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For transit's typical patrons — the elderly and the poor, who have no alternative way to travel — a city's buses, subways and trolleys are essential and affordable lifelines. Moreover, the indirect benefits of subways and rail systems, like those flowing from schools and fire departments, accrue to everyone. "We have to ask ourselves where we would be without it," says Edmund Adams, president of the Southwest Ohio Regional Transportation Authority. "As a society, we would not be moving people to their jobs, or the elderly or handicapped to their destinations."
Public-spiritedness, however, does not pay the bills. In cities with large fixed systems, federal belt tightening has already begun to be felt in fare hikes. Ironically, the higher tabs could make things worse by reducing ridership and causing deeper transit deficits. This month the price of a token in New York City's crime-plagued subway system rose from 75¢ to 90¢, despite studies showing that each 5¢ increase lowers ridership 1%. In some cities, like San Bernardino, Calif., businesses have tried to take up the slack by offering discounts to transit travelers, with uneven success. "Nothing will substantially increase ridership," says Pierre de Vise, a public administration professor at Chicago's Roosevelt University. "The only solution is for mass transit to control its losses."
Despite transit's best efforts, most Americans, especially in the Sunbelt, both live and work outside inner cities in places where public transportation is nearly nonexistent. Only 6.4% of the nation's workers ride transit systems to their jobs. "Fixed systems in these newer sprawl cities are really bucking the tide of demographics and economics," warns the Urban Institute's Miller. Indeed, according to a 1980 study for UMTA, only four cities are serious candidates for new rapid-transit systems: Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles and Seattle. America's far-flung living habits were partly created by its love affair with the car. Likewise, glistening new transit systems, like those in Baltimore and Atlanta, may point people in a different direction. Says Selwyn Enzer, a University of Southern California futurist: "As much as the auto and the freeway shaped our cities, mass transit has the capacity to change them again." — By Susan Tifft. Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington and Richard Woodbury/ Los Angeles, with other bureaus
* Technically, the cars are not trolleys because they do not operate on conventional trolley poles and wheels.