The Center for Transportation Excellence
1640 19th Street, NW
Suite 2
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: (202) 234-7562
Fax: (202) 318-1429
info@cfte.org
www.cfte.org

Transit Benefits

Public transportation plays an integral role in improving our nation's prosperity, equity and mobility. An overview of the benefits provides a powerful rationale for investing in its future.Learn about how transit helps build strong communities, good health and a robust economy.

Economic Benefits

Americans travel over 40 billion miles on transit each year, reducing traffic congestion, creating livable communities and meeting the
need for basic mobility. While transit is funded at roughly $26 billion annually, its benefits far exceed its costs.

	Over 10 million Americans use transit for their daily work commute.
	Another 25 million people use transit less frequently, but on a regular basis.
	Transit projects provide an estimated 150 million annual transit trips.
	Without transit, the nation's $40 billion in annual traffic congestion losses would be $15 billion higher.

	Americans living in transit intensive metropolitan areas save $22 billion per year in transportation related expenses.
	The nation's 1,100 rural transit providers carry riders a billion miles each year.
	Transit providers employ over 250,000 people.
	Almost half of the nation's Fortune 500 companies, representing over $2 trillion in annual revenue, are headquartered in America's transit-intensive metropolitan areas.
	Low-income transit users value the mobility provided by transit to the tune of $23 billion per year

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Environmental Benefits

Public transportation saves energy and reduces pollution in America today -- and increased usage could have an even greater impact in the future. Americans today realize that transit is a key element in sound national energy and air quality policy.

• Public transportation helps promote cleaner air by reducing automobile use, which can exacerbate smog and public health problems. Each year, public transportation use avoids the emission of more than 126 million pounds of hydrocarbons, a primary cause of smog, and 156 million pounds of nitrogen oxides, which can cause respiratory disease.
• For each mile traveled, fewer pollutants are emitted by transit vehicles than by a single-passenger automobile. (Buses emit 80% less carbon monoxide than a car; rail, almost none.)
• According to the Sierra Club, 7 of the 12 cities with the highest grades for low car and truck smog per person (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento and Washington, DC) are located in the states that spend the most on clean transportation choices, demonstrating the power of public transit as a tool to combat air pollution.
• Public transportation can significantly reduce dependency on gasoline, reducing auto fuel consumption by 1.5 billion gallons annually. For example, a person who commutes 60 miles each way daily could save an estimated 1,888 gallons of gasoline every year by switching from using a car to using public transportation. Many U.S. transit systems are continuing to invest in compressed natural gas, low-sulfur burning buses or diesel-electric hybrid buses.

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Health Benefits

At a time of skyrocketing asthma, obesity and stress, more Americans are beginning to make the connection between public transportation and their health. Public transportation has the potential to reduce health threats for Americans by reducing polluting emissions, providing a safe alternative to automobile travel and contributing to a stress-free commute.

Increased availability and use of public transportation dramatically reduces motor vehicle emissions and improves air quality.

• Over 140 million Americans, 25 percent of whom are children, live, work and play in areas where air quality does not meet national standards. Harmful motor vehicle emissions account for between 25 and 51 percent of the air pollutants in these non-attainment areas. From 2000 to 2002, the number of recorded high-ozone days increased 18.5 percent.
• Compared with private vehicles, public transportation produces, on average, per passenger mile, 95 percent less carbon monoxide, 92 percent fewer volatile organic compounds, 45 percent less carbon dioxide and 48 percent less nitrogen oxide.
• During the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, expanded transportation services reduced morning peak auto use by 22.5 percent and reduced mobile source emissions. There was a 44.1 percent reduction in asthma-related medical visits among HMO enrollees.
• From 1980 through 1995, the asthma rate among children doubled from 2.3 million to 5.5 million, reaching epidemic proportions in the U.S. Air pollution is a primary cause.

Public transportation offers a safer alternative than personal vehicles:

• Public transportation trips result in 190,000 fewer deaths, injuries and accidents annually than trips by car, providing up to $5 billion in safety benefits, based on 1994 data.
• Riding the bus is 170 times safer than automobile travel, according to National Safety Council data.

Public transportation provides an opportunity to decrease stress and its negative impacts on our health:

• Studies indicate that less travel time, more predictability, enhanced control and less effort required to make a trip reduces the stress levels and negative health effects associated with driving.
• The average American driver may spend over 450 hours each year—equal to nearly 11 workweeks—behind the wheel. The result: a mounting level of frustration, stress, anger and hostility that causes illness, reduces productivity in the workplace and degrades the quality of life at home.
• The stress of driving in congested conditions is linked directly to a long list of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, suppressed immune system functioning and strokes as well as more headaches, colds and flu.

As obesity rates rise alarmingly, public transportation encourages people to get out of their cars and adopt more active lifestyles:

• Transit-friendly, walkable communities reduce reliance on motor vehicles and promote higher levels of physical activity. These more traditional urban settings may generate half the automobile trips of similarly sized modern-day suburbs. Studies show that a single mile of transit travel can substitute for five to seven miles of auto travel in such settings.
• Nearly 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight; 30 percent are obese. Obesity makes people susceptible to illnesses and chronic health conditions, leading to less productive and less enjoyable lifestyles and increased healthcare costs. Obesity leads to 300,000 deaths a year, and direct healthcare costs of obesity and physical inactivity were estimated to exceed $117 billion in 2000. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that obesity may soon result in as much preventable disease and death in the U.S. as smoking.
• Obesity and declining physical fitness can be associated with inactive, sedentary, auto-dependent lifestyles. In sprawling urban and suburban areas where few travel options are available, cars are now used for 80 percent of trips less than one mile in length.
  

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Community Benefits

Public transportation fosters more livable communities by creating corridors that become natural focal points for economic and social activities. These activities help create strong neighborhood centers that are more economically stable, safe and productive.

• Studies have shown that the ability to travel in an area conveniently, without a car, is an important component of a community's livability.
• For example, Salt Lake City's new TRAX system has achieved nearly 20,000 daily riders since 1999 (41% of whom are new to transit), thereby helping to revitalize the downtown area by attracting new businesses, a community center, ice-skating rink and amphitheater.

Transit helps build strong communities by boosting real estate values and economic development:

• Public transportation fuels local development and in turn has a positive impact on local property values. Studies have shown greater increases in the value of properties located
  near public transportation systems than in similar properties not located near public transportation.
• A transit coalition report, "Dollars & Sense: The Economic Case for Public Transportation in America," found that every dollar taxpayers invest in public transportation generates $6 or more in economic returns.
• Every $10 million in capital investment in public transportation yields $30 million in increased sales.

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Social Justice Benefits

Public transportation enhances equity in American society by creating jobs, getting people to work and providing quality transportation access for low-income individuals and minority communities:

• In addition to the 350,000 people directly employed by public transportation systems, thousands of others are employed in related support services (i.e., engineering, manufacturing, construction, retail, etc.).For every $10 million invested in capital projects for public transportation, more than 300 jobs are created and a $30 million gain in sales for business is realized.
• Public transportation is key to moving former welfare recipients into the workforce as permanent wage earners. An estimated 94% of welfare recipients attempting to move into the workforce do not own cars and rely on public transportation.
• The current federal "Access To Jobs" initiative provides grants to transit service providers to help low-income residents get to work by providing transportation choices.
• Transportation policies that encourage personal automobile travel have an inequitable effect on the finances of minority and low-income individuals with those in the lowest fifth of income earners spending 36% of their household budget on transportation compared with those in the highest fifth income spending 14%.
• The vast majority of Americans rely on cars to meet their transportation needs, but minorities are less likely to own a car. Only 7% of white households own no cars whereas 24% of African American households, 17% of Latino Households, and 13% of Asian households own no cars. In urban areas, African Americans and Latinos comprise 54% of public transportation users.

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Other Benefits

Public transit enhances mobility during emergencies:

• On September 11, 2001, the New York-New Jersey Port Authority transit systems moved people safely away from the World Trade Center disaster.
• Public transportation systems have operated around the clock to transport firefighters to the sites of wildfires; to evacuate nursing homes and hospitals; to move people to safety during storms; and to bring out-of-town police and rescue workers from airports.

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