There are a lot of misconceptions about public transit, despite its critical role in getting people around.

It's a $55-billion industry in the U.S. and a system that has been stretched by record-high gas prices and ridership levels not seen since the 1950s even as a troubled economy reduces funding nationwide.

The American Public Transportation Association says the long-term trend is clear: Ridership on the nation's buses, subways, commuter rail lines and other transit systems grew 34% in 1995-2009, outpacing 23% growth in the number of vehicle miles driven on highways in that period. The number of workers who rely on transit regularly grew by a million, to nearly 7 million nationwide, in 2005-09.

As state and local leaders explore setting up a regional public transportation system to help stabilize and ultimately improve service in southeast Michigan, they'll have to battle misunderstandings about public transportation:

Transit should pay for itself.

No big-city transit system in the U.S. is self-sustaining.

Chicago's three main transit systems are among the best at it, with revenue from fares, advertising on rail and buses and investments bringing in about 50% of operating costs, as Illinois state law requires.

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True, that same pot of money pays for both road building and maintenance and for building and operating transit. But a U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) report in January debunked the notion that those taxes -- often called "user fees" by advocates of road spending -- are adequate. By PIRG's estimate, the U.S. has spent $600 billion more on highways since the system was built than what "user fees" such as gas taxes and vehicle registration fees paid for, and today those fees cover only about half of the cost of building and maintaining roads.
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