K
Klaus Philipsen
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- Thread Author
- #1
Transit in Crisis
Mass transit has always been an afterthought in the US. Sprawling, low-density American land use patterns which replaced the old streetcar villages never allowed it to be efficient. With some short exceptions, such as the development of streetcar villages at the in the early 20th century or the brief period following the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964, as well as the 1991 ISTEA legislation, policies have set on the automobile as the American way of getting around.
However, right now, as cities with and without transit are facing economic trouble the death of transit
has has become a real possibility not only for rural parts of the U.S. Post-pandemic and in the current political climate, transit agencies suffer from the multi-pronged pressures of deferred maintenance, lack of funding and operators, and structural changes in mobility and technology, all at once:
If stagnation is a harbinger of a new age to dawn, the slow pace of expansion of rail service would indicate that a new future isn't far off. Cities throughout the United States opened very little transit in 2024, adding just 29 kilometers (18 miles) of light rail and no new metro rail service (The Transport Politic).
The special role of the U.S.
Public transit in the U.S. trails behind other wealthy countries. .Even the often-evoked glory days of urban streetcars were much less glorious than nostalgia suggests. Mostly privately run, these streetcars were initially tools of the real estate industry to reach developable lands outside core cities. While ubiquitous, the streetcars were neglected as soon as the automobile made the suburbs even more accessible, finally withering away in the 1950s. Since then, even large cities without any real transit have become a a reality in the U.S. Arlington,Texas, is America's largest city without any mass transit. The New York Times titled a recent article "Life Without Transit?". Arlington and about a dozen other cities with a population over 100,000 are astounding examples of cities without a network of buses, trams, or metro, and without a viable alternative to driving. Nationwide 48% of all US residents have no access to transit at all (CNBC). This is unimaginable in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain or even Canada. Could it become even worse?
In most parts of the world, public transport is seen as a right and a public service, on par with schools, libraries, post offices, parks, or train stations. Intercity rail in the U.S. is even worse than transit. Many cities without a passenger rail station are numerous, even if they have a population of more than a million residents. There are six such cities in the U.S., which is unthinkable in Europe, China, or Japan, where a dense network of high-speed trains connects all major cities.
Transit unfriendly policies, poor land use patterns, and an auto-centric culture have resulted in only a tiny minority of trips being taken by transit, except in traditional transit cities such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The fewer people use transit the less attention politicians pay. The lack of excellence, performance, and funding creates poor expectations, that, in turn, reduce ridership, interest, and funding - an endless feed-back loop of self-fulfilling prophecies. Constituents having been forced to rely on the mighty automobile, complain about congestion and want wider roadways. (Why do cars get a free ride? The social-ecological roots of motonormativity). This vicious cycle has made transportation the largest sector of US greenhouse gas emissions and the second largest household expenditure, and, as an unintended consequence, a perpetuator of inequity.
So, are the days of buses, light rail, and metros really numbered? Will they go the way of public bathhouses, streetcars and public housing, where privatization has stigmatized and marginalized this form of living to the point that it is almost extinct, despite a national housing crisis? Can innovation point to a way out?
Fixed-Route, Fixed-Schedule Transit
Who hasn't watched an empty bus go by and wondered if there was a better way? Since the 1662 invention of the omnibus in Paris, the basic principle of running a multi-seat vehicle down a street on a published schedule with people waiting at marked stops hasn’t changed. It doesn’t materially matter that these vehicles are no longer pulled by horses, that they are now air-conditioned, accessible, or share their location on a smartphone. The system is still based on estimations of need, overcrowded at times, and empty at others. Its efficiency is so low that, even in the best of circumstances, it covers only about 30% of its cost, and it is usually only slightly faster than walking. If you are a bit too late to catch the ride, you have to wait—depending on the city and the time of day—for 5 minutes, an hour, or even two days if the service is suspended on weekends. Arrival always carries a fairly high level of uncertainty; even real-time arrival systems are no guarantee (the average wait time in the U.S. is 17 minutes, per CNBC).
These noted pressures have made things worse. In spite of fewer riders, service quality has frequently suffered, with even lower schedule adherence, trains or buses that don't show up at all due to missing operators or failing vehicles, or shutdowns because of tracks, overhead wires, or signal failing as a result of poor maintenance.
Change is attainable and will not come from flying taxis or Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" which won't scale or close the mobility gap, but from policy and priority changes with just a sprinkle of technology:
Fortunately, there is movement on all these fronts, both here and internationally. Let's unpack these one by one to see if they contain the possible salvation of transit. Each topic includes its own innovation component and is closely connected with the others.
Better governance, land use and regulation
Better governance would primarily mean better land use planning to be more efficient. Running transit through sprawl is not affordable. Instead, density needs to be created that is commensurate with various forms of transit, from van shuttles to subways. Driving to stations and stops in areas that are too sparsely populated is not a solution. The resulting parking needs waste land, are costly to maintain, and are inefficient since they still rely on the car that sits idle 90% of the time or more.
Transit stops and stations must sit in densely developed areas, and if they are located in a donut hole, they represent and excellent opportunity for investment. The goal must be that one can walk to transit, a notion which gave rise to the idea of the "15 -minute city", a model that historically applied to streetcar villages and can be used for suburbs and cities alike.
High-density mixed-use near transit allows living without a car and can bring affordability and mobility to those priced out of traditional subdivisions and those who can't drive. It can provide attractive centers with the urban amenities often hard to find in low-density neighborhoods, such as high-quality playgrounds, parks, dog parks, good sit-down restaurants, quality shopping, and libraries. In short, every step away from the dismal mono-use low-density environment often found around transit stops is also a significant step toward placemaking, local authenticity, and quality of life.
On a smaller scale, the streets leading to stations, with their competing uses, need to be rethought with priority given to "last mile uses," such as buses, bikes, and pedestrian pathways. The "complete streets" movement has already shifted priorities. Technology can orchestrate the management of the limited space through smarter operation of lane assignments, signals, parking spaces, and potentially demand-based access management for cars (congestion management).
Better governance would also include streamlining transit approval procedures, from environmental and construction permits to vehicle testing requirements. Current cumbersome and time-consuming procedures contribute to the fact that the U.S. has the highest per-mile cost for subway and rail construction worldwide.
Finally, it is even conceivable to do drastically different land use and drastic reduction of car use without large transit investments. The CuldeSac communities are an example. (Video of the Tempe community).
Shifted Priorities and Funding
Funding and spending priorities play such a central role that I will give them their own heading, even though they are certainly part of governance. Metrics for highway performance are nationally regulated and include intersection grading from A to F. For transit, by contrast, performance metrics such as on-time service, speed, and service frequency are spotty and dismal. Investments are rarely guided by the highest needs.
Transportation capital budgets always favor wider roads, turn lanes, signals, roundabouts, and improvements for traffic flow and congestion reduction. Flashy new construction wins over better asset management, both for roads and transit. Adequate Public Facility Ordinances (APFO) sometimes force wider roads and prevent additional development. Road capacity improvements typically induce additional demand, which quickly fills up the added capacity. Transit improvements would similarly add riders, but since most systems don't run at capacity to begin with, this would be welcome.
Poor transit is usually not captured by APFO metrics, thus better transit, better operational tools, or better land use remain elusive. Transit is also the stepchild of both capital and operational investments, regardless that transit users pay fares and cars usually don't. As a result, transit runs on tired tracks, in worn vehicles, outdated signal and communication systems, and has few amenities. Much of the poor performance stems from deferred maintenance.
All transportation investments should be equally vetted for their cost, returns, social benefits and environmental implications. If done properly. i.e. including external effects, transit would outperform roads in most urban areas.
With funding always in short supply, additional transit funding sources need to be tapped, and investment should be distributed to favor desired outcomes (cleaner air, more equity, fewer fatalities, etc.). A shift away from the inefficient individually driven gas-powered car is not popular but is unavoidable if lowest negative impacts and overall mobility are the goals. Manhattan's congestion pricing is an example of innovative funding for transit, as are service vehicle taxation, delivery taxes, parking surcharges, gas taxes, and similar measures that aim extract the true cost of driving. All would increase mobility by decreasing congestion and generating funds for better transit simultaneously. Those who label this “social engineering” need to realize that the current practices favoring the dominance of the single-family home and the automobile have been active social engineering for decades.
Technological innovation in operations and hardware
Flying taxis and Hyperloops always ignite the imagination, but neither scales well or could be used to move larger crowds. The same is true for robo-taxis, which just add more congestion to the streets given all the dead runs they need to be in the right place at the right time. This leaves us with transit for future urban mobility. Incremental improvements in current buses and trains have been slow but have reached a critical mass in time to potentially save transit from extinction.
Examples include:
The sum of modern technology can translate into a quantum leap in the user experience and the
operation of transit. Train-like buses already run successfully on some of China's arterial streets. They dramatically reduce construction costs by running on existing pavement without needing track construction and catenary while eliminating the higher operating costs that traditional buses incur due to their low capacity and, therefore, high need for operators. U.S. cities have long flirted with "bus rapid transit" (BRT), which was first employed in South America. The new type of guided, automated electric buses combined with cash-free and level boarding, along with larger spacing of stops, could finally give the "R" in BRT some meaning by making this mode truly faster than a regular bus while keeping it affordable enough for application in most metropolitan areas.
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
MaaS represents the biggest step away from traditional fixed-route, fixed-schedule service. It looks at trip times door-to-door rather than just on one transit line at a time. MaaS responds flexibly to varying rider needs by using modern information and communication technology that dispatches transit more like a rideshare. Depending on the size of a city and system, the concept can be applied across all modes, from subways all the way to vans or cars. Traditional mass transit modes like subways and trains would still run on fixed schedules on fixed routes, but they would be linked to and complemented by coordinated buses, taxi services, scooters, and bicycles. Intercity train riders upon arrival have long hopped on a subway bus or taxi to reach their destination, but in MaaS secondary services are time properly, they can all booked and payed in one app, and thus make the door to door travel much more predictable, convenient, and faster.
MaaS is technologically feasible, but in reality, it is complicated by the fact that much of mass transit is run by public agencies while taxis, rideshares, scooters, and bikes are almost always operated by private corporations. Organized labor is no fan of such integration, fearing that lower paying private services would bite into the public service. In metro areas MaaS networks would conceivably span several jurisdictions, potentially each with its own transit agency, payment, and network. Europe has long proven that those must not be insurmountable obstacles. Most metro areas have regional fare integration with local transit that can be accessed with a long-distance train ticket, in the Netherlands such a system includes the entire country. For political reasons it remains still rare and elusive in the U.S.
While the advantages of for riders seem obvious, there is not much information whether the transition to transit on demand modes for last mile or currently less traveled fixed route maps will save transit agencies operational cost. But with ever less predictable travel behavior a demand based repose may well be a necessity.
In short, the death of transit is not unavoidable. The tools to save it are in place. What is lacking is the political will.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Resources:
National Transit Report Card 2025
How Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is transforming the future of transportation
10 trends shaping North American Transit
https://www.uitp.org/news/10-trends-reshaping-north-american-public-transport-in-2024/
AI shaping transit (Urban Institute)
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/ai-and-machine-learning-are-shaping-future-public-transit
The Future of Public Transit (Sustainable America)
https://sustainableamerica.org/blog/the-future-of-public-transit/
CNBC Future of Public Transit
The Future of Public Transit Amid Post-Election Uncertainty Railway News
https://railway-news.com/the-future-of-public-transit-amid-post-election-uncertainty/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/cities-urban-transport-mobility-technology/
How Technology is shaping the Future of Public Transportation (Mondo)
Innovation in Mobility: Understanding the What, Why and How (Factual)
https://www.infrajournal.com/en/w/autonomous-vehicles-and-future-public-transport
Mass transit has always been an afterthought in the US. Sprawling, low-density American land use patterns which replaced the old streetcar villages never allowed it to be efficient. With some short exceptions, such as the development of streetcar villages at the in the early 20th century or the brief period following the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964, as well as the 1991 ISTEA legislation, policies have set on the automobile as the American way of getting around.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
U.S commuter transit in 2025: Slow and
antiquated (Photo: Philipsen)
[/td]antiquated (Photo: Philipsen)
In contrast to this pattern, many economists and urban planners believe that cities with good transit are more likely to thrive than those without, partly because owning and maintaining a car in a large city is less convenient and more expensive. (Politico, APTA). Transit is essential for those who can’t drive because they are too young, too old, too frail, or too poor to drive a car. Excluding large parts of the population from mobility is not only unjust, cruel, and asocial, but it also impedes economic prosperity and sustainability. Metro areas without transit become hotbeds of congestion, wasted time and pollution. Rural areas without transit become unattractive for a new generation that doesn't regard the car as a status symbol and is unwilling to spend a significant portion of their income on a device that sits idle 90% of the time.
However, right now, as cities with and without transit are facing economic trouble the death of transit
has has become a real possibility not only for rural parts of the U.S. Post-pandemic and in the current political climate, transit agencies suffer from the multi-pronged pressures of deferred maintenance, lack of funding and operators, and structural changes in mobility and technology, all at once:
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Morning rush-hour Baltimore beltway: Always congested
(Photo Philipsen)
[/td](Photo Philipsen)
- Ridership never recovered after COVID.
- Remote work won't go away.
- Local governments are out of money in many places while transit construction costs are skyrocketing.
- Federal funding is focused on the renaissance of combustion engine-driven cars.
- Crime on buses and trains has become more visible with sparse ridership.
- Better computing power finally makes transit on demand a real option.
- The simplicity of online ridesharing platforms such as Uber and Lyft has taken riders off transit.
- Ridesharing with autonomous vehicles has already become a reality in several cities.
If stagnation is a harbinger of a new age to dawn, the slow pace of expansion of rail service would indicate that a new future isn't far off. Cities throughout the United States opened very little transit in 2024, adding just 29 kilometers (18 miles) of light rail and no new metro rail service (The Transport Politic).
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Investment in transit pays off for cities
[/td]The special role of the U.S.
Public transit in the U.S. trails behind other wealthy countries. .Even the often-evoked glory days of urban streetcars were much less glorious than nostalgia suggests. Mostly privately run, these streetcars were initially tools of the real estate industry to reach developable lands outside core cities. While ubiquitous, the streetcars were neglected as soon as the automobile made the suburbs even more accessible, finally withering away in the 1950s. Since then, even large cities without any real transit have become a a reality in the U.S. Arlington,Texas, is America's largest city without any mass transit. The New York Times titled a recent article "Life Without Transit?". Arlington and about a dozen other cities with a population over 100,000 are astounding examples of cities without a network of buses, trams, or metro, and without a viable alternative to driving. Nationwide 48% of all US residents have no access to transit at all (CNBC). This is unimaginable in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain or even Canada. Could it become even worse?
In most parts of the world, public transport is seen as a right and a public service, on par with schools, libraries, post offices, parks, or train stations. Intercity rail in the U.S. is even worse than transit. Many cities without a passenger rail station are numerous, even if they have a population of more than a million residents. There are six such cities in the U.S., which is unthinkable in Europe, China, or Japan, where a dense network of high-speed trains connects all major cities.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
High speed intercity train Frankfurt, (Philipsen)
[/td]Transit unfriendly policies, poor land use patterns, and an auto-centric culture have resulted in only a tiny minority of trips being taken by transit, except in traditional transit cities such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The fewer people use transit the less attention politicians pay. The lack of excellence, performance, and funding creates poor expectations, that, in turn, reduce ridership, interest, and funding - an endless feed-back loop of self-fulfilling prophecies. Constituents having been forced to rely on the mighty automobile, complain about congestion and want wider roadways. (Why do cars get a free ride? The social-ecological roots of motonormativity). This vicious cycle has made transportation the largest sector of US greenhouse gas emissions and the second largest household expenditure, and, as an unintended consequence, a perpetuator of inequity.
So, are the days of buses, light rail, and metros really numbered? Will they go the way of public bathhouses, streetcars and public housing, where privatization has stigmatized and marginalized this form of living to the point that it is almost extinct, despite a national housing crisis? Can innovation point to a way out?
Fixed-Route, Fixed-Schedule Transit
Who hasn't watched an empty bus go by and wondered if there was a better way? Since the 1662 invention of the omnibus in Paris, the basic principle of running a multi-seat vehicle down a street on a published schedule with people waiting at marked stops hasn’t changed. It doesn’t materially matter that these vehicles are no longer pulled by horses, that they are now air-conditioned, accessible, or share their location on a smartphone. The system is still based on estimations of need, overcrowded at times, and empty at others. Its efficiency is so low that, even in the best of circumstances, it covers only about 30% of its cost, and it is usually only slightly faster than walking. If you are a bit too late to catch the ride, you have to wait—depending on the city and the time of day—for 5 minutes, an hour, or even two days if the service is suspended on weekends. Arrival always carries a fairly high level of uncertainty; even real-time arrival systems are no guarantee (the average wait time in the U.S. is 17 minutes, per CNBC).
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Transit omnibus Paris 19th century (Musee Carnavalet -
Roger Viollet)
[/td]Roger Viollet)
These noted pressures have made things worse. In spite of fewer riders, service quality has frequently suffered, with even lower schedule adherence, trains or buses that don't show up at all due to missing operators or failing vehicles, or shutdowns because of tracks, overhead wires, or signal failing as a result of poor maintenance.
Change is necessary, and it it is coming.
How Innovation can Blaze a Path for Future Transit
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Baltimore Transit Bus 2024 (Philipsen)
[/td]Change is attainable and will not come from flying taxis or Elon Musk's "Hyperloop" which won't scale or close the mobility gap, but from policy and priority changes with just a sprinkle of technology:
- Better governance, land use and regulation
- Shifted priorities and funding
- Technological innovation in operations and hardware
Better governance, land use and regulation
Better governance would primarily mean better land use planning to be more efficient. Running transit through sprawl is not affordable. Instead, density needs to be created that is commensurate with various forms of transit, from van shuttles to subways. Driving to stations and stops in areas that are too sparsely populated is not a solution. The resulting parking needs waste land, are costly to maintain, and are inefficient since they still rely on the car that sits idle 90% of the time or more.
Transit stops and stations must sit in densely developed areas, and if they are located in a donut hole, they represent and excellent opportunity for investment. The goal must be that one can walk to transit, a notion which gave rise to the idea of the "15 -minute city", a model that historically applied to streetcar villages and can be used for suburbs and cities alike.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Intermodal train station Berlin, Germany (Philipsen)
[/td]Proper Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) solves several problems at once: it can address the housing crisis, the scarcity of developable land, improve the local tax base, and reduce the oversupply of commercially zoned land. Most importantly, it promotes better transit usage. TOD isn't always welcome, and land use authority is local, fragmented, and driven by NIMBYs. States and transit agencies can break through the logjam by mandating density at stations via legislation that makes transit investment contingent upon best land use practices. California, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Utah already have or are considering such legislation.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
What is TOD (Trimet, OR)
[/td]On a smaller scale, the streets leading to stations, with their competing uses, need to be rethought with priority given to "last mile uses," such as buses, bikes, and pedestrian pathways. The "complete streets" movement has already shifted priorities. Technology can orchestrate the management of the limited space through smarter operation of lane assignments, signals, parking spaces, and potentially demand-based access management for cars (congestion management).
Better governance would also include streamlining transit approval procedures, from environmental and construction permits to vehicle testing requirements. Current cumbersome and time-consuming procedures contribute to the fact that the U.S. has the highest per-mile cost for subway and rail construction worldwide.
Finally, it is even conceivable to do drastically different land use and drastic reduction of car use without large transit investments. The CuldeSac communities are an example. (Video of the Tempe community).
Shifted Priorities and Funding
Funding and spending priorities play such a central role that I will give them their own heading, even though they are certainly part of governance. Metrics for highway performance are nationally regulated and include intersection grading from A to F. For transit, by contrast, performance metrics such as on-time service, speed, and service frequency are spotty and dismal. Investments are rarely guided by the highest needs.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Maryland's Governor announcing the reinstatement of the Red
Line in Baltimore, canceled by his predecessor at 95% design
(Philipsen)
[/td]Line in Baltimore, canceled by his predecessor at 95% design
(Philipsen)
Transportation capital budgets always favor wider roads, turn lanes, signals, roundabouts, and improvements for traffic flow and congestion reduction. Flashy new construction wins over better asset management, both for roads and transit. Adequate Public Facility Ordinances (APFO) sometimes force wider roads and prevent additional development. Road capacity improvements typically induce additional demand, which quickly fills up the added capacity. Transit improvements would similarly add riders, but since most systems don't run at capacity to begin with, this would be welcome.
Poor transit is usually not captured by APFO metrics, thus better transit, better operational tools, or better land use remain elusive. Transit is also the stepchild of both capital and operational investments, regardless that transit users pay fares and cars usually don't. As a result, transit runs on tired tracks, in worn vehicles, outdated signal and communication systems, and has few amenities. Much of the poor performance stems from deferred maintenance.
All transportation investments should be equally vetted for their cost, returns, social benefits and environmental implications. If done properly. i.e. including external effects, transit would outperform roads in most urban areas.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Sources for Capital and Operating funding 2021 (APTA)
[/td]With funding always in short supply, additional transit funding sources need to be tapped, and investment should be distributed to favor desired outcomes (cleaner air, more equity, fewer fatalities, etc.). A shift away from the inefficient individually driven gas-powered car is not popular but is unavoidable if lowest negative impacts and overall mobility are the goals. Manhattan's congestion pricing is an example of innovative funding for transit, as are service vehicle taxation, delivery taxes, parking surcharges, gas taxes, and similar measures that aim extract the true cost of driving. All would increase mobility by decreasing congestion and generating funds for better transit simultaneously. Those who label this “social engineering” need to realize that the current practices favoring the dominance of the single-family home and the automobile have been active social engineering for decades.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
NY MTA fare revenue sources 2022
[/td]Technological innovation in operations and hardware
Flying taxis and Hyperloops always ignite the imagination, but neither scales well or could be used to move larger crowds. The same is true for robo-taxis, which just add more congestion to the streets given all the dead runs they need to be in the right place at the right time. This leaves us with transit for future urban mobility. Incremental improvements in current buses and trains have been slow but have reached a critical mass in time to potentially save transit from extinction.
[td]
[/td]
[td]
Modern low floor streetcar in Cincinnati (Philipsen)
[/td]- Electric buses which are faster, healthier, quieter and more comfortable.
- Cashless payment with smart phones or universal cards reduces, delays at boarding and eliminates costly equipment.
- Real time GPS via smart phone that can locate the next bus or train in real time and shorten wait times at stops.
- Electronic onboard maps showing progress on the route, the current location and the destination lower rider's anxiety about transit.
- Better bus stops with shelters and seats funded through advertisements make waiting more comfortable.
- Applying the American for Disabilities Act (ADA) to fix barriers on sidewalks leading up to stops makes transit more accessible for all.
- Real time data based control centers for transit operations and general traffic management that can optimize flow, prioritize transit and reduce trip times.
- Low floor vehicles allow level boarding without steps, ramps or devices that take time to deploy.
- Modern light rail and subway trains are multi-articulated (ie. have a continuous walk isle across several connected vehicle segments), allowing one operator to see through the full length of the train.
- Some subways already operate in automated mode.
- Driverless buses are still in the experimental stage in most places, although they are quite conceivably ready for prime time.
- A technology merger of bus and train is underway that could culminate in a "trackless trains" which are powered by batteries and guided by paint markings or signal wires embedded in the pavement.
operation of transit. Train-like buses already run successfully on some of China's arterial streets. They dramatically reduce construction costs by running on existing pavement without needing track construction and catenary while eliminating the higher operating costs that traditional buses incur due to their low capacity and, therefore, high need for operators. U.S. cities have long flirted with "bus rapid transit" (BRT), which was first employed in South America. The new type of guided, automated electric buses combined with cash-free and level boarding, along with larger spacing of stops, could finally give the "R" in BRT some meaning by making this mode truly faster than a regular bus while keeping it affordable enough for application in most metropolitan areas.
Mobility as a Service (MaaS)
MaaS represents the biggest step away from traditional fixed-route, fixed-schedule service. It looks at trip times door-to-door rather than just on one transit line at a time. MaaS responds flexibly to varying rider needs by using modern information and communication technology that dispatches transit more like a rideshare. Depending on the size of a city and system, the concept can be applied across all modes, from subways all the way to vans or cars. Traditional mass transit modes like subways and trains would still run on fixed schedules on fixed routes, but they would be linked to and complemented by coordinated buses, taxi services, scooters, and bicycles. Intercity train riders upon arrival have long hopped on a subway bus or taxi to reach their destination, but in MaaS secondary services are time properly, they can all booked and payed in one app, and thus make the door to door travel much more predictable, convenient, and faster.
MaaS is technologically feasible, but in reality, it is complicated by the fact that much of mass transit is run by public agencies while taxis, rideshares, scooters, and bikes are almost always operated by private corporations. Organized labor is no fan of such integration, fearing that lower paying private services would bite into the public service. In metro areas MaaS networks would conceivably span several jurisdictions, potentially each with its own transit agency, payment, and network. Europe has long proven that those must not be insurmountable obstacles. Most metro areas have regional fare integration with local transit that can be accessed with a long-distance train ticket, in the Netherlands such a system includes the entire country. For political reasons it remains still rare and elusive in the U.S.
While the advantages of for riders seem obvious, there is not much information whether the transition to transit on demand modes for last mile or currently less traveled fixed route maps will save transit agencies operational cost. But with ever less predictable travel behavior a demand based repose may well be a necessity.
In short, the death of transit is not unavoidable. The tools to save it are in place. What is lacking is the political will.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Resources:
National Transit Report Card 2025
How Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is transforming the future of transportation
10 trends shaping North American Transit
https://www.uitp.org/news/10-trends-reshaping-north-american-public-transport-in-2024/
AI shaping transit (Urban Institute)
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/ai-and-machine-learning-are-shaping-future-public-transit
The Future of Public Transit (Sustainable America)
https://sustainableamerica.org/blog/the-future-of-public-transit/
CNBC Future of Public Transit
The Future of Public Transit Amid Post-Election Uncertainty Railway News
https://railway-news.com/the-future-of-public-transit-amid-post-election-uncertainty/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/cities-urban-transport-mobility-technology/
How Technology is shaping the Future of Public Transportation (Mondo)
Innovation in Mobility: Understanding the What, Why and How (Factual)
https://www.infrajournal.com/en/w/autonomous-vehicles-and-future-public-transport