Op-Ed: In Favor of Transit's Big Glam-Up
In the face of declining or plateauing ridership among many of the nation’s transit agencies, and despite continued urban growth, transit agencies, planners, and academics have increasingly scrambled about in search policy tweaks and system alterations that will get more Americans onto buses and trains. But, spend enough time in a major American city and you’ll eventually come in contact with a common sentiment: transit systems are confusing, unclean, and falling apart. Interpreted another way, people’s aesthetic evaluations of various travel modes have a significant impact on which one they select, and when compared against car travel, transit’s image is often, to put it mildly, lacking.
Yet, who is to blame for this paucity of attractive, navigable stations and snazzy buses? In the modern transportation funding paradigm where residents are often given the (perhaps false) choice of improving either car infrastructure or transit, the overwhelming sentiment tends to be in favor of the former.
A 2013 report published in Transport Policy by a team of Italian researchers surveyed several dozen undergraduates about their relative mode preferences between car and transit across a variety of hypothetical scenarios with fluctuating travel times and costs. Perhaps not all too surprisingly, the respondents tended to prefer travel by single-occupancy car even when it was a significantly costlier and more time-consuming travel option. The researchers determined that this irrational “car stickiness” (as the authors colorfully term it) is the result of “routine decisions, taken over and over again… becom[ing] habitual choices, which cease to be the consequence of a deliberate process of weighing pros and cons.” Essentially, our subjective, pre-defined prejudices have as much to do with our mode-choice as an economic constraints we face. Taken further, this finding would seem to open the door to the possibility that aesthetic- and design-related improvements to transit systems could in fact yield tangible benefits in terms of attracting more users. At the very least, such improvements should be weighed along with traditional improvements to service and not merely tacked on if there’s enough money left over.
Indeed, another report from a different group of Italian researchers suggests there may be support for such a claim. In their 2018 study, they found that aesthetically pleasing transit stations could draw more patronage relative to other stations, that patrons were willing to travel further to them, and that patrons were willing to wait longer for service when they arrived.
But how would transit agencies even go about planning and prioritizing things like remodeling stations, repainting buses, or improving their information design? One possible method could be provided by Jarrett Walker who, in his 2008 paper “Purpose-Driven Public Transport”, mapped out the dichotomous framework for analyzing how transit agencies must often choose between meeting patronage goals (those intended to secure higher ridership for the system) or meeting coverage goals (those designed to appease geographically dispersed stakeholders). Could this framework not be expanded to also encompass aesthetic improvements to stations and vehicles? If so, then Walker’s model could go far in giving transit agencies a guide to scaling and directing aesthetic improvements across their systems. Patronage aesthetic improvements could be large-scale projects concentrated at major transfer hubs, involving improvements such as architectural renovations, multisensory wayfinding systems, or rotating arts & culture exhibits and performances. System-wide aesthetic improvements like a total rebranding would likely have to be sold to stakeholders in patronage-related terms as well, and be designed in such a way that appeals to the greatest number of potential patrons and positively raises the overall profile of the service within the public consciousness. Coverage-based improvements could be smaller-scale, leveraging local community resources for improved buy-in. For example, agencies could provide small grants to neighborhood councils to hold bus stop redesign competitions from among the community, much like King County Metro has done with their bus-stop mural program. In such a program, equity dimensions would take a central role in determining the level of attention (and funding) paid to different neighborhoods or agency assets, endeavoring wherever possible to be a corrective against historic disinvestment and marginalization of community voices.
Despite these arguments in favor of it, transit agencies’ hesitancy to invest in aesthetics is understandable given the political and fiscal constraints these agencies face. As a 2011 APTA report on transit design neatly summarized, “design excellence has sometimes been considered a lesser concern than, for example, the utilitarian functionality of infrastructure implemented on a limited budget”. In a democratic system where budgetary accountability suffuses many of the decisions they can make, transit agencies face public scorn for not only how much money they spend on design, but also where they spend it. Whether it’s the Wall Street Journal doing a deep dive on the bacteria of the New York Subway System, or Forbes Magazine arguing that transit facilities should have all the visual appeal of an army barracks, it’s interesting (but not that surprising) to see the sectors who lament that transit is unappealing, and that we should do nothing about it! However, reports like the ones mentioned above, along with growing study of the topic can help agencies fend off accusations of vanity by providing clear evidence that aesthetics matter in the context of transportation investments, and should therefore gain greater prominence in conversations about how we demonstrate the value of our public transportation systems.
Yet, who is to blame for this paucity of attractive, navigable stations and snazzy buses? In the modern transportation funding paradigm where residents are often given the (perhaps false) choice of improving either car infrastructure or transit, the overwhelming sentiment tends to be in favor of the former.
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| Social media can offer a peek at popular attitudes about transit's appeal (Source: Facebook - New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens) |
A 2013 report published in Transport Policy by a team of Italian researchers surveyed several dozen undergraduates about their relative mode preferences between car and transit across a variety of hypothetical scenarios with fluctuating travel times and costs. Perhaps not all too surprisingly, the respondents tended to prefer travel by single-occupancy car even when it was a significantly costlier and more time-consuming travel option. The researchers determined that this irrational “car stickiness” (as the authors colorfully term it) is the result of “routine decisions, taken over and over again… becom[ing] habitual choices, which cease to be the consequence of a deliberate process of weighing pros and cons.” Essentially, our subjective, pre-defined prejudices have as much to do with our mode-choice as an economic constraints we face. Taken further, this finding would seem to open the door to the possibility that aesthetic- and design-related improvements to transit systems could in fact yield tangible benefits in terms of attracting more users. At the very least, such improvements should be weighed along with traditional improvements to service and not merely tacked on if there’s enough money left over.
Indeed, another report from a different group of Italian researchers suggests there may be support for such a claim. In their 2018 study, they found that aesthetically pleasing transit stations could draw more patronage relative to other stations, that patrons were willing to travel further to them, and that patrons were willing to wait longer for service when they arrived.
But how would transit agencies even go about planning and prioritizing things like remodeling stations, repainting buses, or improving their information design? One possible method could be provided by Jarrett Walker who, in his 2008 paper “Purpose-Driven Public Transport”, mapped out the dichotomous framework for analyzing how transit agencies must often choose between meeting patronage goals (those intended to secure higher ridership for the system) or meeting coverage goals (those designed to appease geographically dispersed stakeholders). Could this framework not be expanded to also encompass aesthetic improvements to stations and vehicles? If so, then Walker’s model could go far in giving transit agencies a guide to scaling and directing aesthetic improvements across their systems. Patronage aesthetic improvements could be large-scale projects concentrated at major transfer hubs, involving improvements such as architectural renovations, multisensory wayfinding systems, or rotating arts & culture exhibits and performances. System-wide aesthetic improvements like a total rebranding would likely have to be sold to stakeholders in patronage-related terms as well, and be designed in such a way that appeals to the greatest number of potential patrons and positively raises the overall profile of the service within the public consciousness. Coverage-based improvements could be smaller-scale, leveraging local community resources for improved buy-in. For example, agencies could provide small grants to neighborhood councils to hold bus stop redesign competitions from among the community, much like King County Metro has done with their bus-stop mural program. In such a program, equity dimensions would take a central role in determining the level of attention (and funding) paid to different neighborhoods or agency assets, endeavoring wherever possible to be a corrective against historic disinvestment and marginalization of community voices.
Despite these arguments in favor of it, transit agencies’ hesitancy to invest in aesthetics is understandable given the political and fiscal constraints these agencies face. As a 2011 APTA report on transit design neatly summarized, “design excellence has sometimes been considered a lesser concern than, for example, the utilitarian functionality of infrastructure implemented on a limited budget”. In a democratic system where budgetary accountability suffuses many of the decisions they can make, transit agencies face public scorn for not only how much money they spend on design, but also where they spend it. Whether it’s the Wall Street Journal doing a deep dive on the bacteria of the New York Subway System, or Forbes Magazine arguing that transit facilities should have all the visual appeal of an army barracks, it’s interesting (but not that surprising) to see the sectors who lament that transit is unappealing, and that we should do nothing about it! However, reports like the ones mentioned above, along with growing study of the topic can help agencies fend off accusations of vanity by providing clear evidence that aesthetics matter in the context of transportation investments, and should therefore gain greater prominence in conversations about how we demonstrate the value of our public transportation systems.
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