economics
What Is the future for transit after COVID?
Cato Institute
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
July 30th, 2021
The transit industry has become a giant scam, sucking up taxpayer dollars and producing little in return. Despite declining ridership before the pandemic, subsidies were increasing until by 2019 transit agencies were spending more than a dollar subsidizing each passenger mile they carried. For perspective, subsidies to highways (which should also be eliminated) average about a penny a passenger mile. Despite subsidies, transit moved just 0.9 percent of U.S. passenger travel in 2019.
Contrary to popular belief, transit is neither good for the environment nor vital to low-income families. In 2019, transit used more energy and emitted as much or more greenhouse gases per passenger mile as the average car. Only 5 percent of workers earning under $25,000 a year took transit to work in 2019 compared with 7 percent of workers earning over $75,000 a year. Since most taxes used to support transit are regressive, the other 95 percent of low-income workers were disproportionately paying taxes to support rides that were disproportionately taken by higher-income workers.
Pandemics don't change things as much as they accelerate pre-existing trends. In this case, the pandemic has accelerated the decline of transit. With both jobs and people moving from dense cities to suburbs or smaller towns, and more people working at home, transit becomes even less relevant than it already was.
From a transportation viewpoint, the pandemic is just about over. In May, highway travel reached 96 percent of what it was before the pandemic and air travel was at 67 percent (and 74 percent in June). However, transit ridership was still only 42 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
Given the numbers of people who will continue to work at home at least some days a week after the pandemic, and the resulting reduction in congestion attracting people into cars who were previously riding transit to avoid congestion, I estimate transit will never return to more than 75 percent of pre-pandemic ridership.
Transit agencies are talking about free transit and spending money to increase transit frequencies and service, neither of which attract many people out of their cars. The fact is that cars give people access to many times more jobs and other economic opportunities than transit.
Instead of mounting a multi-billion-dollar program to try to rescue a dying industry, we should figure out how we can cost-effectively achieve the benefits transit was supposed to provide using more appropriate technologies. Let's make cars that are cleaner and more fuel-efficient, find low-cost ways to reduce congestion such as traffic signal coordination, and help low-income people who lack cars get access to the same transportation that the rest of us use.
The real problem with transit has not been a shortage of funds but too much money. This has made transit agencies beholden to politicians rather than transit riders. It is time to end the subsidies. Transit will survive, but without subsidies it will focus on finding cost-effective ways to help the people who need it rather than wasting money moving nearly empty trains and buses.
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