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The American Public Transit Dilemma
Riders rejoice. From California commuter rails to New York City’s hundred-year-old train lines, transit is now less crowded. Even during the morning rush hour, it’s possible to find that coveted subway or bus seat. While this is seemingly welcome news for riders, each empty seat is lost revenue. That translates to reduced schedules, service cuts, layoffs, and ultimately, a hollowed-out transit system.
This austerity is the new reality for transit agencies across the United States.
According to an analysis of the Department of Transportation’s National Transit Database, more than 95% of transit agencies are operating below pre-pandemic ridership levels. Nationally, ridership is two-thirds of what it was prior to the pandemic. For some transit agencies, the picture is even bleaker. San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, which used to serve 400 thousand riders daily, now serves only a third of that. Some smaller agencies have cut service entirely.
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The most obvious effect is that low ridership levels translate to lost fare revenue. Based on the decline in total ridership between 2019 and 2022, the lost revenue from missing riders totaled roughly $7 billion for 2022.
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Between 2008 and 2015, the various islands making up the U.S. territories received half the total media attention of equivalent-size states (4,936 vs. 10,138 articles).
An uptick in coverage of the territories in 2016 and 2017 was largely driven by the Puerto Rican debt crisis and the devastation of Hurricane María in the Caribbean.
North Korea’s 2017 announcement that Guam would be the target of its nuclear missile program also contributed to increased coverage that year.
In 2018 The New York Times reported heavily on the destruction caused by Typhoon Yutu in the Northern Marianas Islands.
The historic election of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the disparity in coverage between states and territories.
While native residents of the territories are generally U.S. citizens (except in American Samoa where they are U.S. nationals), they do not have the right to vote in general elections. Coverage about COVID-19 levels in different states and counties often excluded the territories.
The Enormous Federal Data Disparity
Federal data collection largely stops short of U.S. territories. Over the next 10 years, the Census Bureau will release approximately 264 key datasets for the 50 states. But for the territories of Guam, the Northern Marianas, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands, the Census Bureau will release only three total datasets over that same period: one decennial count and two economic surveys.
All told, the data collected by the Census Bureau will help direct at least 2.8 trillion dollars annually to 353 federal-assistance programs. While data on the 50 states helps the government direct funding where it’s needed most, a lack of territory data forces officials to operate in the dark.
For its most populous territory, Puerto Rico, federal data collection is a little better. The Census Bureau conducts an annual “Puerto Rican Community Survey” for the region’s 3.2 million residents. But the resulting estimates don’t use the same rigorous control methods as the “American Community Survey.” And data is only available on the county level instead of more specific geographies like zip codes and census tracts.
A Blindfold for Local Officials
Around the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. expanded its colonial influence over seas. Long left to the rule of the U.S. Navy, the nation’s territories were neglected by the government that claimed to rule them. This neglect hampered the development and assessment of the regions’ social programs. In recent years, a lack of federal data has hindered the ability of island territories to respond to disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic and extreme weather.
For example, in 2018, Typhoon Yutu devastated the Northern Mariana’s islands. By 2020, the recovery effort had just gotten underway when the spread of COVID-19 crushed the region’s critical tourism industry. When the federal government asked the region’s department of labor to estimate how many workers lost their jobs during the pandemic, they had no idea.
Speaking to the Honolulu Civil Beat, the head of Northern Mariana’s labor department Vicky Benavente said, “This is one lesson we learned. Data is so critical for justifying our asks to the federal government.”
State governments had ready access to reliable data. They used monthly reports from the Current Population Survey to monitor pandemic-induced rises in unemployment. Working without this data, the Northern Marianas government had to rely on a survey of employers conducted every two years. By 2021, so many businesses had shut their doors that few were left to reply.
Ridership has substantially decreased and hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Analysts are starting to fear the collapse of American mass transit.
Lost fare revenue has already forced agencies to cut back on service and raise fares. This, in turn, could drive down ridership even further. A weakened transit system places yet another burden on poor and working-class families and slows the transition to environmentally sustainable buses and trains.
To be sure, the challenges of mass transit in the U.S. began well before the pandemic. In the early 20th century, mass transit was the dominant form of transportation in every American city. But the expansion of the suburbs and the embrace of the personal vehicle by industry, government, and mass culture killed most large transit systems in the U.S., outside a few core cities. Mismanagement by the transit authorities didn’t help, either.
More recently, after a brief surge in the early 2000s, mass transit ridership plateaued and then declined in the 2010s. This happened for a few reasons:
- Rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft served as effective substitutes for many riders.
- Gentrification and cost-of-living increases pushed families out of transit-accessible neighborhoods, reducing the number of potential riders.
- Historically low prices for cars and gasoline made personal vehicles more affordable.
Now, in this post-pandemic era, ridership is down everywhere, all the time, all at once. This process is still ongoing, but a few theories have emerged to explain this historic change. The mass shift to remote work removes the necessity for any type of transportation. Even miles traveled by personal vehicles is still down, three years later. But also playing a role are the availability of rideshare services and the continued cost-of-living challenges of transit-rich cities.
Transit agencies are then faced with an enormous challenge: how to bring back riders in the emerging structures of post-pandemic life.
The strategies vary. Transit planners have long advocated to refocus on a core competency of transit systems: frequency. Decades of research have shown that frequency, above all system attributes, is the main driver of ridership. It reduces the inconvenience of transfer wait times and makes the issue of mechanical breakdowns nearly obsolete.
Still, some agencies have tried to increase ridership by embracing rideshare rather than fighting it. To meet riders where they’re at, dozens of agencies have launched or doubled-down on their fleet of vans, cars, and other demand-response vehicles. Tampa, Florida, not known for being a transit hub, saw a 20% increase in ridership since before the pandemic, primarily through its agency-run rideshare program.
A few agencies have taken an even more radical approach to increase ridership: abolish fares altogether. For smaller agencies where fare revenue provides a small fraction of total operating cost, this has some logic. After abolishing fares, Tucson, Arizona saw a 10% increase in post-pandemic ridership and is working with local partners to make this pilot program permanent.
Whatever the solution, in nearly every city, transit in the United States finds itself at a precipice. The decisions of lawmakers and policy makers will determine its fate for years to come. Relying on Taylor Swift to save every transit system is probably not the most viable strategy.
About the Data
The data is sourced from the Department of Transportation's National Transit Database (NTD). Most transit agencies in the country are required to report ridership, revenue, and other operating metrics to the Department of Transportation on a monthly basis. The team used April 2023's reported metrics to estimate change over time and used the 2019 metrics file to extract the average fare revenue for pre-pandemic transit operations.
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