ATI The Alliance for Traffic Improvement

Seeking cost effective ways to reduce traffic congestion on Oahu

Myth #3 — “Rail transit will reduce the numbers of cars on the road.”

The decennial U.S. Census shows that there is a continuing decline in the percentage of commuters using public transportation in virtually all U.S. cities — regardless of whether they have rail transit or not; public transportation commuting has declined from 12 percent in 1960 to 4.7 percent in 2000. In Honolulu the trend is the same.

All U.S. Census Data for journey-to-work, 1960-2000

Percent of Workers by Mode	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000
Private Vehicle	64.0	77.7	84.1	86.5	87.9
Public transportation	12.1	8.9	6.4	5.3	4.7
Walked	9.9	7.4	5.6	3.9	2.9
Other means	6.8	2.5	1.6	1.3	1.2
Worked at home	7.2	3.5	2.3	3.0	3.3

Just in the last ten years the 2000 Census data shows that the nation had 13 million more drivers than in 1990, and 2 thousand fewer commuters using public transportation. See Census details.

Secondly, even if the nation’s metro areas were able to halt this slide and maintain the same percentage of public transportation use, the growth in population and thus people driving to work would still totally overwhelm public transportation.

Let’s put this in Honolulu terms: Here 8 percent of our commuters used TheBus in 2000 and 70 percent drove their cars. Each future 10,000 increase in commuters will result in 800, or 8 percent, more bus or rail commuters and 7,000, or 70 percent, more drivers — and that is only if transit usage does not continue to decline.

Here’s some examples for individual metro areas for the past ten years: Washington DC had 35 thousand fewer commuters using public transportation in 2000 than in 1990, but had 317,000 more drivers; Portland: 22,000 more transit users and 173,000 more drivers. Denver: 17,000 more transit users and 248,000 more drivers.
Here’s the Census journey-to-work data for the top 49 metro areas.

The following table shows all the metro areas with rail sorted according to greatest increases in traffic congestion ("Change in hours lost") 1982-2002, together with their ranking. The last column shows the Increase/(Decrease) in the percentage of commuters using public transportation. Thus, for example, Honolulu in 1980 had 10 percent of its commuters using public transportation and that dropped to 8.3 percent in 2000, a decline of (17.0) percent.