The Re-Emergence of Shared Transit

As much as, I like automobiles - and, mind you, I do - even a hard-line autophile like me has to take notice of what can only be described as a modern resurgence of interest in shared transit. And I say this intentionally, avoiding the common moniker of "mass transit", as it doesn't really do justice to what's been occurring, not only just the last few years, but over the last several decades, in our large metropolitan areas as well as our suburban, and even rural, locales.


Shared transit - and let's stick with overland travel for now - really began to hit its initial stride with coach travel (stagecoaches in the United States, analog transportation in other countries and places) - within the last two centuries. Prior to that, most traveling folks either hoofed it, traveling on foot, or found a way to ride a horse or other beast of burden. As the mechanized age began to displace the coach lines and beasts of burden - trains, in particular - the rise of shared transportation gave new horizons to everyone who could manage to pay the fare. Trains begat urban and interurban lines, including trolleys, then electric trolleys, subways and elevated trains across the globe. As the Nineteenth Century turned into the Twentieth, the automobile arrived, in fits and jerks, then in full force. By the midde of the century, contemporary mass transit was rapidly being replaced by individual transport - the rise of the automobile, by the fifties, had effectively sounded the apparent death knell for passenger rail lines, trolleys, interurban lines and the like. While city bus lines hung on in many areas - having displaced the electric interurban lines quite literally, the lines and rails being ripped out or abandoned - riders tended to be only those poor folks who couldn't afford the new individuality of automobiles and the embrace of suburban living.

Fast-forward through the dismal 1960s and the pain of war and civil unrest, and we ran right into the Oil Embargo of the early 1970s, striking the first blow at the heart of the sanctity of personal automobile travel. Gas rationing lines, spiking prices, and inefficient automobiles led to a decades-long mercurial makeover of the automobile, and the whole idea of shared transit. Year after year cities propped up their aging mass transportation systems - subways, trains, els, buses - with subsidies, while the occasional vanguard shouted out the need to develop infrastructure and a true directive toward shared transportation. While the 1980s saw us stumble along at the beginning of that decade, by the end of the eighties SUV sales were starting to roar, and by the end of the next decade, SUVs ruled the roads, with truck and SUV sales outsripping automobile sales across the country, and around the globe.


The events of the new millenia changed all that. Terrorist attacks brought escalating energy prices and shook the financial markets, destabilizing the entire transportation structure. Hybrid automobiles entered the fray, slowly, cautiously nibbilng away at wide public acceptance while SUVs became the social pariahs of the transportation scene. As the financial model caved in 2006, and as the recession became apparent in 2007, markets continued to shift, and the long-muted voices of shared transit began to be heard again. The complete reshuffling of all that is and was automobile production, worldwide, portends a seismic shift in priorities.


In the last two decades, shared transportation systems have cropped up all over, in varying forms, and to varying degrees of success. Los Angeles has methodically made over the sprawling city's transportation system at phenomenal expense, while Phoenix has, after decades of resistance, embraced an effective shared transporation system including light rail - http://www.valleymetro.org/metro_light_rail. Cities and states that long ago wrote off light rail and interurban lines have begun to resurrect long-dormant plans - in Ohio, for example, causing a re-examination of the often-mentioned but never built light rail lines envisioned on the Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati corridor.

In other places, other shared transit ideas are coming to fruition. Shared automobiles, rented by the hour as needed - like http://www.zipcar.com/, have taken hold, not only in Europe, but in the United States, on both coasts, as effective means by which to avoid automobile ownership and all of the attendant costs while still having means to access. In Paris, a shared bicycle system, Velib http://www.velib.paris.fr/ allows shared use of a bevy of bicycles, cutting down on the number of bicycles used and parked by riders while allowing the increased availablility of a ride for all.


Future shared transport systems are growing, too - from mass bicycle renatal programs to individual pods that can attach to others to more efficiently move - and even automated automobiles http://www.mazda.com/, with the clear intent to enhance efficiency while offering safe alternatives in shared travel.




Now, as a boy, I may have fallen for a little red Corvette http://www.corvette.com/ - and, my, that 1968 red Stingray looked awfully good to my 6-year-old eyes - but now I find that, as we peer with greater, daily concern, frustration and intensity at the sign in front of the filling station, shared transportation truly is on the rise. Again.