This document discusses the growth of public transit use in recent decades in cities around the world. It notes that while public transit has helped reduce congestion, pollution, and costs, there are still 5 major reasons that prevent it from being more widely adopted. These reasons are: 1) continued expansion of roads, 2) fast growth of the car market, 3) low costs and lack of restrictions for private car use, 4) low accessibility of public transit in some areas, and 5) hidden costs of negative externalities from car use. The document argues that in order to further increase public transit ridership, cities need to address these challenges.

1. 5 Reasons to Ride a Car
Millions of people use their own cars to move every day. By
this we make a lot of pollution, thousands of accidents and
suffering pernicious traffic in a costly way. Today, rate of
motorization and level of vehicle ownership is growing
rapidly. On the other hand when it comes to transit, during
recent decades most of cities have planned for development
of public transit. Today, transit use in cities is much, much
higher than it was in 3 decades ago. “Many developed
countries, including the United States and Canada, have
experienced significant growth in mass transit throughout the
past few decades – in the U.S., public transport ridership
increased by 34% from 1995 to 2012”.
“The American Public Transportation Association (APTA)
reported that public transportation use in the United States in
2013 rose to 10.7 billion trips – the highest number in 57
years. The highest U.S. public transit ridership number in
history was 23.5 billion trips in 1946, a decade when many
Americans did not own a car”.
Also “Nearly 57 billion local public transport journeys were
made in the European Union in 2012. There are
approximately 182 million journeys being made on an
average working day in the bloc”.

2. “In emerging economies, rapid urbanization is leading to
unprecedented private motorization, but there’s a growing
recognition that investing in urban public transport can help
mitigate the negative impacts of motorization”.

3. In spite of this good knew we have already those problems
according to use private cars. Although public transit has
known as only solution to decrease congestion, air pollution
and save money but there are 5 great reasons that prevent
more achievements by public transit.
1) Roads expansion
By many reasons still roads are expanding in most cities.
Population growth, demand increase and car manufactures
lobby leading authorities to invest more on new roads. In

4. addition there are many evidences that improving roads
leading our cities to more traffic congestion. A research at
1995 by Hansen and Huang shows that there are links
between freeway investment and traffic increases. It means
spend more money on road expanding will increase Vehicle
Miles Traveled. So the best solution is to refuse to increase
highway capacity because it seems to be as an invitation for
private cars. They spent many years of planning and building
new lanes and freeways and all it did was cause real
congestion during the construction and the traffic is exactly
the same now if not worse. Motor car commuting is an
irrational and unsustainable choice, scarce resources should
not be allocated to it and the true cost of such commuting
should be charged to the commuters.
2) Car market growing fast
In spite of global economy recession, rising fuel prices and
growing environmental concerns, the automobile industry
analysis shows an annual growth of 4.9% by 2009-14. In 2012,
a total of 84.1 million cars and commercial vehicles were built
worldwide, led by China, with about 19.3 million motor
vehicles manufactured, followed by the United States with
10.3 million, and Japan with 9.9 million. Likewise, industry
competition is considered high, as leading manufacturers
battle for market share and customer loyalty. High

5. competition leads market to be attractive and beneficial for
costumers.
Furthermore the statistics shows that rate of car ownership
have continuously increased. Global vehicle ownership per
capita in 2010 was 148 vehicles in operation per 1000 people.
In 2009 Vehicle ownership per capita in the U.S. is also the
highest in the world with 828 vehicles in operation per 1000
people. China has by 2007 the highest growth rate of vehicle
ownership, 10.6% annually. For the non-OECD countries,
previous researches show much faster rates of growth:
vehicle ownership growth of about 3.5% annually, and total
vehicles growth of 6.5% annually. In countries like India the
average level of ownership of cars is expected to grow
exponentially (35 per 1,000 in 2025 in compare with 13 in
2013).
Comparison of motorization rates by region
1999 and 2009
(vehicles per 1000 people)
Country/Region 1999 2009
Africa 20.9 24.9
Asia, Far East 39.1 157.7
Asia, Middle East 66.2 101.2
Canada 560 620.9

6. Central and South America 133.6 169.7
Europe, East 370 363.9
Europe, West 528.8 583.3
Pacific 513.9 560.9
United States 790 828
3) Low cost, No restrictions for private cars
Another grant for car is cost. The capital cost of a car is large,
but the running costs relatively low when compared with
public transport. Although in most of cities car owners pay for
fuel, parking, annual fees and etc, but according to some
additional variables such as subsidized policies they still aren’t
paying the true costs of motoring. This would make you think
more about each journey, and use PT only when no viable
options exist. Although in recent years most of cities have
applied for implementing a new road diet to restrict cars by
increasing cost of private cars like taxes, higher parking rates,
tolls, HOV lanes and many other limitations, but still car is
more attractive than using public transit because car is more
comfortable, lower time to access destination and a price with
low Elasticity of demand even with suffering congestion.
4) Low accessibility of public transit
Inaccessibility is isolating, it restricts commuters and lead
them to use private cars. Low accessibility neighborhoods

7. tend to be ones where people also can commute by car. The
cheap neighborhoods in any city are often the ones that make
it hard to hop onto a train or bus, while an expensive
apartment is centrally located and a short walk from a subway
station. In some cases it's the challenge getting people to
public transit. In spite of huge amount of money we need to
develop public transit infrastructures, making more
accessibility is crucial for public transit to cover more and
more places in each city.
5) Car negative externalities are hidden
The existence of car externalities creates a divergence
between private and social costs. When negative externalities
exist, social costs exceed private cost. Congestion, carbon
emission and traffic accidents are some of negative impacts
and externalities of using cars instead of public transit. They
affect people not directly involved. In fact the people who
drive less or not at all are subsidizing some of the costs for
those that drives more. Because driver doesn’t pay the true
costs of his driving, he drives too much and get more subsidy
from those doesn’t use a car. It’s not fare and is a big
governmental grant against public transit users.
Majid Babaie, February 7, 2015

8. http://www.uitp.org/
http://www.apta.com/
http://thecityfix.com/
http://wikipedia.org
http://www.ibisworld.com/
http://tutor2u.net/
http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/