"Elsewhere what we see is the growth in travel being absorbed by the transit system, but 60th Street is the one place that we see traffic declining and transit increasing".
Communities, later aided by the federal government, bought out the declining private transit operators and replaced them with public-enterprise operations.
Since the agency began adopting those changes, the rate of accidents has been declining, and transit experts say it will continue to drop as Houston and the train grow accustomed to each other.
As car-pooling has continued to decline, mass transit use has increased in the past decade.
Declining satisfaction levels among transit users lead to significant decrease in their customer loyalty regarding using transit again or recommending transit to a friend or relative.
Asked about Mr. Samuelsen's accusations about the lights, a spokesman for New York City Transit declined to comment, saying the matter was under investigation.
"Public transportation ridership is surging across the country," he wrote, "increasing 6.5percentt in the third quarter of 2008 — the largest quarterly increase in the past 25 years, but transit systems are cutting service, increasing fares and laying off employees as a result of increased transit fuel costs in the past year and declining state and local revenue sources that support transit".
The American Public Transportation Association found in a study last year that three-fourths of companies serving the public transit industry had flat or declining revenues because of the uncertainty around federal transportation financing and the recession.
In 1992 the transit agency announced that because of declining ridership it wanted to close the entire Green Line.
The federal role in providing operating subsidies has been declining, and state and regional governments, along with transit riders (through increased fares), have made up much of the difference.
