I guess it shows what a city mouse I am that “…one in three Americans has never used public transportation…”[pdf] surprised me.

I am delighted to see that Google’s public transit directions includes the cost of the trip, and for comparison the cost of driving.  They show the cost to you, not the externalized costs.  To get a feel for how these costs break down you can look at this. Very interesting. I’d tried to compute these numbers myself some years ago[1], so the line items I had not included are interesting.  For example I didn’t have a line for the cost of accidents.

The little report that the quote above is taken from has a point it’s making.  People have their habits and they rarely change them.  So the transit systems really ought to make an effort to get people introduced to the system.   I can think of a few, but not many, examples for free trial offers by transit systems.  There should be more.