Transportation & COVID-19

How should state transportation policies change after the pandemic? What is the relative importance of Amtrak, urban transit, highways, and other modes of transport to the states? How can states respond most effectively to future transportation needs?

Click image to download a 5.2-MB PDF of this 25-page paper.

These questions are addressed in Transportation and COVID-19, a set of seven brief articles written by various free-market transportation experts. The guide is aimed at state legislators, state think tanks, and others who are interested in the transportation policies of their states. Continue reading

COVID-19 and Public Transit

Two more studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research associate increased cases of coronavirus with public transit. “A striking and robust relationship is found between death rates and public transit use,” according to a study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. People who worked at home were safest, the study found, but deaths correlated with people who drove to work only at the largest scale; the correlations weren’t statistically significant at the city or state level.

A second study by University of Virginia researcher John McLaren found that blacks and Native Americans were disproportionately likely to die from the virus. This was true even after controlling for income and education; the main factor that seemed to cause increased deaths in these groups was “the use of public transit.”
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My friend MSetty will remind us that there are places in the world that have lots of transit ridership but don’t seem to suffer high COVID-19 death rates, apparently because people in those countries are much more likely to wear masks. That may be true, but all things being equal, people are more likely to get sick if they use mass transportation than if they drive in their private automobiles. This will continue to be true after the current pandemic is over, so people who want to ride transit then will have a choice of continuing to wear masks or risk catching the flu or whatever is the disease of the week.

NYers Say They’ll Use Transit Less or Not at All

As a result of the pandemic, 44 percent of New York City residents expect to “avoid public transit entirely” after stay-at-home orders end. Since, in 2018, 56 percent of New Yorkers rode transit to work, it may be that the 44 percent who weren’t riding transit are the ones who say they won’t ride it in the future.

However, another 31.5 percent say they expect to use transit less. Just 18.5 percent say they expect to use transit as much as they did before the pandemic. If people do what they say they are going to do, New York City transit is going to lose a lot of riders. The survey also found that 5.5 percent say they expect to work at home, which is just 1 percentage point more than the 4.5 percent of New Yorkers who worked at home in 2018.
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Surveys are, at best, a first approximation of future behavior. Tomorrow’s Antiplanner policy brief will present my projections of transportation in the first year or two after the pandemic. They will rely less on what people say they are going to do and more on what we have learned during the pandemic. I’ll be interested in your comments.

Shut Down Public Transit Now!

An op-ed in InsideSources argues that public transit should be shut down as it is a major source of viral infections. No one reading this will be surprised that the Antiplanner wrote the op-ed, but the Antiplanner isn’t the only one who thinks so.

Writing in yesterday’s USA Today, University of Tennessee law professor Glen Harlan Reynolds points out that “mass transit kills.” I know some commenters on this blog point out that New York subways didn’t have to be as deadly as they were, but just two months ago people didn’t know enough about the virus to know how to protect themselves, with some experts (relying on misinformation from China) even arguing that masks could do more harm than good. Since each infectious disease is different, the safest course is to avoid public transportation.

New York City shut down its subways yesterday morning for the first time in its history. The goal is to give crews a chance to disinfect subway cars and stations and open them up again, but just overnight may not be enough as cars can quickly become reinfected every morning. Continue reading

What Happens After the Pandemic?

Everyone everywhere is asking how the pandemic will change their business, and transportation agencies are no exception. What do you think?

David Zipper, writing for CityLab, wonders if commuter-train ridership will return after the pandemic. It’s currently down as much as 97 percent in some cities.

Bus ridership hasn’t declined as much as rail — an indication that most rail riders are white-collar workers who can work at home but most bus riders are not — but it’s still down 60 to 70 percent. But transit agency officials everywhere wonder if they will get back the riders they have lost when the pandemic is over. Continue reading

Accelerating Spread of COVID-19 Earns $25 Billion

Transit agencies, which are known to be “an effective way of accelerating the spread of infectious diseases” but are not effective at much else, received a $25 billion bailout in the $2.2 trillion Congressional coronavirus relief bill. That’s only a little more than 1 percent of the total, but why did the industry get any at all?

When transit agencies asked for the money, the Antiplanner wrote an op-ed arguing against it. Unfortunately, it didn’t reach print until after Congress passed the bill.

Yesterday, which happened to be the day after the op-ed was published, the Department of Transportation announced how the spoils would be distributed. The money is parceled out geographically, so agencies in regions with multiple transit providers will squabble over the funds at the MPO level. Continue reading