The American Public Transportation Association reported last week that U.S. transit ridership reached an all-time high (all-time since 1956, that is). This represents, APTA claims, “a fundamental shift going on in the way we move about our communities.”

Not so, as Wendell Cox pointed out in Joel Kotkin’s New Geography website and planning professors David King, Michael Manville and Michael Smart write in the Washington Post. In their view, the idea that the United States is seeing a vast boom in mass transit use is way overblown. The three professors note that, since population is rising, transit trips per capita actually declined slightly between 2008 and 2013. “There is nothing exceptional about last year’s numbers,” they write. “They represent a depressing norm.” Cox concedes that transit ridership has grown faster than vehicle use since 1995, but points out that its share of urban travel has barely budge, “because its 1994 share of travel was too small.” He presents the following graph, which tells the story:

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