Texas Public Transportation Use
BizJournal
The full searchable (by state) database can be accessed at the bottom of article. Data is from census. Texas metro, the full list of which is as follows: Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX -- 2.61% Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX -- 2.57% College Station-Bryan, TX -- 2.44% San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX -- 2.24% El Paso, TX -- 1.85% Laredo, TX -- 1.83% Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX -- 1.56% Corpus Christi, TX -- 1.43% Victoria, TX -- 1.08% Lubbock, TX -- 0.97% |
I always wondered about using the entire metro areas to come up with the transit numbers considering how geographically large they are with many counties that don't have any public transit.
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Also in Austin it is important to note that even Round Rock isn't a member city of Capital Metro |
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If someone lives Rockwall and has no access to public transit why include them in the figures? If you want to include those places why not add even more counties in? Why not use the population of the state when factoring in Houston's public transit use? It makes no sense to do that |
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The metros are figured out by commuter patters to the large city of the metro. This is why San Marcos is in the Austin metro (a thread on that subject in the San Antonio forum). When they figure out what counties and cities are in what metros and what counties and cities should not be in the metros area of a large city they are using commuter patterns to that large city to figure all of that out. If those counties and cities don't have public transit, that is is worth noting. Ignoring that and removing all of the counties and cities that don't have public transit and yet do commute to the large city would only be telling a small part of the story, when talking about who is commuting to where and how. |
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So you think the people in Cooper, TX, who live 80 miles away from Dallas and 110+ miles from Forth Worth should be included, but people who live in Brazos Bend; 38 miles from Fort Worth and 71 miles from Dallas shouldn't? They are outside of the metro area. They should at least provide more accurate data by including the percentage of people who have access to public transit who use it as well as the percentage of people who don't use public transit and do not have access to it and therefore can not use it. |
Cooper is not a good example. I know you picked it because it and Delta County are far from Dallas and you wanted to use that to prove a point. But come on.... There is over 6,700,000 people in DFW, and there is only 5,000 in all of Delta County. UT-Austin has a dorm with more people living in it, than that country has people in total. lmao. And for it messing up the numbers.. 6,700,000 to 5,000. That isn't even a single percent. In fact that isn't even .1 of a percent of the DFW population. That is something like .07% of the DFW population!
I really wouldn't worry about Delta Country screwing up the statistics and numbers. And .07% sure as heck isn't a valid reason to throw out all the other places that are not served by mass transit. Here is an example of the difference. If you threw out all those with no access to transit, that would include me. I live 4 miles from the intersection of 6th and Congress in Downtown Austin. And yet I have no access to even a bus. It is a mile and half to the first bus stop. To me that is absolutely absurd! To be 4 miles for the center of downtown and still over a mile from a bus stop is just silly. So I should be counted in there, not omitted because in my neighborhood we are a bunch of stuck up rich snobs who would rather throw money down the drain fueling our gas guzzling SUVs than pay a small tax (Yikes!) to support Capital Metro. Oh, and not including those that don't have access to plublic transit would pretty much get rid of all of Round Rock and Williamson CO from Austin. That is 25% of the Austin metro population you just threw out. They should be included. |
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Firstly the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA has about 6.4 Million, the CSA has about 6.7 Million. Although I think it would be interesting if you also think Sherman and Dension should be included So it isn't a good example because Delta County is in the DFW metro because it proves my point? You still haven't commented on whether or not Brazos Bend in Hood county should be included because people who live there could commute 34 miles into Fort Worth. So should Hood County be included in the DFW mass transit numbers? You don't like the Delta County example because it isn't just Delta County, but entire swaths of people who live in DFW who have absolutely zero access to public transit McKinney -130,000 Wise County - 59,000 Parker County - 116,000 Rockwall County - 78,000 and that is just the beginning The numbers would be more accurate to include the member cities of the transit authority when calculating them. Seriously, this is almost like including individuals under the age of 16 in driving statistics by saying X% of Americans drive even though Y% can't drive. DART has about 2 million people in it's member cities, the T has about 1 million. If the T shut down then a huge percentage of DFW loses all access to public transit. Should Fort Worth still count with that many people left out? |
I didn't address Brazos Bend and Hood Counties because they are not relevant to this discussion. Just because they are closer doesn't mean they are more relevant. If a significant portion of their population was commuting to the metro then they would be in the metro. But they aren't so they aren't included. And if they aren't commuting to the metro why should they be included in a study on traffic in the metro?
All of the metros in the OP have "entire swaths of people" who don't have access to public transit from that metro. Dallas is in no way unique in that regard. Austin is no different. Neither is Houston. You just put up some of the DFW ones with out your public transit, here are Austin's, Bastrop - 74,141 Caldwell - 38,066 Hays - 157,107 Williamson - 442,679 DFW is not alone in that. For some reason you seem to want to use distance as the measuring stick. It is not a good one. For one the areas with little population that are distant from the metro have little population. The small populations don't have any real effect on the final numbers, and the little effect they do have is negligible since all metros have small populations around, again DFW isn't unique in that. If those places did have large enough population to support public transit, then they would probably have it. If they are large enough to support public transit and they don't have it, then that is very significant and is something that should be reflected in the numbers. I think you might be looking at the numbers differently than it is intended. What I get the feeling that you are looking for is a study on the people living there, not on the metro. Like I get the feeling you are looking for a study on if people have the choice and options are they, or aren't they, willing to use mass transit. If that is what you are looking for the of course this study is going to reflect that poorly. This was done by pulling the numbers off the census results. It isn't some huge study don't by some Washington D.C. think tank or something like that, to show how individuals are behaving. This to me is more about how a metro area behaves. In that regard to how the metro area behaves then the metro's failure to provide transportation options is one of the most significant aspect of the discussion and should be reflected as such in the numbers. Not including them would make the entire ranking utterly pointless. |
Of the 10 counties in the Houston MSA, 5 of them have (to my knowledge) no access at all to "public transit"...
Liberty County-- 75,643 Waller County-- 43,205 Chambers County-- 35,096 Austin County-- 28,417 San Jac County-- 26,384 That's 208,745... very little (both population and geographic space) of Houston MSA's total. In fact there are huge swaths of Harris County that are 20+ miles from the nearest bus stop. The conversation we need to be having in our Texas cities is how can we improve the QUALITY of transit services that we already have?? I still believe that most people don't ride public transit because they think it's "just for poor people" or are afraid of violence on the bus. Until that perception changes, transit numbers in cities like Houston and Dallas are always going to be down in the dumps. |
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Firstly not all of Williamson County is devoid of Public Transit. Leander and Anderson Mill are both member cities of Capital Metro. Secondly this only further proves my point that including areas with people who have no access to pubic transit skew the numbers down. So thank you Quote:
Little Population? Far North Dallas McKinney - 131,117 Frisco - 116,989 Allen - 84,252 Total - 332,352 Mid-Cities Grand Prairie - 175,369 Arlington - 365,438 Total - 540,807 Quote:
You think the whooping 500,000+ in Arlington and Grand Praire aren't large enough? They are, but political reasons get in the way despite both of them being in between two big cities. The DCTA has fewer people in it's jurisdiction than And that is just the beginning, toss in Mesquite, Rock Wall, Balch Springs, Rockwall, Flower Mound, etc Quote:
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It's not the metros failure, it is the failure of individual "leaders" at the local level. Not including them would show a more accurate representation of the percentage of people who utilize public transportation. Can't use something if it's not available |
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About 2.2 Million people reside in the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, so it is similar to DART with regards to having a great percentage of suburbs municipalities with no public transportation access. One of the best improvements can be made by expanding service, because as service expands more people can see buses near their neighborhoods with their neighbors on board which could help dispel some of the caricatures put forward by the media. However we have got a long way to go. |
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Case-in-point... I flew from Houston to Little Rock this past weekend, and did not take my car to the airport. On the way back, I wanted to ride the METRO Airport Direct, but the route was cancelled due to LOW RIDERSHIP. The Airport Direct was one of the best Transit services ever offered in Houston... $4.50 bus between IAH and Downtown. A cab ride the same distance costs upwards of $50!! That route was in operation for nearly two years. If we can't get Texans to use a no-brainer like that, how are we ever going to grow our local bus systems?? |
So much of it is what was mentioned earlier, with the "attitude" many harbor towards public transit. That it is only for poor people, it is crime ridden, etc. Too many TV shows which perpetuate the myths associated with public transit.
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Instead of using the Metro population figures, use DART member cities.... Dallas 1,197,816 Plano 259,841 Garland 226,876 Irving 216,290 Carrollton 119,097 Richardson 99,223 Rowlett 56,199 Farmers Branch 28,616 University Park 23,068 Addison 13,056 Glenn Heights 11,278 Highland Park 8,564 Cockrell Hill 4,193 DART Total (2010) = 2,264,117 Dallas-Fort Worth-Denton MSA (2010) = 6,371,773 That's approximately one third of the total, therefore ridership within the DART member cities should be three times more than listed earlier. If we account for DCTA and FWTA member city populations.... Denton 113,383 Lewisville 95,290 Highland Village 16,996. Fort Worth 741,206 Richland Hills 63,343 Blue Mound 2,394 Sub Total = 1,032,612 New Total = 3,296,729 That's approximately half the MSA total, therefore ridership is doubled in transit agency member cities. That 1.56% is over 3% now, which is higher than the less than 3% indicated for all other Texas cities. When only half the population is subsidizing public transit with taxes within regions, only half the population is serviced by them - whether that service is good or poor. But even poor service is better than none. |
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By your math of only doing city limits of the towns served, that would be: Austin: 790.000 Leander: 7.600 Manor: 5.500 Jonestown: 1.700 For 804.800 in a metro area of 1,7 million as 47% So for simplicity sake we will say half. That would put Austin at 5,22% and back above your 3%. However by doing that we are ignoring and not showing the huge problem that is such a large portion of the population is not being served. That is significant when discussing public transit. That half of the population has no service, why would y'all want to completely disregard that? Why is that not significant to this discussion? It should be IMO. It just seems to me like by trying to pull out all of the numbers for the people who have no service y'all are trying to just make Dallas' number look better than they are in reality. And by using Dallas' numbers with out those with no public transit access while comparing to the other cities while still including the full population numbers only reinforces that feeling that is what y'all are trying to accomplish here rather than any real discussion on the issue. If this was not a ranking. If we were not comparing cities here. If it were not some silly competition (my city is best! or worst!) Would you still be trying to remove the people with no access to transit from your numbers? And if so I don't understand why. How is the fact we aren't providing transit options to half the population not significant? Lets be honest here. We are all Texans and living in Texas. People in Texas want to rely on themselves. Not spend money and pay taxes to rely on someone else to provide transportation for them when they can provide their own transportation. IMO there is no excuse at all for a city of 100,000 like Round Rock to not be a part of Cap Metro. Or for someone like me who lives a couple miles from DT Austin to not have access to even a bus. The reason I don't have access to a bus, and why north Austin doesn't either is because they don't want to pay the taxes. They would rather pay more to be able to rely on themselves than to pay taxes to rely on others to provide them transit. That is the problem with Texas IMO. Not just Austin, though we are probably the worst. |
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Since this topic interests you sufficiently to make a comment here, I suggest browsing through state law, specifically the Texas Transportation Code. http://law.justia.com/codes/texas/2005/tn.html Specifically Chapters 451 through 461 dealing with public transportation. 451. METROPOLITAN RAPID TRANSIT AUTHORITIES 452. REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITIES 453. MUNICIPAL TRANSIT DEPARTMENTS 454. MUNICIPAL MASS TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS 455. GENERAL POWERS AND DUTIES OF DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION REGARDING MASS TRANSPORTATION 456. STATE FINANCING OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION 457. COUNTY MASS TRANSIT AUTHORITY 458. RURAL AND URBAN TRANSIT DISTRICTS 460. COORDINATED COUNTY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITIES 461. STATEWIDE COORDINATION OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION Then you might understand some of the reasons why half the population in Texas metros don't have public transportation. There's all sorts of little pesky details involved that get in the way. |
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