APTA
Streetsblog Basics
DECISION 2025: Transit Wins Big — Again — Across America
Several candidates who ran on ambitious transportation reform platforms won at the ballot box on Tuesday — but even more communities said yes to supporting transit directly.
November 6, 2025
America Has a Terrible Traffic Safety Record Because We Drive Too Much
Even though the U.S. traffic fatality rate per mile driven has fallen by two-thirds in the last 50 years, America today still has the deadliest road system per capita in the developed world. Much of the improvement from safer driving and better emergency care has been wiped out by increases in total traffic.
September 8, 2016
American Transit Ridership Hits 57-Year High
The last year transit ridership was this high in the United States, Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act. Not since 1956, according to the American Public Transportation Association, have Americans logged as many transit trips as they did in 2013: 10.7 billion. It was the eighth year in a row that Americans have made more than 10 billion transit trips.
March 10, 2014
The Convergence Between New Technologies and the Decline in Driving
According to a spate of recent studies, Millennials -- a bigger generation than the Baby Boomers -- are driving less than their parents did. But the underlying reasons are a matter of some dispute. Will younger Americans start happily motoring again once the economy is really humming, or is a lasting generational shift underway?
October 1, 2013
APTA Goes After Transit-Harassing Patent Troll
For years, transit agencies and other companies have been harassed by a patent troll seeking to extort them for "settlements" when they use real-time vehicle tracking technologies. ArrivalStar and Melvino Technologies, offshore firms led by one Martin Kelly Jones, claim to hold the rights to those ideas.
June 26, 2013
APTA: How to Talk to a Detractor of High-Speed Rail
Stop me if you’ve heard these before:
January 12, 2012
APTA Survey: Transpo Bill Delay May Force Job Losses in U.S. Transit Industry
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) both agree that a new surface transportation authorization bill needs to be finished before Congress leaves for the August recess. But that doesn’t mean it’ll happen.
February 2, 2011
Household Deficit Reduction: Transit Saves People Almost $10K a Year
With gas prices at their highest level since October 2008, the American Public Transportation Association’s monthly Transit Savings Report estimates that transit riders save, on average, $9,656 a year.
January 10, 2011
APTA Report Prescribes Public Transport to Improve Public Health
A new report written by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute's Todd Litman for the American Public Transit Association [PDF], the trade organization for the nation's transit agencies, reminds us that one of the most valuable benefits of transit is to our health. Summarizing the state of research in the field, "Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits" lays out the basic fact that increasing transit use is an easy way of preventing thousands of unnecessary deaths each year.
August 19, 2010
Transit Industry and State DOTs Agree: Senate Climate Bill Needs ‘Rewrite’
The transit industry's leading D.C. lobbying outlet today joined the umbrella group for state DOTs and two major construction groups to protest the Senate climate bill's failure to set aside all of the revenue from its proposed new fuel fees for infrastructure projects -- specifically, to the cash-strapped highway trust fund that is generally split, 80-20, between roads and transit.
May 19, 2010