How to Get People on Transit

One strange thing which I do not believe should be overlooked is transit cleanliness. It may not stop people from taking transit, but clean transit overall can be a good pull factor for people who normally take cars. I have noticed that dirty vehicles and stations tend to make people think twice before using a particular service. It can really affect stations in particular, which are often used like malls to help generate revenue to run services. When stations are dirty, few will travel there to visit shops unless they are actively using the transit service. Maybe a video about this would be interesting?

What I've learnt is that the public won't take the first step on taking public transport, transit agencies have to take the first step by providing a clean, fast, reliable, frequent, convenient, cheap and safe service will make the public start using it.

I think stuff like station lockers are pretty underrated. They seem only useful for tourists, but I think many locals could be convinced to leave their car at home or ditch it altogether if you could leave stuff at most stations.

The biggest upswing EVER (excluding world wars) for Oslo's tram was their at the time counter-intuitive large increase in service called the "Rolling Sidewalk" project. ALL central and semi-central lines were to have service at most every 10 minutes. Including the ones with dwindling ridership. The effect was that people simply stopped looking at the time table. You just strolled over to the stop at your leisure, because one would show up in a few minutes anyways. This decreased the perceived hassle and lead to a MASSIVE increase in total ridership across all parts of the system.

At the end of the day, if city planners and politicians look at transit as an asset for cities and not a checklist band-aid solution, great transit is possible just about anywhere. And great transit will get people to ride every single time.

An effective system is the connectivity of Miami's Metrorail and Metromover with the commuter Tri-Rail. They got people to ride trains when there was highway construction in the 1980s, so Tri-Rail was meant to be a temporary solution to still get people to and from work. Because it proved to be such a popular service, they made the service permanent. They changed the livery from GO colors to blue skies and palm trees which I love and it's one of my favorite liveries of all-time, up there with the New Mexico Rail Runner. And purchased more rolling stock from Hyundai Rotem, as well as renovating coaches so they can be bike cars, furthering reach with making it great for cyclists. The Metromover is a free people mover system with three loops and because of it, so much development has popped up downtown thanks to its connectivity to the Metrorail. The Metrorail first opened in 1984 as a park and ride system with parking garages outside downtown but now, transit-oriented development has popped up by stations like by Brownsville and Historic Overtown/Lyric Theatre stations.

From my experience in Philadelphia, people who choose not to use SEPTA cite how dirty it is and unlawful behaviors (assaults, smoking on trains, drug use) as reasons why they avoid using transit. They're not completely off base, it can be gross and very sketchy. Even if statistically there's a low likelihood they'll be a victim, the mere terrible reputation of the system leads many people to Uber or drive to places they could much more easily use transit. The buses seem to have a better reputation though. Until the issues are lessened, I just can't see people who have the means using transit as much as driving or ride services. Philly isnt NYC so you can get a ride so its just not attractive enough for a lot of people.

As a Calgarian, I would say the number one barrier to people I know ditching the car and sticking with transit is service shutdowns. Transit in this city SHUTS DOWN in the wee hours of the morning. On weekends it's even worse. One can't even make it to midnight before transit shuts down. Whether it's a kid trying to make it home from their McJob, or a temporary foreign worker trying to get back and forth from that late night restaurant, transit has NO SOLUTION FOR YOU. Having to hire Ubers after every shift doesn't make transit an affordable option. It forces folks into cars, even when they don't want to.

The World Cup and Olympics are going to be logistics nightmares. They're expecting people from around the world to rent a car at the airport and drive to their hotels, drive to bars, and drive to sport venues. People are going to be pissed. At least the few FIFA games in Vancouver will be enjoyable.

Safety and cleanliness are important factors. I love taking transit in Asia. In Singapore, you get fined for just eating in trains, no questions asked. No wonder then that their public transit is so spotlessly clean. The people then feel like actually using public transit. Compare that to North America 🙄. You want people who actually fund public transit with their taxes(middle class and the rich) to use it? Then make it safe and clean. If you want North American transit system to remain a free for all Lord of the Flies type setting, then yes we will rather drive our cars.

Can you please make a video on NJ transit. Its the most developed train sysytem in all of North America. Its very busy. Most of it is electrified. It also has high ridership.

the „make cars slower“ take is…debatable. it just means that transit gets relatively more attractive, not absolutely. Making drivers more frustrated is a great way to make them vote for politicians who favor cars. I got rid of my car because I didn’t need to take it anymore, not because I got fed up with driving. If you need to take away road space to put great transit in its place, sure! But otherwise it’s just a net worsening.

Your transit system is doing something wrong if they need to make driving more expensive to get people out of their cars. That won't work very well, most people won't stop driving because it's more expensive. It might get them to drive less. Building a fast, frequent, reliable, safe. and clean transit system is what will get people to give up their cars!

You left out a major point-- security. I've personally been on transit where I've witnessed sexual harassment and drug use. Transit agencies need a security system in place to kick off unruly passengers. If people's experience on public transit is not pleasant, they will not use it.

In LA the number one issue preventing people from using transit is safety and security (real or perceived). If you follow the r/losangeles subreddit posters almost always advise against transit due to the "condition" of the system, even if it's convenient for where the need to go.

The exclusion of transit is, in the United States, very deliberate a number of times. For example, for sports stadia, the parking revenue is significant. There are also other reasons to keep "undesirables" away from certain areas.

2:51 Minor point, but the bad decision was not putting the stadium near transit, it was to not build core transit lines near the stadium (and the nearby Clippers arena). There were very few options for a NFL stadium site in the downtown LA area, there's not much they could do to get that kind of footprint in any realistic way, especially after the Staples Center plan went up in smoke. 10:38 Virginia Railway Express ran an interesting experiment this summer, making all fares on Fridays free. I tried it once at the end of the season, I noticed that there were a lot of families using the train for day trips up to DC on a day when people in the area traditionally take off and ridership is very low. The trains I was on were actually quite full both going into and out of DC, when they ordinarily wouldn't be. This might be something other commuter rail lines should look at doing, as it exposed a lot of people to the convenience of using VRE when they might not ordinarily have used it.

Please start talking about DART in the Dallas/ Fort Worth metroplex. Nobody has ever talked about DART but Dart has for light rail lines with direct connection to the DFW airport, one commuter train from Dallas, to Ft Worth, a train that takes you from DFW airport to Fort Worth and another train that takes you from Dallas to Denton via the A Train. Dallas is also building the sliver line. from Plano to DFW airport with cross connections within the current system.

Great video of all the tradeoffs which drive ridership. Seattle is a great example: Ballparks are all accessible via transit and Sound Transit and Metro are making sure to add capacity at major events to get people to and from those events efficiently, Kraken games even include the transit fare! This gets a lot of car owners to give transit a try! Yes, passing King St Station makes the 2nd downtown tunnel less attractive. Even better would be to run more lines through the existing downtown tunnel. It would double the frequency of transit service downtown and make for far simpler/faster transfers. Instead of building a 2nd tunnel right next to the existing tunnel, Seattle should rather build a tunnel farther to the east of downtown to serve for example the big hospitals on First Hill and Seattle University. That would increase coverage instead of complexity and therefore ridership.

My keys: 1) Allow bikes to be stored on transit 2) Have stations with short walk distances 3) Allow skyscrapers to be built by stations (99% of urban areas prohibit skyscrapers) 4) Fund transit with property taxes and not fares, to simplify station design 5) All stations should connect to bike paths 6) Provide good frequency & speed 7) Connect transit to airports 8) Arrest people who harass others on transit 9) Prohibit low-density developments near stations 10) Provide late-night/early morning services