The nation’s public transit systems carried 77.3 percent as many riders in October 2024 as in the same month of 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the highest level transit has achieved since the beginning of the pandemic.
The increase is likely due to more people returning to downtown jobs instead of working remotely. While President Biden seems content to let many federal employees work at home, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to order them to return to work, which will create an interesting situation as the new administration takes office in January. Musk and Ramaswamy have hinted that their real goal is to get many federal employees to quit, thus relieving the president of the necessity of firing them to achieve the goal of reducing the federal budget by $2 trillion.
Whatever the reason, transit in Washington DC is now carrying 81 percent of pre-pandemic numbers. This above-average rate is a turnaround from several months ago when DC transit was well below average. Other above-average regions include Houston (88%), Los Angeles (85%), Dallas (81%), Miami (80%), New York (79%), and Seattle (79%). Below-average regions include Phoenix (52%), Atlanta (58%), Detroit (60%), Minneapolis (61%), Chicago (70%), San Francisco (71%), and Philadelphia (72%).
As usual, you can download my enhanced spreadsheet that includes totals by year, mode, transit agency, and urban area. On the trips (UPT) and service (VRM) worksheets, the raw FTA data are in cells A1 through JX2302, with annual totals for 2002 through 2024 (to date) in columns JY through KU, mode totals in rows 2310 through 2331, transit agency totals in rows 2340 through 3339, and urban area totals in rows 3341 through 3831. Columns KV through KX compare October 2024 with October 2019, the years to date, and October 2024 with October 2023.
What can we do to get those Amtrak numbers down?
More bad news…
https://jalopnik.com/ridership-of-bay-area-caltrain-is-up-drastically-follow-1851709008
Caltrain spends $2.4b to increase ridership by 400/day and car haters scream, “Success! Success!”, but CalTrans spends $250m to eliminate congestion on a highway bottleneck somewhere and the same car haters are screaming, “Induced demand!”
Henry Porter, where do you get your numbers?
Ridership came from the article you posted. Cost came from some random website but SF County Transportation Authority says the cost was $2.72b.
https://www.sfcta.org/projects/caltrain-modernization#:~:text=Cost%20%26%20Funding,and%20procurement%20of%20electric%20vehicles.
Jane, here’s more bad news: SFGATE says fare revenue surged by $400,000/month since electrification. At that rate, the $2.72-billion cost of electrification will be recovered in just 6,800 months, or 567 years…over 20 generations.
But wait, there’s more! Even at a measly 1 percent interest rate, the interest on a $2.72-billion bond would be $2.27 million PER MONTH, 5.7 times the incremental monthly revenue increase.
It’s like the people making these decisions don’t even have pocket calculators!
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/bay-area-transit-agency-revenue-ridership-surge-19937170.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH1FLn-ATcc
Also in news more as anticipated fallout from another sad and growing example Chinese “Tofu Dreg” construction where in Serbia 15 died from roof of a train station collapse after chinese company hired to do the renovation. Another failure Belt/Road initiative.
The rail station had been built in 1964 and renovated twice in recent years as part of a wider deal between China, Serbia and Hungary to establish a fast rail connection between Belgrade and Budapest.
Besides China corrupt, highlights Serbia, a nation famous for mobster influence.
But really highlights why Tiny nations like Serbia don’t need HIgher speed rails. Serbia is smaller than Maine, 73% of it’s population is largely urban meaning they only need commuter rail and that doesn’t require complex large interior stations. CHINA is very good at building high speed trains, they are not good at infrastructure like elevated columns that have to withstand shock/vibration forces or stations with adequate design.
Since 2000, China has had 95 subway/metro floods/roof collapses. The New York City subway is over 100 years old; despite this it’s robust enough and hasn’t had a tunnel collapse since 1903 and again after 9/11. The London Metro Underground is over 100 years old, withstood the Blitz…. China? Give us 6 months.
Boy you said it Lazy Reader – here’s a video of a building collapsing in China. Many such cases
https://x.com/ShangguanJiewen/status/1868943085088178276