Keeping Up with the Joneses: Radial vs. Multidestinational Transit in Decentralizing Regions

Increasingly dispersed travel patterns in contemporary American urban areas raise questions about appropriate policy for fixed-route public transit, particularly rail transit. Some argue that fixed transit routes should be radial, serving only regional central business districts and adjoining inner-city neighborhoods; others argue that fixed routes should be reconfigured as networks to serve many regional destinations. This article evaluates these two approaches with an examination of transit performance indicators in nine urban regions, tabulated annually from time series data for 1983 through 1998. The public transit route configuration in six of the nine regions follows the first approach. The configuration in the remaining three regions is multidestinational. The results of this examination, controlled for population, show that the multidestinational approach is more effective, about as efficient, and more equitable than the best of the radial approaches.