Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.

Public transit offers a simple way for cities to lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the pandemic has pushed ridership, and revenue, off a cliff in many big systems.

Charts: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/buses-trains-ridership-climate-change.html#click=https://t.co/HtLq8cf2vc

Transit ridership during the coronavirus pandemic is compared with an earlier period of regular ridership, which varies city by city. For Paris, total case numbers are not available, only the number of hospitalizations.

Sources: International Association of Public Transport using operator data and public sources; Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission

By Veronica Penney

By Somini Sengupta, Geneva Abdul, Manuela Andreoni and Veronica Penney

March 25, 2021Updated 11:20 a.m. ET

On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is nearly vacant on a weekday morning, while the Delhi Metro is ferrying fewer than half of the riders it used to. In Rio, unpaid bus drivers have gone on strike. New York City subway traffic is just a third of what it was before the pandemic.

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, public transit is hanging by a thread in many cities around the world. Riders remain at home or they remain fearful of boarding buses and trains. And without their fares, public transit revenues have fallen off a cliff. In some places, service has been cut. In others, fares have gone up and transit workers are facing the prospect of layoffs.

That’s a disaster for the world’s ability to address that other global crisis: climate change. Public transit offers a relatively simple way for cities to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention a way to improve air quality, noise and congestion.

But act how? Transit agencies that have been bailed out by the government are wondering how long the generosity will last, and almost everywhere, transportation experts are scrambling to figure out how to better adapt public transit to the needs of riders as cities begin to emerge from the pandemic.

For now, people simply aren’t moving around much. Even in cities like Delhi, where most businesses are open, many office workers are working from home and universities haven’t resumed in-person classes. Paris has a 6 p.m. curfew. 

In some places, fear of the virus has driven people into cars. In the United States, used car sales have shot up and so have prices of used cars. In India, a company that sells secondhand cars online saw sales swell in 2020 and its own value as a company jump to $1 billion, according to news reports. Elsewhere, bike sales have grown, suggesting that people are pedaling a bit more.

The worry about the future is twofold. If commuters shun public transit for cars as their cities recover from the pandemic, that has huge implications for air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, if transit systems continue to lose passenger fare revenues, they will not be able to make the investments necessary to be efficient, safe and attractive to commuters.

There are a few outliers. In Shanghai, for example, public transit numbers took a nosedive in February 2020, but riders have returned as new coronavirus infections remain low and the economy rebounds.

But the picture is grim in many more cities.

On the Paris Métro, ridership was just over half of normal in the first two months of this year. Île-de-France Mobilités, the transport agency for the greater Paris area, said it lost 2.6 billion euros, or over $3 billion, last year. The agency is projecting a shortfall of an additional billion euros this year.

In Amsterdam, ridership numbers on the city’s trams and buses are around a third of normal, and the transit agency’s website counsels people to “only travel when absolutely necessary.” In Rome, Metro ridership remains below half of prepandemic levels.

Ample seating on the New Delhi Metro in September. Credit...Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Fares have risen sharply on private bus lines in Lagos, Nigeria. Credit...Pius Utomi Ekpei/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A deserted Tube station in London last year. Credit...Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock

Rio de Janeiro’s bus service has laid off 800 employees since last March. Credit...Leo Correa/Associated Press

One of the busiest metro systems in the world, the London Underground, which normally clocks around four million journeys every weekday, is currently operating at around 20 percent of its normal capacity. Buses are a bit more populated, running around 40 percent of normal. The city transit agency, which had once projected a budget surplus for 2020, has instead been relying on government bailouts since the pandemic hit. It expects it will take at least two years to see public transit usage return to prepandemic levels.

“It’s been pretty devastating, to be perfectly honest,” said Alex Williams, director of city planning for Transport for London. “One of our concerns are substantial declines in public transport and higher levels of car use.”

London is one of a handful of cities around the world with a congestion tax designed to reduce car traffic in the city center. Both London and Paris sought to use lockdowns to expand bike lanes.

In the Indian capital, New Delhi, the subway reopened last September after a suspension of many months. Ridership in February 2021 hovered under 2.6 million, compared with more than 5.7 million for the same month the year before, and bus traffic stood at just over half of prepandemic levels.

Lucky are those agencies, as in India and across Europe, that are subsidized by their governments. There’s even more distress in cities where people rely in large part on private bus companies.

In Lagos, Nigeria, fares have doubled on private bus lines for rides longer than a kilometer, or a bit more than half a mile.

In Rio de Janeiro, a once-celebrated bus network is in a shambles. The private company that runs the system has cut over a third of its fleet and laid off 800 employees as the number of passengers has shrunk by half since last March, according to the city transportation department. Strikes by bus drivers have made bus travel even slower and more chaotic.

“I have never seen anything like it,” said José Carlos Sacramento, 68, a leader of a bus workers union in Rio, who has been working in public transportation for five decades. “I think it might never go back to normal.”

City officials said they hope to use the crisis as an opportunity to revamp the system, including by persuading the private bus companies to be more transparent about their operations in exchange for possible financial help from the government.

After all, said Maína Celidonio, the head of the city transportation department, a clean, efficient bus system is critical for Rio to not only reduce its carbon emissions but also to clean its air. “It’s not just an environmental issue, but a public health issue,” Ms. Celidonio said.

The bigger challenge for all cities is to fix their public transit systems now so that passengers will return, said Mohamed Mezghani, head of the International Association of Public Transport. They could adjust peak hour service as telecommuting from home becomes more commonplace, expand bus only lanes that make commutes more efficient and comfortable or improve ventilation systems to assure citizens that riding public transit is safe.

“Those cities that were investing, they will get out stronger,” Mr. Mezghani said. “People will feel more comfortable traveling in a new modern public transit system. It’s about perception in the end.”

Shola Lawal and Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/buses-trains-ridership-climate-change.html#click=https://t.co/HtLq8cf2vc

[R10 2952]

No surprise to me.  Look no further than what's going on at the local level; coronavirus erased the '90s-'00s rebound of public transit in New York practically overnight.  People are now looking at NYCT buses and subways with the same disdain as they did in the mid-'80s, albeit for a different reason.  Back to square one and then some.  That's the way it is, sadly.

Edited March 26, 2021 by R10 2952

[NewFlyer 230]

2 hours ago, R10 2952 said:

No surprise to me.  Look no further than what's going on at the local level; coronavirus erased the '90s-'00s rebound of public transit in New York practically overnight.  People are now looking at NYCT buses and subways with the same disdain as they did in the mid-'80s, albeit for a different reason.  Back to square one and then some.  That's the way it is, sadly.

I think what also doesn’t help for NYC is the reputation the subways have for being dirty. The growing homeless problem and the lack of funding for top notch cleaning has definitely left a bad impression in the minds of many. So now you mix in the fear of covid and of course no one would want to ride public transportation. I think subway ridership will continue to lag behind even when more things open. 

[MHV9218]

No evidence to me that any of this is permanent. Will the return to full ridership be slow? Absolutely. Will we see the same ridership as 2019 this year? No. Next year? Probably not. 2023? Getting warmer. This will take time, but what this article suggests is a structural change. There has been no such change. Nor has there been any real return to the city yet – offices are still empty, and residential rentals are still at decade-lows in many parts of the city. Someone like me is a perfect example: I used to take the subway 5-7 days a week, and I haven't taken the subway once during the pandemic. I bike and walk everywhere, and I go to far fewer places than I used to. But I'm one week into my first shot and after two weeks I'll be back on the subway and returning to my routine. Within a few more weeks I assume my work will reopen in-person and I'll be commuting. Lot of people are on the same schedule.

Wake me when the city's back in full swing and then we'll talk about people "abandoning" public transit. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

14 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

No evidence to me that any of this is permanent. Will the return to full ridership be slow? Absolutely. Will we see the same ridership as 2019 this year? No. Next year? Probably not. 2023? Getting warmer. This will take time, but what this article suggests is a structural change. There has been no such change. Nor has there been any real return to the city yet – offices are still empty, and residential rentals are still at decade-lows in many parts of the city. Someone like me is a perfect example: I used to take the subway 5-7 days a week, and I haven't taken the subway once during the pandemic. I bike and walk everywhere, and I go to far fewer places than I used to. But I'm one week into my first shot and after two weeks I'll be back on the subway and returning to my routine. Within a few more weeks I assume my work will reopen in-person and I'll be commuting. Lot of people are on the same schedule.

Wake me when the city's back in full swing and then we'll talk about people "abandoning" public transit. 

Yeah, but someone like you I would say sounds like you haven't switched to say using a car. A lot of people have (I have been doing a mix of a car, express bus, MNRR and walking) and I'm not so sure that they are going to make such an investment and give that up so easily. The other thing is, we are already seeing an increase in subway ridership, but it is largely along class lines. White collar, higher income workers like myself continue to work from home. I've been working from home for over a year now, and we have not discussed any sort of change either, as we moved everything to remote, so we can all work very easily from home for just about everything. I do go in by choice maybe once a week, but I work alone in the office and come and go as I please. The big question is how big will Work From Home (WFH) be after the pandemic? There are signs that many workers like this arrangement, and surveys have shown that most people that have been working from home want to continue it entirely, or if they must go back in some capacity, they favor a hybrid model. This is also attractive to businesses, as they get the same level of productivity or more with less overhead costs (less office space). Employees are happy, employers save money, productivity is higher... It's a win-win situation for us white collar workers in that situation.

Now the people in the service sector, they've already been commuting back and forth, so naturally those people don't have a choice. Overall I think we'll see some sort of rebound, but I'm not sure it'll be quite the same, even in 2023 as you predicted. 

[MHV9218]

22 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yeah, but someone like you I would say sounds like you haven't switched to say using a car. A lot of people have (I have been doing a mix of a car, express bus, MNRR and walking) and I'm not so sure that they are going to make such an investment and give that up so easily. The other thing is, we are already seeing an increase in subway ridership, but it is largely along class lines. White collar, higher income workers like myself continue to work from home. I've been working from home for over a year now, and we have not discussed any sort of change either, as we moved everything to remote, so we can all work very easily from home for just about everything. I do go in by choice maybe once a week, but I work alone in the office and come and go as I please. The big question is how big will Work From Home (WFH) be after the pandemic? There are signs that many workers like this arrangement, and surveys have shown that most people that have been working from home want to continue it entirely, or if they must go back in some capacity, they favor a hybrid model. This is also attractive to businesses, as they get the same level of productivity or more with less overhead costs (less office space). Employees are happy, employers save money, productivity is higher... It's a win-win situation for us white collar workers in that situation.

Now the people in the service sector, they've already been commuting back and forth, so naturally those people don't have a choice. Overall I think we'll see some sort of rebound, but I'm not sure it'll be quite the same, even in 2023 as you predicted. 

Jury is out though – for all the people that like the flexibility, you have a ton of people miserable with the lack of community and miserable with the blurring of work/home schedules. Think about those horror stories about Goldman and the other investment banks lately; the cardinal innovation of WFH was basically turning a 60-hour work week into a 90-hour one. That kind of thing is not sustainable or popular long-term. Not to mention that the real estate industry is positively begging its higher-end clients to come home, and a lot of things are at stake economically if they lose out on all their tenants.

Also, for most New Yorkers, owning a car is not a pleasant experience, and if you can commute to work without using it, you choose to. Nobody likes sitting in traffic forever, paying tons for parking, doing the alternate-side dance, etc. It's a serious additional expense for a lot of people, and leaving aside the obvious environmental issue, it's pretty inconvenient as a daily commute. I wouldn't bet on this continuing. Something like the Holland Tunnel traffic of late, for example – nobody in their right mind is going to prefer the two-hour delays we see now as opposed to NJT once things are back in the swing of it.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 minute ago, MHV9218 said:

Jury is out though – for all the people that like the flexibility, you have a ton of people miserable with the lack of community and miserable with the blurring of work/home schedules. Think about those horror stories about Goldman and the other investment banks lately; the cardinal innovation of WFH was basically turning a 60-hour work week into a 90-hour one. That kind of thing is not sustainable or popular long-term. Not to mention that the real estate industry is positively begging its higher-end clients to come home, and a lot of things are at stake economically if they lose out on all their tenants.

Also, for most New Yorkers, owning a car is not a pleasant experience, and if you can commute to work without using it, you choose to. Nobody likes sitting in traffic forever, paying tons for parking, doing the alternate-side dance, etc. It's a serious additional expense for a lot of people, and leaving aside the obvious environmental issue, it's pretty inconvenient as a daily commute. I wouldn't bet on this continuing. Something like the Holland Tunnel traffic of late, for example – nobody in their right mind is going to prefer the two-hour delays we see now as opposed to NJT once things are back in the swing of it.

I don't disagree with you on that. The Goldman Sachs situation may be worked out in due time. They have said that they're actively listening to their junior bankers and looking to provide a more balanced work-life situation. That said, it's not like bankers, traders and the like weren't working crazy hours before. The hours were always long for what is usually high pay. Part of the job. 

Those situations are the exception and not necessarily the norm though, and I think the question is how much WFH will we see? We have some companies agreeing to allow their employees to work from home permanently, and others totally fine with a hybrid. Maybe you'll see different hours, or a change to the so-called rush hour scene as people work at home a few days and only come in as needed. In that case, you still keep the car, and just commute with public transit a few days, but not enough to require say a pass.