At least 20 percent of former Long Island Railroad commuter-train riders are “lost forever,” predicts Gerald Bringmann, the chair of the transit agency’s commuter council. This raises the question of whether capital improvements to the railroad that “sounded great” before the pandemic make any sense today.
“The longer people work remotely, the more businesses are finding, ‘You know what? This is working,'” says MTA board member Kevin Law, who is also the president of a Long Island business group. People like working at home, Law added, and don’t like spending hours trying to get to work on someone else’s timetable.
The decline in commuter-train ridership had “been a trend, but COVID-19 accelerated it at a massive rate,” notes the chief editor of Railway Age magazine. Commuter railroads “are going to have to adjust, if they can, to these new commuting patterns.”
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Not just commuter trains, of course, will lose riders in the long run. Calgary Transit put together three scenarios about the future and the best case predicted a long-run 25 percent drop in ridership from pre-pandemic levels. It’s nice to see transit agencies being realistic about the future, but Calgary is still planning to build a new C$4.9-billion light-rail line. The city has already spent C$500 million buying right of way, and it wouldn’t want to waste that money by not building the line.
Similarly, the Long Island Railroad isn’t planning any major service reductions. Instead, it is trying to adjust by relying more on weekend and off-peak riders. But if its core market of peak riders declines, it isn’t likely that off-peak riders can make up for it. After all, as the owner of New York City’s original subway, August Belmont, Jr., once said, “the profits are in the straps,” that is, in the crowded periods of the day when standees needed to hang on to straps. Spending more money to run more less-than-full trains doesn’t make economic sense.
Applying a little elementary arithmetic to this trend, if new costs—due to COVID cleaning, for example—increase by 10% and ridership decreases by 20%, the cost per passenger increases by 37.5%. (1.1/0.8=1.375)
Even if costs remain stable (I know. I’m laughing too.), the cost per passenger would still go up by 25%.
Is theatre a point where decision makers would finally say, “Okay, that’s enough, it’s no longer worth it.”
The meme, “Everybody is working from home and nobody’s coming back” is a little extreme. This is not an all-or-none problem or solution.
Before the pandemic, coworking spaces were becoming popular. One of the most prominent (and troubled) was WeWork.
“WeWork is an American commercial real estate company that provides flexible shared workspaces for technology startups and services for other enterprises. WeWork designs and builds physical and virtual shared spaces and office services for entrepreneurs and companies.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeWork
So while people rightly say that for many, working from home is not the best solution, returning to large concentrated offices in “downtown” is also not the best solution and alternatives in suburbs and small towns are readily available.
I’d be curious how many office workers, working from home, are playing up their fears of Covid19 with the boss because they want to work remotely.
I’m curious how many office managers are playing up their fears of being sued for forcing people to work in an unsafe office or manufacturing or retail environment.
In 1969, H3N2 flu killed 100,000 Americans.
Did we SHUT DOWN all of society? No, we held the most famous large social gathering ever, Woodstock and landed on the Moon.
A disease with a 99% survival rate is No pandemic, deaths are overexaggerated; mostly co-morbidity, dense infection clusters from the lockdowns and COVID positive fatalities of other concerns (gunshots, crashes, heart attacks) It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s bullshit. Germaphobia turned Americans into pussies.
I was mask free til May (by force of employer) and never contracted a thing.Govt never gives you your freedom back, Either TAKE IT, Fight for it or wear your muzzle like a good little bitch.
70 years ago the law was pink triangles and stars of david patch.
50 years ago, Certain folks had to sit in the back of the bus
I don’t have a strong opinion on COVID-19 numbers and for good reason … nobody knows.
“The spottiness [of COVID-19 recovery data] stems from the absence of both an agreed-upon definition for a coronavirus recovery and a standardized way to track the numbers of patients, the health experts say. What constitutes recovery is so nebulous that some states don’t even track it, and those that do probably undercount the true number.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-have-recovered-from-covid-19-cases-no-one-knows-11603963801?
This seems to be a case of nobody knows but everybody has an opinion. And some of those every bodies think they are in command.
Follow the science! Sure. But science needs data.
”
I’m curious how many office managers are playing up their fears of being sued for forcing people to work in an unsafe office or manufacturing or retail environment.
”
Retail being shut is largely being done at state level. I dono’t know of any major retailers who have not opening stores where permitted.
Same w/ industrial.
Not seeing the big players do it. It may be happening but not a big scale.
Offices though… they’re a different cat. 95% of what most people do in an office can be done w/out one thanks to modern tech + fat data pipes. And a chunk of that 5% is just face to face meetings which, eh, good enough not always having those.
Some people are genuinely scared. Some people don’t see the use of the risk cuz it feels like they’re getting things done w/out going in to the office. I suspect that some pushback is coming form folks who are playing up to some extent those things cuz they like working remotely.
@antiplanner, did you see that SunRail’s board just voted to push forward to an extension to DeLand despite Volusia dropping out before this?
https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/SunRail-commission-advances-proposed-DeLand-commuter-rail-extension–61984
The vote passed narrowly by 3-2, with some officials saying the $100 million project wouldn’t payoff and that it would put a burden on county taxpayers, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Commission officials told the news outlet that it’s unclear if the vote will have the authority to force Volusia County to contribute to the extension or compel the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) to carry out the project.