Why Public Transportation Sucks in the US — Transcript

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4. 0:10This is Indiana, and this is Scotland.
5. 0:13Both have a similar number of inhabitants, a similar size, and a similar population density.
6. 0:18But here’s Indiana’s public transportation system, and here’s Scotland’s.
7. 0:22You want to get to Cupar, a town of 9,000 30 miles from the capital?
8. 0:26That’ll take you 55 minutes on a train that leaves every 30 minutes or an hour and 40
9. 0:30minutes on a bus that leaves every 40.
10. 0:33You want to get to Anderson, a town of 50,000 30 miles from Indiana’s capital?
11. 0:37Well, you’re out of luck.
12. 0:38The only option is the car.
13. 0:40Antiquated technology, safety concerns, crumbling infrastructure, and nonexistence—it’s
14. 0:45not hard to argue that the US public transportation network is just not good.
15. 0:50Vast swaths of the US have no option but to drive because the alternative just is not
16. 0:56there.
17. 0:57This has consequences on the environment, on economic mobility, on where people live,
18. 1:01the consequences of America’s lack of solid public transportation almost defines American
19. 1:06culture.
20. 1:07But it wasn’t always like this.
21. 1:09The United States once had the best public transportation system in the world.
22. 1:14It was a the admiration of countries worldwide and an essential factor allowing for the successful
23. 1:19western expansion of the country.
24. 1:21It all started with this—the horsecar.
25. 1:24Now, there were urban transportation systems before these horse drawn trams came along,
26. 1:28but they weren't cheap and they weren’t fast.
27. 1:31Roads generally weren’t paved and there just wasn’t the economic demand for high
28. 1:35frequency service because these carriages were rarely faster than walking.
29. 1:39But on rails, these horsecars were fast and one horse could pull a full load of passengers
30. 1:44thanks to the rails.
31. 1:45In its heyday, there were over 6,000 miles of horsecar lines in the US.
32. 1:50In comparison, the combined mileage of every tram, subway, light rail, and commuter rail
33. 1:55system in the US nowadays is 5,416.
34. 1:58In 1880, 50 million people lived in the US.
35. 2:03Today, over 320 million.
36. 2:06Around the turn of the century, many of those horsecar systems were electrified.
37. 2:10There were then 11,000 miles of streetcar track nationwide.
38. 2:14The systems were absolutely everywhere.
39. 2:16Even tiny towns like Bangor, Maine and Berlin, New Hampshire had streetcars.
40. 2:21So what happened?
41. 2:22How did the US go from having 11,000 miles of streetcar to 200?
42. 2:27How did the US go from having solid public transportation in towns big and small across
43. 2:32the country to how it is today?
44. 2:34The decline of the streetcar began just after the turn of the century.
45. 2:38That was when the automobile came around.
46. 2:40By 1920, the car was starting to get to an attainable price-point for the everyday individual.
47. 2:45That was the real threat for the streetcar—not cars, but economical cars.
48. 2:50The streetcar received another blow in 1929—the great depression.
49. 2:55There were fewer people with jobs which meant fewer people who needed to commute and fewer
50. 2:58people who had the money to pay for transport so many lines were just not profitable anymore
51. 3:04and closed.
52. 3:05But then the streetcar received a stay of execution—World War Two.
53. 3:09You see, during World War Two, the US had the lowest unemployment rate in history—as
54. 3:15low as 1.2%.
55. 3:17There were tons of factory jobs to support the war so practically everyone who wanted
56. 3:21a job had a job.
57. 3:23That meant there were tons more people now going to and from work, and, even better for
58. 3:27the streetcar, there were rations going on on rubber and gas which diminished the popularity
59. 3:32of the car.
60. 3:33But something else was going on through all of that.
61. 3:36Something more sinister.
62. 3:37Sometime in the 1920s, automobile technology became advanced enough that the bus became
63. 3:41cheaper to operate than the streetcar.
64. 3:44Streetcars cost very little to power, but they do require a lot of infrastructure from
65. 3:48overhead lines to track.
66. 3:50Buses were more flexible and required almost no infrastructure.
67. 3:54And the bus had some powerful friends, the automobile companies, or more specifically,
68. 3:59General Motors.
69. 4:00General Motors went and bought dozens of small streetcar companies across the nation and
70. 4:04turned them into bus companies.
71. 4:06They removed hundreds of miles of track across the US and supported other companies doing
72. 4:11the same, but its not like they didn’t have a good reason to do this.
73. 4:14These streetcars were not economically advantageous.
74. 4:17Buses were faster, cheaper, and at the time, they were the modern and fresh transportation
75. 4:22method that the public wanted.
76. 4:24Nearly every streetcar system nationwide was replaced with a bus system.
77. 4:28In addition, the streetcar companies were almost all commercial so if and when they
78. 4:32failed, many local governments set up public, subsidized bus companies.
79. 4:36So that’s how transportation got bad, but why did it stay bad?
80. 4:41Well, mostly because of the car.
81. 4:43America is the country of the car.
82. 4:45It grew up as the car grew up and so its cities were built for cars.
83. 4:49Think Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angeles—you can’t survive in these cities without a car.
84. 4:54Remember, the United States is centered around the idea of personal freedom.
85. 4:59With a car, you can go anywhere at anytime, so politically, cars have historically been
86. 5:04associated with the idea of personal freedom.
87. 5:07Just like the Republican party votes to have strong national defense, allow gun ownership,
88. 5:11and preserve small government in order to promote personal freedom, they have always
89. 5:15worked to promote the usage and ownership of cars.
90. 5:18This means they often voted in favor of subsidies helping the auto industry, most often in the
91. 5:23form of indirect subsidies lowering the cost of gas.
92. 5:26Now, that was fine when cities were small, highways were new, gas was cheap, and climate
93. 5:31change wasn’t even a concept, but that’s not the case anymore.
94. 5:35Cities are just of a size where they literally cannot support their entire population driving.
95. 5:40You can’t fit more road infrastructure in many cites, but you can fit more public transportation.
96. 5:46Cars were available to the common American much earlier than the common European, so
97. 5:50the US set road policies early that allowed for large, smooth, well-functioning roads.
98. 5:56While the US was building its magnificent roads, Europe was building their public transportation
99. 6:02systems.
100. 6:03The high car usage in the US even has to do with zoning.
101. 6:06You see, European cities tend to have less strict zoning laws which allow for businesses
102. 6:10and housing to intermingle.
103. 6:12The US zones its cities much more strictly.
104. 6:16Houses are next to houses and businesses are next to businesses which means that the distances
105. 6:20between houses and shops in the US is much greater.
106. 6:23Therefore, Americans have to go further more often.
107. 6:27The most demonstrative fact is how the two places approach parking.
108. 6:31In the US, zoning laws specify a minimum number of parking spaces per building.
109. 6:36In Europe, the laws specify a maximum number of parking spaces.
110. 6:40The three cities with the three lowest car-ownership rates in the US all have something in common.
111. 6:45Boston, New York, and DC, are all old, rather compact cities with decent public transportation
112. 6:51systems.
113. 6:52Since they were cities before the car, they’re built much more like the European cities that
114. 6:57have such good public transportation systems today.
115. 7:00Simplified, public transportation gets worse as you go further west since western cities
116. 7:05are newer.
117. 7:06But here’s the most important sentence of this entire video: access to transportation
118. 7:11is the single most important factor in an individual’s ability to escape poverty.
119. 7:16That is not a subjective claim, that is a fact that emerged from a Harvard study.
120. 7:21Someone who lives right by a subway stop is astronomically more likely to find a high-paying
121. 7:26job than someone who doesn’t have a way to get around.
122. 7:30Individuals in poverty generally live in poor neighborhoods with few job opportunities,
123. 7:34but with reliable, accessible, and inexpensive public transportation these individuals can
124. 7:40get all across their city to where the jobs are.
125. 7:43So, a good way to evaluate the effectiveness of a public transportation system is by how
126. 7:48well it serves the poor.
127. 7:49DC, for example, does a good job of this.
128. 7:52The poorest neighborhoods have the greatest proportion of their residents within a 10-minute
129. 7:56walk of a metro station while the richest neighborhoods have the smallest proportion.
130. 8:01Hand-in-hand with their move back into the cities, millennials are shunning cars.
131. 8:06Car ownership among young people is at historic lows and the urban youth is relying more and
132. 8:11more on public transport.
133. 8:13Some cities like, Portland, Kansas City, Detroit, and DC are turning back to streetcars.
134. 8:18Done right, streetcars can drive huge increases in economic development.
135. 8:22They’re more of a symbol of modernization that entices residents, developers, and businesses
136. 8:28to areas.
137. 8:29Portland, for example, has had an estimated $5 billion in extra economic development thanks
138. 8:36to its streetcar.
139. 8:37New streetcar systems are being built all across the US in cities like Milwaukee and
140. 8:41Oklahoma city since they’re finally making money again—not from their fares, but from
141. 8:46the jobs brought by their existence.
142. 8:49People didn’t want them a century ago, but streetcars finally make sense again.
143. 8:53Public transportation is instrumentally important to the success of cities.
144. 8:57You can almost be sure that a good city will have good public transportation and a bad
145. 9:02city will have bad public transportation.
146. 9:04Public transportation increases economic mobility, decreases carbon footprints, and increases
147. 9:10economic development so the only question is, why not build more of it?
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