How efficient is public transit?

Public transportation gets people where they're going while emitting far fewer climate-warming greenhouse gases than private cars. The reason is simple efficiency: while cars usually carry just one or two people at a time, a bus can carry 50 or more, and a train in a large city may carry thousands.



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Investments in public transportation have potential traffic safety, air quality, active transportation, and accessibility benefits, thus improving associated personal health outcomes. Public transportation has substantially lower crash rates and lower crash severity than automotive travel.

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Improves Fuel Efficiency The average miles per gallon multiplied by the number of private cars on the road versus transit buses or trains shows less fuel is consumed when using public transportation.

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An average transit bus can fit up to 42 people, which means a full bus can remove 42 single-passenger cars from the road during a commute. A handful of full buses running every 15 minutes or so along one commute route can take up to 168 cars off the road each hour, including those cars' emissions!

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There is also the issue that people feel that public transit does not give them what they want, as it is aimed at moving many riders on fixed routes not tailored to their individual needs as the private car is perceived to do.

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A Harvard study found that commute time is the biggest indicator as to whether or not a person can escape poverty. The longer your commute, the more likely you are to be late to important things, and you have less time with your family. Increasing public transit's efficiency and reach can make a big impact.

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It slows down workers' economic output, which directly impacts business revenue in our economy. Such a lack of productivity causes a decrease of $180 billion in America's GNP, which includes a loss of $109 billion in household income and 162,000 jobs over the same six-year time frame referred to earlier.

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Buses help conserve natural resources The production of fuels for planes, such as kerosene and jet fuel, requires huge inputs of energy and causes a lot of pollution. In contrast, producing diesel fuel for buses takes much less energy and results in far less air pollution.

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