What should America’s transit ‘moonshot’ look like?

The nation doesn’t just need more transit. It needs to build faster, more advanced transit in the places with the highest ridership potential.

Subway proposals in Washington, DC, Manhattan and San Francisco. Are these the makings of a moonshot?

America needs a transit “moonshot” on the scale of the Interstate Highway Act. That’s the message of a new report by the advocacy group Transportation for America. It calls for a dedicated stream of federal transit funding two and a half times greater than what the U.S. currently spends in order to give cities “world-class” transit.

The report comes as members of Congress begin to discuss the next five year surface transportation reauthorization bill to replace the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. It lays out a path to getting transit service levels per capita on par with other developed countries by building new transit lines and running more transit vehicles. But the report stops short of recommending where those new transit lines should go (beyond overall miles per metro area), which network design principles should guide that buildout, and what sorts of technologies should power and control those transit vehicles.

There are some good reasons why this report keeps its recommendations so general. America does, in fact, need a lot more transit in cities big and small. But I also think the report invites a more granular exploration of what America’s transit moonshot could actually look like on the ground.

It matters a great deal what sorts of transit projects the nation prioritizes going forward. Will America build transit using the latest technologies and design best practices, like automation, electrification, grade-separation and through-running service? Or will it continue to build slow, at-grade light rail lines; infrequent diesel commuter trains; and short, impossibly expensive heavy rail subway extensions?

Will politicians, planners, and advocates prioritize reducing travel times, maximizing ridership growth, and minimizing construction costs? Or will they continue to follow the political, social, and geographical paths of least resistance?

These choices could determine whether transit will broaden its appeal, serving many more people than it does today, or whether it will remain a marginal part of America’s transportation landscape.

In an email, Corrigan Salerno, policy manager at Transportation for American, explained the rationale of the report. “Looking at technology, design, and individual cases is important, but they are highly context-specific. By contrast, analyzing the number of transit vehicles per capita works across the 452 urban areas we studied. We determined that defining the problem in terms that are easy to understand… and then identifying a realistic scale of investment needed to bring the service to world-class levels would be most helpful in establishing a baseline for what is needed in the U.S., to give advocates and policy-makers alike a clear target to aim for.”

That seems like a wise enough approach in a political system where elected officials from the most populous cities and states are structurally under-represented. Still, I think it’s a missed opportunity to explain to policymakers and the public what world-class transit actually is. Yes, it’s more frequent bus service in Springfield — all the Springfields. But mostly, it’s complex, costly, and utterly transformative subways in places like New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

America’s Transit Exceptionalism

One of the points I make in my book is that high-tech transit is a form of modernity that effectively doesn’t exist in the U.S. We don’t understand the benefits of automated metros or through-running, electrified regional rail because we’ve never experienced them. Our vision of the future of transportation is all EVs and AVs and Tesla tunnels and flying taxis. Without a concerted effort to develop transit that can compete with these other modes on travel time, usefulness, and perhaps even “wow factor,” this Muskian vision will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Avoiding this fate will require a futuristic transit moonshot that promises to deliver transit that is better than it has ever been.

Somehow, the broad majority of Americans will need to be convinced of the fact that big transit investments in major cities are essential for the entire nation’s economy, as the citizens of virtually every other developed country have come to understand. Advocates will need to emphasize — without demonizing transit agencies — that crumbling transit systems are national embarrassments. State-of-the-art transit systems are symbols of national pride.

This really hit home for me recently while reading Dan Wang’s Breakneck, about China’s economic development. Awe-inspiring transit projects don’t just improve quality of life, Wang explains, they’re an essential part of the legitimacy of the state.

Transportation for America’s report seems like as good an excuse as any to fantasize about where a true transit moonshot could land us. (Salerno said the group may release future reports looking at specific projects and transit technologies.) Below is a list of programs and projects that, I believe, would go a long way toward giving American cities world-class transit. It’s not total fantasy: Many of the projects on the list have already been proposed by city and state governments. Most of the rest are improvements to existing light rail and commuter rail systems. Hopefully this post can serve as a conversation starter, in the comments and beyond.

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Build the top 10 highest-ridership-potential grade-separated transit lines, with no more than two in any one metro area.

Here’s a best guess list, including only projects that have been proposed by planners. (There are surely even better projects out there that have not been proposed because they’re viewed as unrealistically challenging and expensive.) I’m excluding projects that are already significantly funded and relatively close to groundbreaking, like the IBX and the 2nd Avenue Subway Phase II in New York, BART to San Jose, and Austin’s light rail system.

• 2nd Avenue Subway southern extension, Manhattan

• Utica Subway, Brooklyn

• Sepulveda Transit Corridor, Los Angeles

• K Line Extension to Mid-City and West Hollywood, Los Angeles

• Geary/19th Avenue Subway, San Francisco

• Downtown relief subway, including Georgetown station and new Potomac crossing, Washington, DC

• Ballard Subway, Seattle

• Downtown Miami to Miami Beach transit line, Miami

• Roosevelt Subway, Philadelphia

• Red Line, Baltimore

America's Most Exciting Transit Project

Turn America’s top 10 busiest commuter rail networks into super-express regional metro systems like Germany’s S-Bahns. That means electrification, level boarding, through-running service, and as much grade separation as possible.

Look at a map of Metra in Chicago, Metrolink in Los Angeles, SEPTA in Philadelphia, or Tri-Rail in Miami. Now imagine each of those lines are lines on a subway map, where the expectation is that trains will arrive every ten minutes or better throughout the day.

Look at a map of the three commuter rail providers in the New York City area, or the two in the Washington, DC area. Now imagine those arbitrary administrative boundaries no longer existed. Trains would instead “run through” the city center to the other side of the region, giving passengers one-seat rides to many more destinations across multiple states.

Look at the existing terminus stations in downtown Boston and downtown San Francisco. Imagine new tunnels going across downtown (in Boston’s case) or the Bay (in San Francisco’s) uniting the disconnected halves of the commuter rail system into an interconnected regional network.

Salt Lake’s FrontRunner and Seattle’s Sounder system would also become super-express regional metros under this proposal.

Through-running proposals for New York, Boston, and San Francisco.

For many trips along these new and improved routes, travel times would be significantly faster than driving. The benefits of these projects would extend far beyond the principal city, to exurban areas and nearby mid-sized cities (and potentially a lot of swing districts). Through-running in Boston would offer new, faster connections to Maine and New Hampshire, for example. In the Bay Area, through-running would connect Silicon Valley to Sacramento and Stockton.

Why automated metros are the future

Fully grade-separate and automate the top 10 highest-ridership light rail lines, with no more than two in any one metro area

This one’s for the sunbelt, where a lot of light rail lines are relatively close to being fully grade separated. I’m excluding legacy streetcar systems like those in Boston and San Francisco since they function more like buses for long stretches of their run. All of the following lines would become much faster and more frequent than they currently are with automation and full grade-separation.

• A Line, Los Angeles

• E Line, Los Angeles

• Line 1, Seattle

• Line 2, Seattle

• Hudson-Bergen Line, New Jersey

• Blue Line, San Diego

• Blue Line, Portland

• Green Line, Twin Cities

• Red Line, Houston

• Orange Line, Dallas

Reader: What would your transit moonshot look like? What programs or projects am I missing?