, because it makes hiring drivers more expensive and (more importantly) brings them closer to employee status, which would sink both companies.
- mistermann 10y ago
  > which failed, thankfully Why are you opposed to Uber & Lyft?
  - cantankerous 10y ago
    OP implied he was opposed to the ride-sharing legislation and related initiatives. Not Uber and Lyft.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    I'm not opposed to Uber and Lyft. I'm opposed to letting them regulate themselves.
massysett 10y ago
In Washington DC it has taken over ten years of crashes, worker and passenger fatalities, and awful service for the press to start telling "Metro is failing" stories. Up until then the stories generally were positive.
- rayiner 10y ago
  I think Metros problems are relatively recent though. There were some crashes before (inevitable in a large transit system). But it's only in the last few years that service has totally gone off the rails.
- saulrh 10y ago
  Out of curiosity - per day or week: how many people ride the DC Metro, how many people die on the Metro, how many people drive, and how many people die driving? Metro services have the same issue as airlines in that a non-issue failure rate ends up reviled in the news because there's the same name attached to every single incident and everybody is completely failing to group up the alternatives to examine them. Bad service I can agree with - that's something that needs to be fixed. More money, supportive legislation that makes it easier for them to acquire capability, etcetera. But unless the Metro is killing someone literally every day I doubt its fatality rate approaches cars.
  - acdha 10y ago
    It's definitely safer. The problem is that it was even better during the period where they skimped on maintenance and so part of what drives the reaction are the million people who remember when you never heard of things like this happening.
  - massysett 10y ago
    Metro's problem is gross and chronic mismanagement. Not a single fatality or injury on Metro has been attributed to lack of money. So they do not need more money or legislation to make it easier for them to acquire anything. A common bogeyman among Metro apologists is "lack of dedicated funding," even though no one has shown any link between this lack of dedicated funding and any of the problems Metro is facing. The airlines are an excellent example of how regulation and safety consciousness can succeed in creating an extremely safe means of transportation. Causes of mishaps are tracked down and fixed. Meanwhile Metro kills people due to gross mismanagement. I do not think "more people die driving" is an excuse for gross mismanagement in a government agency.
orasis 10y ago
This is California specific. Don't bother reading if you thought the title was about larger scale trends.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  Please don't post any comments about how you live in Montana, then. In the meantime, I thought that it was not merely an interesting article about a particular newspaper in a particular place, but an interesting observation about how to lie with graphs and what interests newspapers really serve.
- dang 10y ago
  If it's interesting local commentary then it certainly has a place on HN.
- rco8786 10y ago
  This place is full of local commentary. News doesn't have to be global to qualify.
- massysett 10y ago
  I don't get the downvotes on this one. The article headline makes assertions about the press generally, and then discusses only California anecdotes. There is absolutely nothing in the article to support anything about a "media fixation on 'transit is failing' stories." More accurate would have been "why do a few California news sources have some stories asserting that some local California transit systems are failing?"
fucking_tragedy 10y ago
It plays into the "ridesharing is the future" narrative that pulls in the big bucks.
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  Don't forget the self-driving cars!
cptskippy 10y ago
Is it just me or does the type of chart used only make it harder to interpret things? Why not plot actual numbers for population and ridership on a chart instead of % change relative to 2001? It seems deceptive.
rchowe 10y ago
Public transit is a very visible part of government for people who live in cities that have it, and it's controversial because it's partially financed with taxpayer money whether you use it or not. I feel like especially in southern California, there are a lot of people in the suburbs who don't use public transit and who feel like the money spent on transit ("moving poor people around") should go to road projects instead which benefit them. I was recently in Miami, and my friend who lives there said to use Lyft instead of taking the bus or the metro, because "it's only used by poor people". I compare this to Boston, where people complain about MBTA crowds and management, but in general if you're near a subway stop you'll take the subway over Uber of Lyft (when it's running).
- Aleman360 10y ago
  You may be paying for it even if not using it, but you have to account for the environmental savings. But people care less about stuff that's harder to measure.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Remember that every bus full of 'poor people' is 10 or 12 cards not on the road. It already benefits everybody. As public transportation increases, so do road conditions for all. This is an example of a win-win situation.
  - auxym 10y ago
    Only 12? Maybe at off-peak hours. In my city at peak hours, an articulated bus can have as many as ~70 people in it. At an average private vehicle occupancy of 1.67 [2] that's over 40 cars less on the road. People also need to realize that before bitching about cyclists. Would you really rather have one more car contributing to the traffic jam you're stuck in? [1] https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/Articulated_Buses/index.jsp https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/Artic... [2]http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf
- tajen 10y ago
  Likewise, bike users are tired of paying for either 12 feet lanes, the war that petrol-dependent citizen make in Irak, or their contribution to global warming.
Scoundreller 10y ago
I'm hoping the failure of transit leads into a 32-hour/4-day work week media fixation... Overnight 20% reduction in load = dramatically faster service and reduced congestion.
- oceanplexian 10y ago
  Plus basic income bitcoins as a service and uber, but for light rail. Am I right, guys?
strommen 10y ago
Maybe I need to take off my tin-foil hat - but I think this reads exactly as if somebody paid the newspaper to write a story about the "failure of mass transit", and the writers/editors snuck in this graph as a hidden message.
- code_sloth 10y ago
  I'm interpreting that chart as tracking the year on year percentage increase/decrease of the population and ridership. So the population has more or less been increasing year on year since 2005, with a near zero decline prior to that. The ridership has gone through a steep decrease which bottomed out at -35% in ~2005. Sure it's been decreasing less, but isn't it still decreasing? The ridership line is flat near the end, but isn't it still decreasing at more than 20% year on year? How else can the chart be read? How am I reading it wrong?
  - strommen 10y ago
    The chart label of "% change since 2001" is pretty unclear, but based on the quote "ridership...has dropped a staggering 23 percent since 2001", it seems to mean "% difference from 2001", not "% change year-to-year, since 2001".
barney54 10y ago
I think the reason has to do with the perception that ridership should be rapidly increasing and it isn't. Population is up, urbanization, is up, but public transit isn't keeping pace. That's an interesting story because it is non-obvious. I don't think there much else to the media fixation than that.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Building good rail transit infrastructure takes a pretty long time, and it's very expensive. You can also have good bus service, but having it competitive with driving usually requires bus-only lanes, and that's a difficult proposition in America. If you look at Seattle, for example, people there are desperate for new transit, and they want it done as soon as possible, but the timelines for the upcoming ST3 package have most of it taking upwards of a couple decades to complete. For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport. Self-driving cars will go a long way towards improving this. The focus needs to be on avoiding silly mistakes in the meantime, like sinking billions of dollars into new fixed-rail transit routes that will be obsolete the day they enter service.
    - akgerber 10y ago
      Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. If a transit route has sufficient ridership to justify investing in rail, it is already going to be very congested at commuting hours, and will remain so after self-driving cars become common.
gaur 10y ago
Reminds me of Paul Graham's article about newspapers shilling for suit companies: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
kazinator 10y ago
People love to hate public transit, and will click on any headline that promises to fuel their sentiment. In particular, people who commute using single-occupancy vehicles are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of transit.
- sebgr 10y ago
  This is very much an American thing to hate public transport though. Places in Europe, especially Switzerland for example, have much better infrastructure and taking a car can be a pain compared to a train which is faster and a lot more comfortable.
- mbucc 10y ago
  I don't hate it, but I do question if it is the best use of funds. The U.S. doesn't have the density required to support the transit systems we have built. Fare box revenue only covers 44% of operating costs in Boston; in Austin, the CMTA only covers 12.4%. And operating costs do not include the cost of capital, which must be massive [ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio]. -- Edit 's/costs do not cover/costs do not include/'
  - extra88 10y ago
    Do gas taxes cover the costs of road repairs and all other government spending that benefits car owners? Hell, even parking isn't self-supporting, why should transit fares cover all operating costs?
    - mbucc 10y ago
      Wow, they sure don't. In fact, nationwide gas tax and tolls cover about 32% of highway costs. [http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pa...] (But that just says to me our gas taxes should be higher. :)
- chc 10y ago
mc32 10y ago
It may have to do with for example, the VTA expanding service (in miles of track) but the ridership not going up to match. Also, rail in places like the bay area, or even buses, just can't justify the opex given the relatively light ridership. Mass transit is rarely profitable (financially self sustaining) but many transit systems, given housing density and commercial/residential patterns, in the US, are woefully in deficits. Edit: To add, I mean this in terms of more than just the high density corridors and terminus to terminus lines. I mean if you live in Almaden Valley and want to get to East San Jose or you want to get to Milpitas. Or if you want to get from The Marina in SF to the Outer Sunset. Most SF transit is designed to pull people in and out of the old downtown core (even MUNI uses the terms "inbound" and outbound" which tell you a lot about the passenger flow they had in mind. There is no "ring" line or N-S LRVs in SF.
- redditmigrant 10y ago
  As someone who uses the Caltrain every week 3-4 times , I can say the ridership at commute times is very healthy. The housing prices in SF and the concentration of a decent number of large companies (AirBnB, Pinterest, Atlassian) in the SoMA area is probably the chief reason for this trend.
- occamrazor 10y ago
  Public transit has huge positive externalities in terms of reduced traffic. I think that in Europe on average tickets cover only 25% of expenses.
  - mc32 10y ago
    It really depends. Many large metro systems in Asia do better than 100% farebox recovery. Europe hovers between 30 to 60%. In the US anything above 35% is pretty remarkable -and there are a few over 50% but not many. Most recover less than 30% from their boxfare. And that's mostly due to being too "diluted". You have lines in suburban-like areas who cannot sustain the lines via ridership. I'm a fan of public transit I love punctual, clean, timely, dependable mass transit, but I realize it may not be the best answer for agglomerations like we have in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the Bay area or Dallas-Ft Worth, TX.
throwaway_exer 10y ago
As a long-time rider, the VTA infrastructure is excellent, and the route coverage is good. It even has wifi. In the short-term, if buses left and arrived on time, that would be a helpful improvement. Longer-term, ride analysis from Clipper data could optimize routes and frequencies. When looking at farebox recovery numbers, remember that the bloated bureaucracy, driver salaries and pensions have to be paid from that. Doubling the speed of the light rail would make it much more usable.

67 points by another 10y ago

I have zero evidence of this, but having witnessed Uber and Lyft spending over $8 million dollars trying to pass pro-ridesharing legislation here in Austin (which failed, thankfully), I can't help but wonder if these types of "Transit is Failing" stories might be their astroturfers/PR agencies at work. Think about it: as a ridesharing company, the more you convince people that public transit is in bad shape and getting worse everyday, the more they will clamor for your ridesharing service.

dkopi 10y ago
The real winner with anti-ridesharing legislation isn't public transport. It's car ownership. Uber doesn't let you avoid taking the bus/train. It lets you rely on public transport 95% of the time, and use ride sharing the rest of the time. Fighting uber/lyft means forcing people to own a car, and if they already own a car - they aren't going to be riding the bus.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  As I mentioned in my other comment, I'm not against Uber, Lyft or ridesharing in general. I'm against letting them self-regulate with regards to running background checks on their drivers. They have zero incentive to do so, because it makes hiring drivers more expensive and (more importantly) brings them closer to employee status, which would sink both companies.
mistermann 10y ago
> which failed, thankfully Why are you opposed to Uber & Lyft?
- cantankerous 10y ago
  OP implied he was opposed to the ride-sharing legislation and related initiatives. Not Uber and Lyft.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  I'm not opposed to Uber and Lyft. I'm opposed to letting them regulate themselves.

massysett 10y ago

In Washington DC it has taken over ten years of crashes, worker and passenger fatalities, and awful service for the press to start telling "Metro is failing" stories. Up until then the stories generally were positive.

rayiner 10y ago
I think Metros problems are relatively recent though. There were some crashes before (inevitable in a large transit system). But it's only in the last few years that service has totally gone off the rails.
saulrh 10y ago
Out of curiosity - per day or week: how many people ride the DC Metro, how many people die on the Metro, how many people drive, and how many people die driving? Metro services have the same issue as airlines in that a non-issue failure rate ends up reviled in the news because there's the same name attached to every single incident and everybody is completely failing to group up the alternatives to examine them. Bad service I can agree with - that's something that needs to be fixed. More money, supportive legislation that makes it easier for them to acquire capability, etcetera. But unless the Metro is killing someone literally every day I doubt its fatality rate approaches cars.
- acdha 10y ago
  It's definitely safer. The problem is that it was even better during the period where they skimped on maintenance and so part of what drives the reaction are the million people who remember when you never heard of things like this happening.
- massysett 10y ago
  Metro's problem is gross and chronic mismanagement. Not a single fatality or injury on Metro has been attributed to lack of money. So they do not need more money or legislation to make it easier for them to acquire anything. A common bogeyman among Metro apologists is "lack of dedicated funding," even though no one has shown any link between this lack of dedicated funding and any of the problems Metro is facing. The airlines are an excellent example of how regulation and safety consciousness can succeed in creating an extremely safe means of transportation. Causes of mishaps are tracked down and fixed. Meanwhile Metro kills people due to gross mismanagement. I do not think "more people die driving" is an excuse for gross mismanagement in a government agency.

orasis 10y ago

This is California specific. Don't bother reading if you thought the title was about larger scale trends.

dsr_ 10y ago
Please don't post any comments about how you live in Montana, then. In the meantime, I thought that it was not merely an interesting article about a particular newspaper in a particular place, but an interesting observation about how to lie with graphs and what interests newspapers really serve.
dang 10y ago
If it's interesting local commentary then it certainly has a place on HN.
rco8786 10y ago
This place is full of local commentary. News doesn't have to be global to qualify.
massysett 10y ago
I don't get the downvotes on this one. The article headline makes assertions about the press generally, and then discusses only California anecdotes. There is absolutely nothing in the article to support anything about a "media fixation on 'transit is failing' stories." More accurate would have been "why do a few California news sources have some stories asserting that some local California transit systems are failing?"

fucking_tragedy 10y ago

It plays into the "ridesharing is the future" narrative that pulls in the big bucks.

xkcd-sucks 10y ago
Don't forget the self-driving cars!

cptskippy 10y ago

Is it just me or does the type of chart used only make it harder to interpret things? Why not plot actual numbers for population and ridership on a chart instead of % change relative to 2001? It seems deceptive.

rchowe 10y ago

Public transit is a very visible part of government for people who live in cities that have it, and it's controversial because it's partially financed with taxpayer money whether you use it or not. I feel like especially in southern California, there are a lot of people in the suburbs who don't use public transit and who feel like the money spent on transit ("moving poor people around") should go to road projects instead which benefit them. I was recently in Miami, and my friend who lives there said to use Lyft instead of taking the bus or the metro, because "it's only used by poor people". I compare this to Boston, where people complain about MBTA crowds and management, but in general if you're near a subway stop you'll take the subway over Uber of Lyft (when it's running).

Aleman360 10y ago
You may be paying for it even if not using it, but you have to account for the environmental savings. But people care less about stuff that's harder to measure.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Remember that every bus full of 'poor people' is 10 or 12 cards not on the road. It already benefits everybody. As public transportation increases, so do road conditions for all. This is an example of a win-win situation.
- auxym 10y ago
  Only 12? Maybe at off-peak hours. In my city at peak hours, an articulated bus can have as many as ~70 people in it. At an average private vehicle occupancy of 1.67 [2] that's over 40 cars less on the road. People also need to realize that before bitching about cyclists. Would you really rather have one more car contributing to the traffic jam you're stuck in? [1] https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/Articulated_Buses/index.jsp https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/Artic... [2]http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf
tajen 10y ago
Likewise, bike users are tired of paying for either 12 feet lanes, the war that petrol-dependent citizen make in Irak, or their contribution to global warming.

Scoundreller 10y ago

I'm hoping the failure of transit leads into a 32-hour/4-day work week media fixation... Overnight 20% reduction in load = dramatically faster service and reduced congestion.

oceanplexian 10y ago
Plus basic income bitcoins as a service and uber, but for light rail. Am I right, guys?

strommen 10y ago

Maybe I need to take off my tin-foil hat - but I think this reads exactly as if somebody paid the newspaper to write a story about the "failure of mass transit", and the writers/editors snuck in this graph as a hidden message.

code_sloth 10y ago
I'm interpreting that chart as tracking the year on year percentage increase/decrease of the population and ridership. So the population has more or less been increasing year on year since 2005, with a near zero decline prior to that. The ridership has gone through a steep decrease which bottomed out at -35% in ~2005. Sure it's been decreasing less, but isn't it still decreasing? The ridership line is flat near the end, but isn't it still decreasing at more than 20% year on year? How else can the chart be read? How am I reading it wrong?
- strommen 10y ago
  The chart label of "% change since 2001" is pretty unclear, but based on the quote "ridership...has dropped a staggering 23 percent since 2001", it seems to mean "% difference from 2001", not "% change year-to-year, since 2001".

barney54 10y ago

I think the reason has to do with the perception that ridership should be rapidly increasing and it isn't. Population is up, urbanization, is up, but public transit isn't keeping pace. That's an interesting story because it is non-obvious. I don't think there much else to the media fixation than that.

TulliusCicero 10y ago
Building good rail transit infrastructure takes a pretty long time, and it's very expensive. You can also have good bus service, but having it competitive with driving usually requires bus-only lanes, and that's a difficult proposition in America. If you look at Seattle, for example, people there are desperate for new transit, and they want it done as soon as possible, but the timelines for the upcoming ST3 package have most of it taking upwards of a couple decades to complete. For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  For most Americans, getting around means driving, and other modes are seen as either impractical (walking), a toy (biking), or just for the poor (transit). It's a relatively difficult culture in which to improve alternative modes of transport. Self-driving cars will go a long way towards improving this. The focus needs to be on avoiding silly mistakes in the meantime, like sinking billions of dollars into new fixed-rail transit routes that will be obsolete the day they enter service.
  - akgerber 10y ago
    Self-driving cars may lead to marginal improvements in road throughput, but shared-vehicle transportation will always be able to move more people in the same amount of space. If a transit route has sufficient ridership to justify investing in rail, it is already going to be very congested at commuting hours, and will remain so after self-driving cars become common.

gaur 10y ago

Reminds me of Paul Graham's article about newspapers shilling for suit companies: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

kazinator 10y ago

People love to hate public transit, and will click on any headline that promises to fuel their sentiment. In particular, people who commute using single-occupancy vehicles are happy to read anything which externalizes and validates their views about the viability of transit.

sebgr 10y ago
This is very much an American thing to hate public transport though. Places in Europe, especially Switzerland for example, have much better infrastructure and taking a car can be a pain compared to a train which is faster and a lot more comfortable.
mbucc 10y ago
I don't hate it, but I do question if it is the best use of funds. The U.S. doesn't have the density required to support the transit systems we have built. Fare box revenue only covers 44% of operating costs in Boston; in Austin, the CMTA only covers 12.4%. And operating costs do not include the cost of capital, which must be massive [ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio]. -- Edit 's/costs do not cover/costs do not include/'
- extra88 10y ago
  Do gas taxes cover the costs of road repairs and all other government spending that benefits car owners? Hell, even parking isn't self-supporting, why should transit fares cover all operating costs?
  - mbucc 10y ago
    Wow, they sure don't. In fact, nationwide gas tax and tolls cover about 32% of highway costs. [http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pay-only-third-state-local-road-spending http://taxfoundation.org/article/gasoline-taxes-and-tolls-pa...] (But that just says to me our gas taxes should be higher. :)
chc 10y ago

mc32 10y ago

It may have to do with for example, the VTA expanding service (in miles of track) but the ridership not going up to match. Also, rail in places like the bay area, or even buses, just can't justify the opex given the relatively light ridership. Mass transit is rarely profitable (financially self sustaining) but many transit systems, given housing density and commercial/residential patterns, in the US, are woefully in deficits. Edit: To add, I mean this in terms of more than just the high density corridors and terminus to terminus lines. I mean if you live in Almaden Valley and want to get to East San Jose or you want to get to Milpitas. Or if you want to get from The Marina in SF to the Outer Sunset. Most SF transit is designed to pull people in and out of the old downtown core (even MUNI uses the terms "inbound" and outbound" which tell you a lot about the passenger flow they had in mind. There is no "ring" line or N-S LRVs in SF.

redditmigrant 10y ago
As someone who uses the Caltrain every week 3-4 times , I can say the ridership at commute times is very healthy. The housing prices in SF and the concentration of a decent number of large companies (AirBnB, Pinterest, Atlassian) in the SoMA area is probably the chief reason for this trend.
occamrazor 10y ago
Public transit has huge positive externalities in terms of reduced traffic. I think that in Europe on average tickets cover only 25% of expenses.
- mc32 10y ago
  It really depends. Many large metro systems in Asia do better than 100% farebox recovery. Europe hovers between 30 to 60%. In the US anything above 35% is pretty remarkable -and there are a few over 50% but not many. Most recover less than 30% from their boxfare. And that's mostly due to being too "diluted". You have lines in suburban-like areas who cannot sustain the lines via ridership. I'm a fan of public transit I love punctual, clean, timely, dependable mass transit, but I realize it may not be the best answer for agglomerations like we have in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the Bay area or Dallas-Ft Worth, TX.

throwaway_exer 10y ago

As a long-time rider, the VTA infrastructure is excellent, and the route coverage is good. It even has wifi. In the short-term, if buses left and arrived on time, that would be a helpful improvement. Longer-term, ride analysis from Clipper data could optimize routes and frequencies. When looking at farebox recovery numbers, remember that the bloated bureaucracy, driver salaries and pensions have to be paid from that. Doubling the speed of the light rail would make it much more usable.