Covid-19’s effect on the nation’s public transportation system has a lot in common with the disease itself.
There was an initial period of shock and distress, followed by a long and sometimes incomplete recovery.
What that means in practical terms is that ridership has yet to return to prepandemic levels for trains and buses across the country. The road back has been uneven too, with bus systems recovering faster than train networks.
The new reality has strained city budgets and put government leaders in a difficult position — especially when it comes to commuter trains.
Many white-collar workers — who were forced to work from home during the pandemic — never returned to their office jobs. It helps explain why rail use hit just 71 percent of prepandemic levels across the country in 2023, according to a report from the Federal Transit Administration.
Bus ridership has done better, in part because buses tend to serve blue-collar workers who never left their jobs during the pandemic. But bus systems haven’t fully recovered, either. In 2023, bus ridership nationally was at 77 percent of prepandemic levels.
The drop in passengers — and fares — has put major holes in transit budgets. And it’s forced agency leaders and government officials to take extraordinary measures to keep mass transit on track.
The agency that runs San Francisco’s rail service balanced its recent $1.1 billion operating budget with a series of cost-cutting moves and by spending state and federal emergency funding. The Washington Metro system balanced its $4.8 billion budget with fare increases and hundreds of millions of dollars from the District of Columbia and state legislatures in Virginia and Maryland.
These kinds of efforts, combined with a broad decline in ridership, have raised uncomfortable questions about the future of mass transit — especially for train networks such as San Francisco’s that were built for urban commuters.
“The biggest issue is that the business model that had been built up over decades — just doesn’t work any more,” said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Planning Commission, which coordinates transit in the Bay Area.
The issue even has crept into the presidential campaign, with allies to former President Donald Trump suggesting the federal government cut its losses and rein in its support for mass transit. For her part, Vice President Kamala Harris has said little about the issue, though observers expect Harris to provide “standard-issue Democrat” support for public transportation.
Still, the news isn’t all bad, say mass transit supporters.
Ridership actually has increased in some small and midsize cities, as white-collar workers relocated to work remotely in affordable communities. Bus systems in smaller municipalities from California to Virginia are seeing higher ridership than before the pandemic.
That’s partly because of population growth, transit advocates said, and partly because of changes in ridership patterns. Rather than hauling commuters at rush hour, a lot of transit systems are carrying more passengers in the evenings and on weekends.
“Transit just works differently now,” said Henry Bendon, a spokesperson for the bus system in Richmond, Virginia.
Why San Francisco is struggling
In the San Francisco Bay area — where the transit system is arguably in worse shape than the rest of the country — leaders are still looking for a solution.
The regional train service, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, carried 426,000 riders on an average weekday before the pandemic. Earlier this month, the BART system carried between 186,000 and 194,000 weekday passengers — a little less than half the prepandemic average.
One problem for BART is that it receives a greater share of revenue from fares — 70 percent in 2019 — than most other transit agencies. That means it took a greater financial hit when ridership dropped. And San Francisco has the highest rate of telecommuters, at 35 percent of the workforce, according to the Census Bureau.
The Bay Area also has a tangle of 27 agencies that run buses, trains and ferries across nine counties and dozens of cities. Not all of them have seen the same problems as BART, but they could all be affected if the train system falters.
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, which operates the city’s buses, has recovered faster than BART, with ridership at 71 percent of pre-pandemic levels in 2023 — and some of its bus lines are carrying more passengersthan before Covid. But because it’s a separate agency, those improvements don’t help the broader system.
BART’s directors balanced the system’s budget this summer in part by cutting the number of cars in each train, which slashed its electrical bill by 20 percent. But the board issued a warning: Without a long-term funding solution, it could face a spiral of fare increases and service cuts that would undermine the entire regional network.
“BART needs a more reliable long-term source of operating funding,” the agency said in a June news release.
A bill in the California State Legislature would have called a referendum on a regional tax boost to stabilize the system’s finances. But its sponsors pulled it from consideration, likely until next year, after tensions arose about how to divide the funding among different parts of the Bay Area — and because it called for a study into consolidating some of the transit agencies.
“Regional transportation funding politics is the most raucous and intense form of politics,” said Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill. “It’s a constant food fight about who deserves what funding.”
Versions of the same drama have played out around the country. Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Illinois are looking for solutions to support mass transit in Philadelphia and Chicago, respectively.
In New York, the state legislature approved a package of tolls known as congestion pricing to help fund the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s subway systems — only to have Gov. Kathy Hochul delay its implementation.
Even though the Washington Metro system balanced its budget this year, Metro Board Chairman Paul Smedberg said state and regional leaders still need to find ways to stabilize the system’s long-term funding.
“Over the next year, we’re looking forward to continuing a robust conversation with jurisdictional partners, elected officials, and business and community stakeholders around Metro’s role in the region and how the region can sustain and support the world-class transit that the DMV deserves,” he said in a statement in April.
Should the feds do more?
So far, a national solution seems out of reach.
The federal government authorized up to $108 billion in transit spending as part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. But that funding is dedicated to repairs and capital projects — most large systems can’t spend federal money on operational costs like salaries and fuel.
The Biden administration has proposed allowing more, larger systems to use federal aid for day-to-day expenses.
Neither Trump nor Harris has said much about transit funding, and the two campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on transit issues.
But the issue overlaps with Harris’ goals of addressing climate change and creating affordable housing.
And Project 2025, a compilation of ideas for a second Trump administration written by the conservative Heritage Foundation, argues that the federal government should slash transit spending, including funding for capital projects.
“Lower revenue from reduced ridership is already driving transit agencies to a budgetary breaking point, and added operational costs from system expansions will make this problem worse,” the project, which isn’t affiliated with the Trump campaign, said in its “Mandate for Leadership.”
Harris has been a “standard-issue Democrat” on transit issues, but her goal of building 3 million new homes could be a bright spot for many transit agencies, said Ethan Elkind, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies transportation.
That’s especially true if the program leads to dense apartment developments with access to bus and train service.
“Harris’ focus on boosting housing construction could really help in that regard, specifically with cities like San Francisco that historically have been quite hostile to new housing of all types,” Elkind said in an email.
Likewise, buses and trains are the simplest way to cut climate-warming emissions from the transportation sector.
“Public transit falls right into the nexus when you’re talking about job creation, … affordable housing and the environment,” said Paul Skoutelas, chief executive officer of the American Public Transit Association.
What’s working in Richmond
Two hours south of Washington, ridership on Richmond, Virginia’s bus system is booming. The GRTC Transit System carried 10.9 million passengers in its most recent fiscal year, up from 8.5 million before the pandemic.
Richmond, home to the state capital and Virginia Commonwealth University, already had a steady base of riders before the pandemic. And its population — 1.3 million in the surrounding metro area — has been growing steadily, in part because rent and home prices are far lower than those in larger cities such as Washington or New York.
The bus system has been supported by local taxes, making it less reliant on the fare box, and it got a state grant during the pandemic that allowed it to eliminate fares altogether. It also began offering more frequent service, including nights and weekends when people are more likely to ride, said Bendon, the bus system spokesman.
“We’re going more places and we’re running buses more often as well, so that’s made our system more reliable,” he said. “That’s been a noticeable and measurable improvement to service that has resulted in people using the system more.”
