by Leonard Robinson
Public transit ridership has fallen since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic leading one expert to question if rates will ever return to pre-pandemic levels.
A recent report by the American Public Transportation Association shows that total transit ridership in the United States stalled for the second time since the first quarter of 2021. Ridership grew for six of the seven quarters from the first quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2022. But there was a slight dip in the first quarter of 2023.
The total ridership dropped from 1.68 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 1.66 billion in the first quarter of 2023. The modes of transportation tracked include heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, trolleybus, bus and demand response.
Total transit ridership is still 33% below pre-pandemic levels, according to the APTA.
Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director for transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, told The Center Square that it’s unlikely ridership will return to pre-pandemic levels.
“We’re not expecting ridership to exceed 80% of its pre-pandemic levels nationwide and some regions will do significantly worse than that,” Feigenbaum said.
Public transit systems are facing numerous challenges, he adds, such as a substantial share of employees who will not return to working in an office, commuters taking advantage of other options such as driving or using rideshare apps and systems being too slow to adapt to new commuting patterns or not serving suburban work centers.
San Francisco, for instance, is expecting to lose $22 million in transit fares over the next two fiscal years, according to budget documents. A $10 million loss is projected by the end of the 2023 fiscal year with a $12 million loss projected by the end of the 2024 fiscal year.
APTA and the U.S. Department of Transportation did not respond in time for publication.
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Leonard Robinson is a reporter for The Center Square based in New York City. He has held reporting positions at Morning Brew and New York Business Journal and has been published in numerous publications, including Business Insider and Reason.
