Most of the nation's most-trafficked public transit systems are still seeing less than 80 percent of their pre-pandemic ridership.
NEW YORK — Public transit systems at the heart of major American cities were built around the 9-to-5 — and that old business of shepherding workers to downtown offices turned into their greatest weakness.
Regardless of the calls to think bigger or differently about their operations, slow revenue growth is weighing heavily on public transit agencies. They face little choice but to sacrifice something if they want to woo new kinds of riders, which risks leaving those who still must commute literally stranded.
“Even three years since the shutdowns began, we have not yet landed at our new normal,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview. “We’re not going back to 2019. But I also think today’s norm is not where all of this ends, in terms of commuting patterns.” That’s put pressure on statehouses, where fights for cash have gotten partisan as well as geographic as rural lawmakers from both parties question why their constituents should pony up to make life easier in cities that already seem to have it all.
In New York, a proposal to raise $800 million for the MTA by increasing the payroll tax on large businesses in areas served by the agency faced such steep opposition from suburban lawmakers that it will now only apply to companies within city limits.
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