Tag Archives: transit

Ridership on New York City subways is down by 67 percent from before the pandemic. Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Sarah Feinberg says it is all the media’s fault.

The MTA “was really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic,” she says. “People started thinking, ‘the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car.'” She claims that “study after study” has found that transit was not “vectoring the virus.”

The New York Post article reporting on her statement snarks that she made it “without referencing specific studies.” But what do you expect? The Post, after all, is part of the media. Continue reading →

The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed by the House of Representatives last week would give public transit more money than any other form of transportation: $30 billion. Airports and airlines, which before the pandemic moved 14 times as many passenger miles as transit, would receive $23 billion if the bill is approved by the Senate.

Amtrak, which is even more trivial than transit, would get $1.8 billion, some of which would be dedicated to restoring long-distance trains to daily service and some of which is to pay for state-supported trains under the probably fallacious assumption that the states can’t afford to do so during the pandemic. In 2019, Amtrak carried about 10 percent as many passenger-miles as transit.

If the last few months of 2020 are an indication of what will happen in 2021, then the airlines will carry 450 billion fewer passenger-miles than in 2019; transit 34 billion fewer; and Amtrak 4.5 billion fewer. The subsidies per each passenger-mile they won’t be carrying amount to 5 cents for the airlines, 40 cents for Amtrak, and 88 cents for transit. Of course, subsidizing someone for not doing something is ridiculous, but only typical for Congress. Continue reading →

Subway ridership may be down by 67 percent, but subway crime has doubled. New York City subways have seen eight murders since the pandemic began, and the six people murdered in 2020 were twice the number in 2019. Rapes have also doubled and robberies and other violent crimes have increased as well.

This mirrors the 11 percent decline in driving in the third quarter of 2020 that was accompanied by a 13 percent increase in traffic fatalities. Yet murders and other violent crimes are much more likely to deter transit riders than accidents are to discourage auto drivers.
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To counter this, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is asking the city to triple the number of police monitoring the subways, adding 1,500 patrol officers. At an average of $100,000 per police officer, including salary and benefits, this would cost taxpayers about $150 million per year. Since this comes out of city funds rather than MTA’s budget, this is a hidden subsidy to transit. Even with increased police, public awareness of such crimes will be one more obstacle to transit recovery after the pandemic.

“One thing Millennials are’t killing?” the headline on an article from National Public Radio read last week: “Public transportation.” Such a story might have been relevant a year or two ago. Today, when transit ridership is down by more than 60 percent, it is an example of spectacularly poor timing, like writing about how we should all invest in GameStop.

Millennials (ages 25-44) are a little more likely to commute by transit than previous generations, but members of Generation Z (ages 16-24) or less likely to do so.

One thing NPR is good at is putting a human face on the data published by various government and private entities. The problem in this story is that they forgot to see if the data actually backed up their anecdotes. They don’t. Continue reading →

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has proclaimed that transit agencies will need nearly $40 billion more in subsidies, on top of the tens of billions in subsidies they already get, to survive through the end of 2023. It backs this up with a so-called “independent study” that is hardly independent as APTA paid for it. APTA also points out with distress that 65 percent of transit agencies were forced to cut service in 2020.

This $39.3 billion is part of a $111.3 billion transportation package being sought by unions and other interest groups. The package includes $40 billion for school buses, motor coaches, and ferry companies; $15 billion for airline employees; and $17 billion for airports. Note that almost none of this money will end up assisting any actual travelers; it is all for unions and bureaucrats.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to include $30 billion for transit in the next COVID relief bill. This is $10 billion more than President Biden asked for in his $1.9 trillion relief bill. Transit agencies like the New York MTA are already rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of these funds. Continue reading →

The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) has seen ridership fall in every year since 2015. The district was originally created to bring office workers from the suburbs into downtown San Francisco, yet downtown is now a ghost town with some of the highest vacancy rates in its history and actual occupancy rates — that is, offices that are actually being used — are probably below 20 percent. BART’s latest ridership numbers themselves are less than 15 percent of 2019 levels. Many of San Francisco’s high-tech employers have already announced that they will allow many of their employees to continue to work from home after the pandemic.

What better time is there for BART to announce its proposal to significantly expand its service? Called Link 21, the heart of the proposal is to build a second tube under the bay connecting San Francisco with Oakland costing a mere $30 billion. Continue reading →