Vielkind , Jimmy. “Public Transit Goes off the Rails with Fewer Riders, Dwindling Cash, Rising Crime.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 9 Jan. 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/subway-mta-bart-public-transit-new-york-boston-san-francisco-11673198418.
Despite an overall downshift in Covid-19’s legal restrictions and societal impact, public transportation has not attained the same ridership that it had before Covid. In cities like New York and San Francisco, ridership is less than two-thirds of what it was before covid, worsening the growing budget issues in these public transportation systems. Both of these cities’ prolific public transportation systems (BART and MTA) have had to rely on emergency government funds to keep systems running as usual. Despite this, MTA recently planned to cut back on Monday and Friday services due to a lack of ridership paired with a lack of budget resources. To summarize this issue, a lack of ridership causes an impaired service, which will further harm ridership, perpetuating the cycle.
Due to the lasting implications of Covid-19, one of which being a huge rise of work from home, public transportation has been severely underutilized, even with Covid itself becoming less and less of an issue. However, I think that cutting back on these services entirely is the worst possible way to go about this. What dropping ridership should indicate to these systems, rather, is that an improvement in service is necessary (as well as making fare evasion more difficult in MTA’s case) and these funds should be allocated by taxpayers. There will always be people trying to get around, but most of these people are currently driving cars. Making these systems more efficient and frequent will attract more ridership, which will then increase capital among these systems. Rather than continuing the cycle, these systems should break it through government funds. The government must realize the importance of efficient public transportation if our environmental catastrophe is going to be remedied.
The headline for this one is a bummer, but I guess not so surprising. I agree with your sentiments, James… your last sentence says it all. The govt needs to come through. One thing to consider is that the federal and state govts massively subsidize fossil fuels and the car industry when they build and maintain all the roads for them to drive on. What if that same kind of subsidization went into mass transit? We should not be cutting services but making them more, cheaper, and easier by using govt funds. Do you agree with this statement?
Thanks for all your good work on this issue, James. I hope it kept you interested and you feel extra informed!~
I totally agree Mr. Powell! Thanks for reading.
This was very interesting as I have wondered about how to make public transportation more effective or efficient I always see lots of SamTrans buses in our area with few people, so the issue of decreased ridership in public transportation systems in cities like New York and San Francisco came across my mind. Have any specific solutions been proposed for improving the efficiency and frequency of public transportation systems, and how would these solutions be implemented?
I’m not sure about any specific proposed improvements, but a more expansive driving staff should make it possible to accomplish a higher frequency. Thanks for reading!