3 Approaches to Transit That Didn't Break the Bank

(Source: Unsplash/Ant Rozetsky.)

“The U.S. continually breaks its own records for most expensive track miles on Earth,” a Vice article from last year observed. When New York City’s Second Avenue subway was constructed, costs mounted to $340 million per mile, then a world record. The nearby Gateway Project amounts to about $1.55 billion per mile.

Recently, the Pacific Northwest swept headlines as local lawmakers demanded $200 million to plan a “bullet train” in the region. The full price tag of planning—not constructing—came out to nearly $350 million. As a rule, it appears that building transit in this country is exponentially more expensive than anywhere else in the world. 

These expenses and the limited funding streams available can be discouraging for anyone eager to see non-auto-oriented connections in their city. At the same time, fostering a marginally better transit experience shouldn’t be entirely reliant on a burst of federal funding. In fact, sometimes influxes of cash earmarked for transit fail to address the issues transit users find most relevant to their commute. Furthermore, existing and prospective transit users shouldn’t have to wait years—if not decades—for something, anything, to change.

In the Strong Towns Approach, the first step is to look where people are struggling. The second is to do the next smallest step to alleviate that struggle. What does a Strong Towns approach look like when it comes to public transit?

A bus bench built by grassroots organization Abundance Denton. (Source: Twitter/@AbudnanceDenton.)

1. Benches at Bus Stops

Less than a year ago, Denton, Texas, resident Kristine Bray came across a video of the Chattanooga Urbanist Society installing benches at bus stops on TikTok, and thought, “This is really neat. I'd like to see this happen here.” A few months later, she founded Abundance Denton, and soon after that at daybreak, Bray and roughly a dozen Dentonites dropped benches by the city’s bus stops.

The benches were fashioned out of recycled pallets and assembled in the course of a weekend. More importantly, they were clearly a hit. The benches—decorated with a system map and route-specific details—humanize waits for the bus in a system Abundance identifies as neglected and emaciated. 

While Abundance received a finger wag for their unsanctioned efforts, their city ultimately applauded the initiative and has, in some places, installed permanent seating while allowing Abundance to keep their pallet benches in others. “This is good. You can’t do it, but we like it. We won’t remove the benches, but you can’t do this again,” Bray recalled being told.

2. Transit to Work Day

Sometimes a barrier to transit can be as simple as unfamiliarity. Exposing people to transit by joining them aboard could assuage whatever anxieties or associations that have inhibited it from being an option in the past. In 2019, a DC lawmaker wanted to challenge commuters to opt for transit by dedicating a Monday in February “Take The Bus To Work Day.”

“Our goal is not only to achieve increased bus ridership Monday,” the Councilmember who spearheaded the idea said, “but to see a sustainable, long-term upward trajectory in ridership trends.”

Encouraging transit doesn’t need to be a citywide initiative; workplaces, student groups, church groups, and so on can coordinate trips. And if community bike rides serve as any indicator, those who participate might choose a bus more readily next time they have the opportunity.

3. Focus On What Users Need

While the above advice is targeted more toward the average resident, there are small steps transit agencies and the professionals in their periphery can take, too. Jarrett Walker of Human Transit emerged from consulting IndyGo, Indianapolis’ bus rapid transit network, with several lessons for cities looking to ameliorate their networks without breaking the bank.

One of the first is: focus on frequency.

For those questioning how vital frequency is to a transit user, Walker offers a compelling analogy, paraphrased below: 

Imagine there's a gate at the foot of your driveway. That gate only opens once every half hour for about 20 seconds, and you have no control over it. Infuriated yet? 

This is the experience of daily bus riders in most U.S. cities, compounded by the hellish experience of trying to make a transfer between two lines that run every 30 or 60 minutes.

For Walker, concentrating on decreasing headways—say from 15 minutes to eight between buses—on a handful of routes with existing demand can produce the biggest impact on ridership. Multiple routes with reduced wait times can evolve a system into a coherent network. Increased frequency also keeps the service usable should any disruptions arise. “If a vehicle breaks down or is late, frequency means another will be along soon,” Walker wrote in his Transit Ridership Recipe.

Overall, we shouldn’t wait on sporadic infusions of cash to make improvements to our transit systems. Transit expert Jerome Horne, formerly of IndyGo like Walker, has ideas on what small steps could be taken that would make a big difference.

Jerome Horne.

Join him in conversation with Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn on November 2, 2023, as part of this year’s Local-Motive Tour. You can purchase a one-way ticket or take a roundtrip ride, aboard which you will learn how to change a stroad into a street; how to fight a freeway; how to define, refine, and distribute your story; and more.

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