Steve Polzin, a researcher with the Department of Transportation, estimates that transit will recover 90 percent of its prepandemic riders by 2023, but will never get much more than that. I think 90 percent is far too high, but he has access to more data than I have.
This chart is based on numbers on page 9 of Polzin’s presentation.
Polzin, who has been mentioned here many times before, made his projection in a presentation last week to the Transportation Research Forum. The presentation covered far more than just transit, and made good points about air travel, freight, and other modes as well.
Among other things, he presents data showing that the “daily distribution of trips has flattened,” meaning we aren’t seeing big morning and afternoon peaks. I’ve pointed to anecdotal evidence of this but Polzin has a graph based on INRIX data.
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Polzin’s predictions of travel in the next four years, shown on page 9 of the presentation and in my graph above, are impossibly precise, like to the nearest tenth of a percent. Unfortunately, the presentation doesn’t say how he came up with these numbers, but I consider some of them to be unlikely.
I suspect he is underestimating driving, which I expect to exceed 2019 levels as soon as next year considering that people are likely to substitute driving for various forms of mass transportation. As he notes, by August 2020 freight shipments had already grown to exceed 2019 levels, and there’s no reason to think that passenger travel will remain depressed.
Meanwhile, I think he is overestimating all of the other modes in his table. Even after the pandemic is resolved, such things as working at home and teleconferencing are going to put a permanent crimp in all forms of mass transportation. Long-distance air travel may eventually recover, but it won’t be to a higher percentage of 2019 levels than driving, as he predicts, especially when combined with short-distance air travel, which I don’t think will recover as quickly if ever.
Despite these quibbles, Polzin makes a lot of good points. The main question is whether anyone is willing to listen to these kinds of analyses. We were already spending way too much money on modes of transportation that were doing far too little. The pandemic has greatly reduced the use of such modes but so far hasn’t reduced people’s willingness to spend money on them.
Could use this research presentation, as I would be shocked if my Metro regional government is not back asking for more taxpayer money to build their stupid light rail extension, called the SW Corridor project, within the next 12 months. Voters in the Metro region strongly rejected only a few weeks back now Metro’s proposed Payroll tax for paying for their stupid light rail boondoggle.
Nope…..
I said it before, Transit agencies have no interest in providing transit. They want infrastructure empires. it’s about retention of public sector jobs and maintaining a tax gobbling bureaucracy.
As the Antiplanner has said, smart infrastructure is dumb infrastructure. The rise in cycling during the pandemic, the user provides his own transportation infrastructure the government need only provide a safe flat surface.
Lazy Reader, well said. Couldn’t agree more.
Wall Street Journal
Public Transit Agencies Slash Services, Staff as Coronavirus Keeps Ridership Low
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From San Francisco to Washington, D.C., officials say federal emergency funding is drying up and they need more
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/public-transit-agencies-slash-services-staff-as-coronavirus-keeps-ridership-low-11606582853?
“The [San Francisco] agency has eliminated half its transit lines and focused on serving essential workers and neighborhoods with the fewest mobility options.
Even so, Mr. Tumlin said, “we leave hundreds of essential workers behind at the curb every day, on a dozen of our lines, because we’ve exceeded the social-distancing requirements.”
Dispatching more buses isn’t an option, he said: “We are out of money.””
The article reads to me like a carefully orchestrated first step in a plea for more money from Congress.
Everyones an “essential worker” I don’t care if you wait tables or strip; it’s someone’s livelihood. Government workers were immune from lockdown & paid no matter status of the economy. If they were furloughed like private business this “Pandemic” would’ve been over by April.