Public Leadership
40 JOURNAL FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATORS, 10(1), SUMMER 2010
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Public Transportation Ridership Levels
Christopher R. Swimmer and Christopher C. Klein 1 Abstract This article uses linear regression analysis to examine the determinants of public transportation ridership in over 100 U. S. cities in 2007. The primary determinant of ridership appears to be availability of public transportation service. In fact, the relationship is nearly one to one: a 1% increase in availability is associated with a 1% increase in ridership. The relative unimportance of price may be an indicator of the heavy subsidization of fares in most cities, leaving availability as the more effective policy tool to encourage use of public transport. Key Words: identification, public transportation, ridership. JEL Classifications: A22, C81, H42 Introduction What makes one city more apt to use public transportation relative to another? This is an important issue that has been studied by others in various ways. Glaeser et al. (2008), find that the availability of public transportation is a major explanatory factor in urban poverty. Glaeser and Shapiro find evidence that car cities, where a large percentage of people drive themselves to work, grew at the expense of public transportation cities as the percentage of cities’ population taking public transportation declined between 1980 and 2000. Murray et al. (1998), conclude that the performance of a public transport system is determined largely by the proximity of public transport stops to the regional population. Initially, the data were gathered for the top 136 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. using the raw number of unlinked trips on public transportation as the measure of ridership. Due to the wide variation in population and ridership across cities, the per-capita unlinked trips were calculated for use as the dependent variable. Missing values reduced the number of observations to 105. The regression analysis utilizes
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Public Transportation Ridership Levels
Christopher R. Swimmer and Christopher C. Klein 1 Abstract This article uses linear regression analysis to examine the determinants of public transportation ridership in over 100 U. S. cities in 2007. The primary determinant of ridership appears to be availability of public transportation service. In fact, the relationship is nearly one to one: a 1% increase in availability is associated with a 1% increase in ridership. The relative unimportance of price may be an indicator of the heavy subsidization of fares in most cities, leaving availability as the more effective policy tool to encourage use of public transport. Key Words: identification, public transportation, ridership. JEL Classifications: A22, C81, H42 Introduction What makes one city more apt to use public transportation relative to another? This is an important issue that has been studied by others in various ways. Glaeser et al. (2008), find that the availability of public transportation is a major explanatory factor in urban poverty. Glaeser and Shapiro find evidence that car cities, where a large percentage of people drive themselves to work, grew at the expense of public transportation cities as the percentage of cities’ population taking public transportation declined between 1980 and 2000. Murray et al. (1998), conclude that the performance of a public transport system is determined largely by the proximity of public transport stops to the regional population. Initially, the data were gathered for the top 136 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. using the raw number of unlinked trips on public transportation as the measure of ridership. Due to the wide variation in population and ridership across cities, the per-capita unlinked trips were calculated for use as the dependent variable. Missing values reduced the number of observations to 105. The regression analysis utilizes