JLF head John Hood’s column today is on the limits of transit. As he writes, most people prefer to go by car. A sample:
As Charlotte tries to figure out how to pay for additional passenger rail service, Raleigh decides whether to join with Durham and Chapel Hill to create passenger rail service, and Triad communities decide whether to decide to create passenger rail service, those who pay close attention to actual commuter behavior will be yawning.
You see, the vast majority of North Carolinians — and Americans — will never use rail or bus transit on a regular basis. Indeed, most of them have and will never set foot in a city bus or regional rail car. Mass transit is irrelevant to their lives, except as an expense on their tax bill or a distraction from building or expanding the roads they use to get to work, school, shopping, or other destinations.
That’s not to say that transit is useless, or that localities ought not to fund transit service. The point is that transit is primarily a program of public assistance, a means of providing mobility to people who either can’t afford personal vehicles or can’t operate them for some medical reason. Transit has some convenience users and even a few ideologically motivated users, but not many.
