Friday, April 30, 2021

Covid Makes Public Transit Funding More Challenging

About 55 percent of younger professionals who responded to a poll on Blind say they do not feel safe commuting on public transportation. Though 39 percent of respondents say they used to take public transportation to work. Now, just 22 percent say they plan to do so. 


The caveat is that significant numbers expect to continue working remotely, so transportation to the office will not be necessary so often. 


Most public transportation services in the United States are heavily subsidized. Like it or not, if ridership continues to fall, the subsidies will have to grow. By some studies, ridership has fallen 65 percent, compared to pre-Covid levels. 


To be sure, we will have to see what happens a few years from now, but ridership has been falling for some years before Covid. Use of public transit seems to have been falling for at least four years.

 

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