The Importance of Public Transit For various reasons, many people can't drive or choose not to. They might be too young to hold a license or too old to continue driving safely. They might have an injury or a chronic condition that limits driving. They might never have learned to drive, or their car might be in the repair shop. Also, many people cannot afford to own and maintain a car, and some prefer to leave their cars at home when they head for work.
Public transit gives people options.
Without it, some people would either have to reduce their travel or depend on people with cars to provide them with rides. In addition to providing alternative means of travel, public transit can improve mobility by making more efficient use of the existing transportation network. In 1999, for example, Southern Californians boarded buses and trains for a total of 687 million transit trips. Without transit, a lot more cars would have been on the roads and freeways, contributing to congestion. For a long time, Southern California's population has been growing faster than the capacity of our street and highway system, and it has become more and more difficult to build enough highways to eliminate the increasing congestion.