The Second Coming of Mass Transit and the Decline of Driving in America

Last year, Americans took 10.7 billion trips on mass transit. That's the highest number of trains, buses, and trolleys boarded in nearly six decades. Ridership increased by nearly every metric: From light rail in Utah to buses in New York to trains in Miami, more people were forgoing cars and hopping aboard with the teeming masses.

While the announcement makes for something of a milestone, as the Atlantic's Jenny Xie notes, the trend has been in evidence for some time: "In fact, transit ridership has consistently hit over 10 billion for the past eight years in a row—in 2012, the total was 10.5 billion, and in 2011, 10.4 billion."

Note that 2006 was about the time when young people, for the first time in decades, officially started losing interest in driving. Statistically speaking, anyway. According to US Pirg, the total miles driven by Americans started to flatline mid-decade. "Young people aged 16 to 34 drove 23 percent fewer miles on average in 2009 than they did in 2001—a greater decline in driving than any other age group," the report stated. I (and many others) have argued that this decline has to do with the rise of social media and the cultural cache of cities.

The total number of miles driven, per capita, is sliding, too.

Beginning in 2010, cities have been growing faster than suburbs—another first in a long while—due in part to younger people moving into urban areas. And cities are more likely to have good transit systems that can serve as alternatives to cars.

It makes sense that mass transit is ascendant while the most hospitable environments for driving are stagnating, but there's more to the story, too. Look where the technology for cars is going—the autos we've gotten most excited about in recent years have been those that most radically upend our assumptions about cars in general: all-electric sports cars and sedans that drive themselves.

Which is to say, we seem to be increasingly comfortable letting go of the classic conception of cars. What is the Google Car but a highly intelligent, personalized trolley, anyway? Even car enthusiasts are cheering on the development of a car that cedes much of its car-ness to computers and behaves more like a subway than a Subaru.

A growing number of us are content to forget about our drivers' licenses, let our cars transform into trains, and to hop aboard the old-school version whenever we need to move around. Both trends are moving relatively slowly—we're nowhere near the mass transit ridership peaks of the 40s, and total miles driven are tapering off as opposed to plummeting—but it's hard to argue that our attitudes towards driving aren't being transformed by technology and modern social structures. Convenience, the ability to socialize while mobile, and the freedom to focus on our thoughts and gadgets might be taking precedence over having direct control of the vehicle.

There will always be classic car diehards, but a onetime stalwart staple of Americana is evolving into something more efficient, safer, and, interestingly, more communal. We still want to get where we're going, but the desire to sit alone in the driver's seat seems to be in decline.