The Problem With “Infrastructurism”

Have you ever heard someone say that building a new transit line will increase ridership by so many thousands of riders?

Jarrett Walker at Human Transit calls folks who subscribe to that idea "infrastructurists," and he says it's a mistake to attribute too much importance to physical infrastructure. In the end, it's service -- which can be facilitated by new infrastructure -- that influences ridership.

The "infrastructurist" mentality was on display, Walker says, in a recent study published by the Transportation Research Board, which Streetsblog covered in July. The authors examined why some transit lines attract more riders than others.

Based on the transit lines they studied, the authors did not find that speed, frequency, and reliability "individually had a statistically significant effect on ridership." But Walker says there's plenty of evidence demonstrating the effect of service quality on ridership:

Walker has some additional critiques of the study that he says arise from the "infrastructurist" point of view. It's an easy trap to fall into, he says.

Elsewhere on the Network today: The Political Environment explains the psychology behind Wisconsin's rush to spend big money to reduce the "rush minute" -- the suburban Milwaukee car commuter's version of rush hour. Pedestrian Observations discusses the pluses and minuses of locating rail alongside a road right-of-way. And Better Institutions says U.S. DOT's pronunciations about recovering driving levels are misleading.