WASHINGTON -- As President Joe Biden urges more federal spending for public transportation, transit agencies slowed by covid-19 are trying to figure out how to win back passengers.
It's made more urgent as the United States confronts the climate change crisis. Biden has pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by the end of the decade, an aggressive target that will require car-loving Americans to transform the way they travel, ditching gas-guzzling cars for electric vehicles or embracing mass transit.
"We have a huge opportunity here to provide fast, safe, reliable, clean transportation in this country, and transit is part of the infrastructure," Biden said at an event Friday to promote rail and public transportation.
With fewer transportation alternatives, lower-income people are more reliant on public transportation for commuting and their daily lives. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti promises free transit fares for them and for students.
The city's Metro ridership has fallen to about half its peak of 1.2 million, and Garcetti said getting more people on board would accelerate economic recovery "for our most vulnerable" and reduce the city's traffic and emissions.
In Washington, D.C., where many federal employees now telework as a result of covid-19 restrictions, transit officials are mulling lowering fares. New York City has deployed several hundred additional police officers in recent months after a series of subway attacks. The Chicago area is looking at rejiggering train schedules to accommodate more passengers traveling throughout the day, part of a pandemic shift from traditional 9-to-5 work days. Houston is pledging improvements to 17 of its higher-frequency bus routes.
Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would provide $85 billion over eight years to update and replace subway cars and repair aging tracks and stations; of that amount, $25 billion would go to expanding bus routes and rail lines. Another $25 billion would pay to convert gasoline- and diesel-powered mass transit buses to zero-emission electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are balking at the price tag, as well as Biden's plan to increase corporate taxes to pay for it.
The Republican National Committee has argued that just 7% of the money in Biden's $2.3 trillion plan covers infrastructure as they define it, leaving public transit out of the mix. A Senate GOP counteroffer proposes $568 billion for infrastructure, resulting in cuts to public transit funding by several billion dollars, according to an Eno analysis.
"Biden's plan is not about infrastructure -- it is a plan to levy a job-destroying $2 trillion tax hike while forcing through a far-left, Green New Deal-style agenda," the RNC wrote on its blog.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says while commuting patterns may be shifting, now is the time to boost public transportation, not downsize it.
The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave public transit a dismal D-minus grade for its crumbling network, citing 1 in 5 transit vehicles in "poor" condition" and a repair backlog of over $100 billion.
"Today, Americans who rely on public transportation to get to work spend twice as long commuting as those who drive. And it's not as reliable as it should be," Buttigieg said. "A lot of this is because of the age of our transit infrastructure -- across the country there are systems in urgent need of upgrade and modernization."
VANISHED PASSENGERS
A year ago, transit ridership nationwide drained to almost nothing as tens of millions of Americans hunkered at home because of the raging virus, shunning travel in trains and buses. To stay afloat, transit agencies cut payroll and slashed services.
Three rounds totaling nearly $70 billion in federal covid-19 emergency assistance pulled transit agencies from the brink of financial collapse. That federal aid is now expected to cover operating deficits from declining passenger revenue as well as costly covid-19 cleaning and safety protocols through at least 2022.
Still, even as vaccinations become more widespread, it's uncertain how many riders will come back.
Work-from-home arrangements initially seen as temporary appear to be a more durable trend. Transportation alternatives such as ride-share programs -- and bike shares, scooters and driverless cars -- threaten to eat away at transit ridership. Some city-dwellers, weary of staying in crammed quarters, have left for wide open spaces with less access to transit.
To date, about 50% of transit riders nationwide have returned compared to pre-pandemic times, according to the American Public Transportation Association. The biggest losses -- about 65.6% -- are in commuter rail systems serving white-collar suburbanites traveling to downtown workplaces.
From coast to coast, the changed ridership is striking.
In the Chicago area, transit ridership was down 71% in March compared with the same time in 2020, according to the Regional Transportation Authority. Pre-pandemic the system saw nearly 2 million riders weekdays on Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses, Metra commuter rail and suburban Pace buses.
Those who continue to rely on public transportation are mostly Black, Hispanic and low-income workers. For that reason, the Chicago Transit Authority, which runs 24 hours, didn't cut routes or service even as ridership plunged to 200,000 at the lowest.
Although empty train cars are common in some parts of the city, Chicago's Green Line trains connecting the south and west sides to downtown remain busy, says 34-year-old Ryan Patrick Thomas. Some days it's standing room only.
He commutes daily from the predominantly Black Austin neighborhood to work downtown at a company that operates senior living centers. Thomas, who is Black, says trains that used to have mixed crowds are now mostly Black, noting the virus has disproportionately hit people of color.
"These trains seem to be just as full of people in more vulnerable demographics," he said.
New York's subway system lost billions in revenue and more than 90% of its riders at the height of the pandemic, not to mention about 150 employees who died of covid-19. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on disinfecting train cars and nearly 500 stations, even taking the unprecedented move of shutting the system down overnight; it remains closed between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
Subway ridership remains down close to 70%, though it continues to rise gradually. Current predictions have roughly 85% of riders coming back by the end of 2024.
More than $14 billion in federal aid has put the agency on sound fiscal footing until mid-2024, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Patrick Foye said. How quickly riders return will dictate what happens after that.
BIDEN PLAN
The Biden plan would invest $621 billion to modernize transportation infrastructure, putting an emphasis on public transit and rail needs over roads by a ratio of 1.43 to 1, according to Urban Institute researcher Yonah Freemark. That signals a big shift in how the nation moves goods and people.
Projects already in the pipeline likely stand to gain the most, including a planned extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system to San Jose and Santa Clara, Calif.; bus rapid transit lines in St. Paul, Minn., Charleston, S.C., and Las Vegas; and New York City's long-awaited Second Avenue subway line.
Biden's proposal would also offer federal aid to cities developing projects that relieve congestion, boost access to underserved populations and help the environment, even if construction is several years away.
"If you're a city that has not developed a plan and identified local revenues to support transit improvements, you may actually lose out," Freemark said.
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen, Christopher Weber, Sophia Tareen, David Porter, Juan Lozano and Ashraf Khalil of The Associated Press.
