Everybody knows that the purpose of living in cities is to keep public transit systems operating. Thus, says Bloomberg News, people who work at home are “threatening” transit for everyone else (meaning all of the 1 percenters who ride transit).
Not to worry. Someone named Kristin Schwab, over at Marketplace, has a plan to “lure riders back” to transit. (Is that like luring little kids with candy?) Transit is safe from COVID, she claims, but to overcome public perceptions that it is not, transit agencies should still require people to wear masks and regularly clean transit vehicles. Okay, that’s not so much a plan as it is wishful thinking.
Back at Bloomberg, San Francisco writers Tiffany Chu and Daniel Ramot say that we should fix transit by (1) giving it dedicated funding, meaning funding that transit agencies are sure to get no matter how poorly they perform; and (2) tie funding to outcomes, meaning transit agencies only get money if they produce results. These contradictory suggestions are made worse by the “outcomes” Chu and Ramot suggest, including “expanding access to jobs, improving cost efficiency, driving equity and reducing carbon emissions.”
Note that actually attracting transit riders isn’t considered an important outcome. I would argue that, if transit agencies were judged by the outcomes Chu and Ramot suggest, they would get no money at all, but of course the agencies will simply fudge the numbers to make sure they get a lot of money even if no one rides transit.
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Meanwhile, the Washington Metro system staff told its board last week that it only expects ridership to recover to 42 percent of pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. Since they were only at 26 percent as of March, that might be realistic.
Transit agencies are in something of a bind here. If they predict low ridership, people other than the Antiplanner are going to begin to wonder why they are spending so much money funding it. On the other hand, if they set up really low expectations (such as 42 percent), and then ridership exceeds that (say 50 percent), they will be regarded as heroes for doing such a good job at luring people back.
What we have to remember is that ridership was already so pathetic before the pandemic that transit really was irrelevant everywhere except New York and a few downtown areas. The pandemic has just made this a lot more visible. Instead of worry about whether transit’s obsolete business model will survive, people should start thinking about what is the best way of moving people who don’t currently have cars. In most cities, that way is not conventional fixed-route transit systems.
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Transit is safe from COVID, she claims, but to overcome public perceptions that it is not, transit agencies should still require people to wear masks and regularly clean transit vehicles.
” ~anti-planner
a year ago MN’s Metro Transit proudly proclaimed that because of covid19, they were cleaning every bus once every days. Ya, they were proud that 3 days of germs and bacteria and even literal crap was piling up on their buses.
Why were they proud?
Because previously they had only cleaned a bus every 45 days.
Every 3 days is an improvement over 45. But it’s still gross, gross, super gross.
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Meanwhile, the Washington Metro system staff told its board last week that it only expects ridership to recover to 42 percent of pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. Since they were only at 26 percent as of March, that might be realistic.
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That makes a lot of sense. A big chunk of their ridership are upper middle class office workers riding into DC. If they start doing that 2 or 3 times a week instead of 5, that’s a 40% – 60% reduction in ridership amongst those riders.
A mask mandate would make me less, not more, likely to use transit. It also doesn’t do much to inspire confidence that your buses or trains are a clean, safe environment.
The other commentaries just illustrate the confused state of thinking that surrounds public transit systems these days. These know-nothing commentators want transit systems to address climate change and promote equity (whatever what means), while suggesting funding structures that reward them with more money regardless of performance. And how exactly are you supposed to ensure “cost efficiency” if you just shovel out more money with no strings attached? That is mind-bending logic.
Ironically, most real outcomes (not imaginary ones like job access) require transit networks to actually be used. One possibility for reducing carbon emissions would be to use more electric or hybrid buses. This wouldn’t necessarily be tied to use, but of course if you can do this for transit vehicles you can do it for most other types of vehicles as well. And meaningful reductions in carbon emissions will have a lot more to do with the latter than the former.
As for the first piece, not it’s not just any Bloomberg piece but that of the old Richard Florida creation, CityLab. Outside of Florida, that publication rarely had anything that wasn’t blatantly extremist.
Good to see them keeping up that extremism even now that they’re under the Bloomberg umbrella with the headline “Working From Home for Some Threatens Mass Transit for All”, eh? Wouldn’t want to be more thoughtful, eh? Cherry on top is the piece isn’t about transit in the US like it’s title implies, it’s about NY / NJ and the huge rail transit system that exists to funnel workers into Midtown.
It gave me a chuckle to see them put out this “oh my all that rail transit for Midtown can’t pay for itself if the people makeing $143K / yr don’t go into Midtown to work every day”.
They did this without the article even giving a nod to Richard Florida. That made me chuckle cuz Florida’s been running around telling people Midtown’s set is the last holdover from the industrial area + is probably dead.
Transit has evolved into such a monster it’s no longer serving it’s purpose. The chief demographic transit was originally meant for, the Poor, the Handicapped, the elderly and children.
Paratransit services have largely outmoded collectivist transit approaches of taking care of the elderly and handicapped by offering essentially door to door services to exact destinations.
Vans can carry children to their afterschool destinations and back. And programs aimed at helping poor people buy a car are shown to better alleviate poverty, because once you have an automobile you’re no longer locally geographically bound to a career and are free to pursue work or even a new residence elsewhere….which is what cities fear most; people fleeing. The automotive revolution and the building of the interstate allowed people to leave the geographic constraints of cities for better places. Transit is merely the methodology of urban planners to re-acclamate people back to urban appreciation. They failed. So their next option is to hire more planners and this time around, use the power of the law to craft the next “Liveability” standards.
Second, Attracting high income people means building transit in high income areas If Rail is chosen, at significant expense, it must be built in high income neighborhoods….which again overlooks the individuals mentioned above. Which only alienates the people further, makes the transit agency look more incompetent, devises political regimes to keep the federal money pump. Building transit from high income areas to downtown/businesses where alot of the workers are lawyers, doctors, professionals, etc, The last people I can think of who need subsidies for transportation.
Subsidize the poor directly for transit as the Antiplanner suggests, bears merit, but minutiae laws are slippery slopes. Once exceptions are allowed, the goalposts move, the rules get complicated, and the idea dropped. Subsidizing people below the poverty level, once subsidies emerges for basically free transportation, they lose all incentive to sustain transportation options beyond what they’re given. Of course the solution to this is stipulations for job requirements, met, hours etc. Which again…Goalposts.
In government goal posts rarely advance
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Transit has evolved into such a monster it’s no longer serving it’s purpose. The chief demographic transit was originally meant for, the Poor, the Handicapped, the elderly and children.
Paratransit services have largely outmoded collectivist transit approaches of taking care of the elderly and handicapped by offering essentially door to door services to exact destinations.
” ~lazyReader