Routes connecting small and mid-size towns may be the key to American transit’s success

Stoughton, WI is one of countless American towns deprived of public transit. The town's train station, pictured above, has not seen any scheduled service since the 1970s, but remains as a relic of a better transportation system that deserves to be revived. (Photo by Tommy Anderson, courtesy of Pixels.)

A recent New York Times article analyzed the current state of public transit on both coasts of the U.S. The article compared fledgling Western systems, which enjoy substantial political support and are undergoing expansion, to legacy Eastern systems, which face reliability issues and maintenance challenges.

In reality, mobility throughout our country continues to fall short. Operators of legacy rail systems, facing constrained resources, must make painful service-maintenance tradeoffs, while advocates must fight tooth and nail against automobile interests for every inch of bus lanes, bike lanes, and transit-oriented development projects needed to complement those core systems. Newer systems may enjoy more stable funding sources, but despite recent expansions, large portions of the sprawling metropolitan areas they serve remain without good options. Thus, most residents of these regions continue to purchase and depend on cars, making it challenging for transit to attract new riders.

Evidence suggests that in the long run, transit systems in both West and East Coast cities will turn out okay. An overwhelming proportion of Americans support transit improvements, and even the controversial stopgaps some people have turned to – such as ride hailing and shared e-scooters – demonstrate that people are sick of the auto-dependent status quo and desire the freedom to choose how they get around.

But carnage on our roads, inaccessible life needs, and the effects of climate change have made our transportation shortcomings an urgent issue, and we don’t have time to wait for the seemingly endless standoff against auto and oil interests to resolve itself. Instead, we must make well-functioning public transportation a valued part of our culture, considered every bit as important as our electrical grid and water supply.

 

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The ultimate cure to the problems plaguing U.S. transportation may lie in Middle America, rather than the cosmopolitan locales advocates tend to focus on.  

In parts of the world that consider public transit a basic necessity, functional service is not just a niche product serving specific neighborhoods and job centers, but rather a complex, national (or, in some cases, international) network of essential infrastructure. Trunk routes serving large cities boast the shortest headways and move the most riders, but even in small and mid-size communities, trains and buses are modern and provide a viable form of mobility for residents and visitors. The resulting local and intercity links help keep these places economically and culturally connected, reducing interregional inequality and catalyzing long-term growth.

But in the U.S., modern mobility is largely confined to posh urban areas. Outside of our vibrant metropolises, the quality of transportation today has arguably regressed since the mid-20^th century, and car crash fatality rates are three times higher in rural areas than in cities.

The regional streetcar lines that once connected our towns – commonly referred to as “interurbans” – are long gone, and (in contrast to the large cities that lost their streetcars in the 1940s and -50s) the areas these lines served have never attempted to redevelop their transit systems. Communities that once enjoyed frequent rail service now are left – if they are lucky – with once-a-day, oft-delayed trains that may arrive in the middle of the night. Even intercity bus service in much of America has been cut substantially over the past few decades, as the private companies that operate those services have shifted their attention to point-to-point routes that cater to young, budget-conscious urbanites.

Vast swaths of our country don’t have any transit service at all. While the Dallas suburb of Arlington, TX may be the most notorious – and mocked – example of a locale lacking any form of public transportation, countless towns remain completely left out of the modern mobility trends that people in cities have come to take for granted. 

Stoughton, WI, located south of Madison, is one such town. Though a train station still proudly stands just off Main Street, it’s now nothing more than a Historical Society annex, serving no transportation purpose. When my dad and I visited relatives in Stoughton over the holidays, we were able to catch an intercity bus from Chicago that took us as far as Janesville, but had no choice other than to accept a car ride from him to get the rest of the way.

There’s also the Sharon Line neighborhood of Youngstown, Ohio – where my grandfather grew up – named for an interurban streetcar that once connected the area to Sharon, PA. The rail line ceased operation in 1939, making way for an automobile-oriented future. By the 1960s, the local economy was collapsing, and more and more homes in the neighborhood sat abandoned. In 2016, the city’s leaders decided to officially give much of the once-vibrant middle class neighborhood back to nature, closing several miles of streets as the forest retook the land.

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Anti-transit forces have utilized this increasingly stark disparity to their advantage, turning public transportation into yet another politicized issue that pits “coastal elites” against “real Americans.”

Whenever a transit improvement intended to benefit Middle America is proposed, opposition is especially fierce, as special interest groups spend millions of dollars to convince people that new service will not bring beneficial connectivity, but rather will somehow oppress the everyman and ruin traditional ways of life. Such misinformation campaigns have helped stymie large-scale rail expansions in aforementioned Wisconsin and Ohio, as well as ballot measures that would have fixed the broken transportation systems of Detroit and Nashville.

The special interests spend so much money to oppose transit in places like the Rust Belt and Sun Belt because they fear if residents of those places could use trains and buses to get where they need to go, they would do so.

Due to their small size and quiet streets, America’s small towns are already relatively walkable and bikeable, and a local bus route or two would satisfy additional transportation needs. Such local routes, which even a minimal transit-dedicated tax, among other possible funding sources, can support, could feed into intercity buses – or, where feasible, rail – that connect these towns to each other. For example, Wenatchee, WA, a town of around 30,000 people, is served by a network of local and intercity buses – as well as Amtrak’s Empire Builder train – and 100,000 annual passengers use Galesburg, IL’s Amtrak station, which sees four trains in each direction per day and offers connections to four local bus routes.

If transit were part of the underlying fabric of so many peoples’ day-to-day lives, auto and oil interests would have to cease their relentless culture war against forms of mobility they don’t profit from. To stay in business, these corporations would need to reinvent themselves as one cooperative component of a sophisticated transportation system, a costly endeavor they have little desire to pursue.

Recent electoral results suggest that this reinvention may soon be necessary. For example, despite the best efforts of groups such as Americans for Prosperity, voters in places including Indiana, Georgia, and New Mexico – not just the traditional progressive megacities of the West and Northeast – have recently approved or extended transit-dedicated taxes. In California’s agricultural Central Valley, Jeff Denham – once Congress’s leading opponent of the state’s high-speed rail project – was sent packing in the 2018 midterms.

To ensure this trend continues, turning our country into a place where extensive, well-functioning transit is considered essential infrastructure (on par with roads, pipes, and power lines), we need to craft viable mobility solutions that benefit currently neglected communities. This will require careful planning and laborious on-the-ground effort. But in the end, it will ensure Americans view transit as a national necessity for all, allowing planners from our largest cities to our quaintest towns to thoughtfully consider the specific form improvements should take, rather than endlessly debate whether or not such improvements are necessary.