Public Transit and Metrics of Success in a Post-Pandemic World

In “The New Urbanity: The Rise of a New America,” Arthur C. Nelson tries to predict major trends in the future of transportation, as so many urban scholars enjoy doing. He does so based on current demographic and social changes, to explore what transportation will look like between 2010 and 2030. He states, “There will be changes in the kind of housing and neighborhoods that households prefer. More than half of all households will prefer housing in neighborhoods that comprise such “urbanity” attributes as transit accessibility; proximity to shopping and restaurants; mixed uses including mixed housing choices; and mixed incomes, ages, and ethnicities. Moving toward this new urbanity will require reconsideration of several policies with roots dating from the baby boom era.” But Nelson wrote this in 2009, before the COVID-19 pandemic changed nearly every facet of modern life as we know it. 

The Spanish Flu of 1918 had similar effects on public transit ridership. At the time, street cars were the predominant mode of transportation in urban centers. After the Spanish Flu hit, cities placed limitations on ridership. Some streetcars were decommissioned due to shortages of operators as they fell ill. Fewer people were utilizing street cars generally in response, but ridership was not significantly affected in the years following the 1918 pandemic. Yet looking to history should not make cities or transportation scholars complacent about how ridership will look after the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has been apocalyptic for ridership in a way that the 1918 pandemic was not. National ridership is down 58%, and even down 95% in NYC this spring. Reports also reflect mass exoduses of urban residents leaving major cities. The long-term economic impacts are hard to predict o0r comprehend in our current moment, but they will be significant. All of these factors indicate that ridership may be impacted in nearly permanent ways, because COVID-19 will have long-term impacts on the way we live generally. 

Looking ahead, transit scholars must take into account many factors, including the expansion of telework that will likely continue after the pandemic is over (which will mean fewer commuters going into city centers); sustained public fears over the safety of public transit (rooted in issues like sanitation and overcrowding); and the availability of government subsidies to make up for lost revenue. Equity will also become a more central issue for those who have had the privilege of ignoring equity elements before: “Transit is key to providing access to opportunity. If you look at the use of rail versus the bus system in the Washington Metro Area, it just shows how important the bus system is for providing opportunity for the economically disadvantaged [...] The core mission of transit will probably now blend a lot more equity into it.”

Yet even those transit agencies and planners who have already significantly focused efforts on equity may need to rethink exactly what equity means in the context of transportation post-COVID. Those who have continued to use transit during the pandemic have generally been low-income essential workers who do not have access to other mode options, and it is not a coincidence that most of these riders are people of color. Their continued use is emblematic of public transportation as a public good and a crucial social institution. Transit operators may have no choice but to cut down on service frequency because of lower ridership, so it will no longer make sense to measure success by ridership and revenue. Agencies will likely be requesting more federal funding for transit development and operations, rather than local taxes. Brian Taylor, a planning professor at UCLA, explained “For many years we have a lot of aspirations for transit: We want it to beat traffic, fight climate change, and revitalize communities. But the two things it has demonstrably done in the last half century is provide mobility for those without — whether that’s due to age, income, or disability — and allow highly agglomerated places to function. My educated guess is that we will see the rise of transit as a social service.”

 Ideally, transit as a social service would be the prevalent paradigm without the impact of a global pandemic. But history can at least teach us that it often takes catastrophic events to reframe the way society approaches its big problems. In retrospect, I don’t think that Arthur Nelson’s prediction of America’s “New Urbanity'' is incompatible with the likely reality of post-COVID cities. But that new urbanity must reimagine public ridership equity as a success metric. 

Sources:

Nelson AC. The New Urbanity: The Rise of a New America. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2009;626(1):192-208. doi:10.1177/0002716209344172

Laura Bliss. “A Post-Pandemic Reality Check for Transit Boosters. Bloomberg City Lab. May 6, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-06/a-post-pandemic-reality-check-for-transit-boosters

"COVID-19 Trends Impacting the Future of Transportation Planning and Research.” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine. August 17, 2020. https://www.nationalacademies.org/trb/blog/covid-19-trends-impacting-the-future-of-transportation-planning-and-research

Image:

The Energy and Resources Institute: "Effects of COVID-19 on Transportation Demand."

https://www.teriin.org/article/effects-covid-19-transportation-demand