B-43It may seem odd to disregard travel speed in this sense, but the service differences are important.Attempting to estimate the slower speeds on transit routes and incorporating them into theanalysis would, in essence, double penalize the service. Travelers already use the travel times tomake their decisions and the longer times are the reason ridership is relatively low during off-peak hours. Transit routes could gain speed by decreasing stops, but at the risk of losingridership. This relationship between speed and convenience is constantly adjusted by transitagencies seeking to increase transit service and ridership. And this approach to defining adifferent standard speed for transit routes is similar to the different threshold used for streets andfreeways.The “penalty” or “reward” for public transportation in this revised Travel Time Index estimatecomes from gain or loss in ridership. If the route travel times become unreasonably long,ridership will decline, and the amount of “uncongested” passenger-miles contributed by publictransportation will also decline. The beneficial effects of faster route times, better access orimproved service from interconnected networks or high-speed bus or rail links would result inhigher ridership values, which would increase the amount of “uncongested” travel in the mobilitymeasure calculations.The delay benefits were calculated using the “what if transit riders were in the general trafficflow” case. Additional traffic on already crowded road networks would affect all the other peak period travelers as well. This is an artificial case in the sense that the effects of a transit serviceshutdown would be much more significant and affect more than just the transit riders or roadwaytravelers. Public transportation patrons who rely on the service for their basic transportationneeds would find travel much more difficult, making jobs, school, medical or other tripdestinations much harder to achieve. And the businesses that count on the reliable service andaccess to consumers and workers that public transportation provides would suffer as well.
Delay Effect Estimate
In the 437 urban areas studied, Exhibit B-33 shows that there were approximately 51 billionpassenger-miles of travel on public transportation systems in 2005 (15). The annual ridershipranged from about 18 million in the Small urban areas to about 2.7 billion in the Very Largeareas. Overall, if these riders were not handled on public transportation systems they wouldcontribute an additional roadway delay of over 541 million hours or 13 percent of total delay.Some additional effects include:
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The Very Large areas would experience an increase in delay of about 430 million hours peryear (18 percent of total delay). This is the result of the significant public transportationridership in these areas. Most of the urban areas over 3 million population have extensiverail systems and all have very large bus systems.
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The Large urban areas would experience the second largest increase in delay with 64 millionadditional hours of delay per year. While the average Large area transit system carried only7 percent of the ridership of the Very Large area systems, the delay increase would represent15 percent of the Very Large group because there are 25 Large areas.
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The New York urban area accounted for almost 40 percent of the delay increase estimated inthe report.
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