Eleventh of a Series: Existential Threat to Transit

When Congress authorized federal funds for transit operations in late 2020 and early 2021 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, that particular aid for the nation’s transit providers was meant to be temporary; a response to the steep ridership declines and consequent declines in revenue suffered by transit agencies around the nation, from the major systems I have examined in this series to small systems that operate only a few bus routes with limited service. That money is now running out, and ridership has not returned to pre-COVID levels on most transit systems, while costs continue to climb.

This has resulted in an existential crisis for many transit agencies, whether or not they are willing to acknowledge that “inconvenient truth” (as Al Gore said about climate change). Over the summer I have looked at eight major transit providers that operate significant rail transit systems, including regional trains (still often referred to as “commuter rail” despite post-COVID changes in ridership away from the prior commuter-centered model), metropolitan-style subway and elevated lines, light rail, or modern-style or heritage-style streetcars. The include the MBTA in the Boston area, New York’s MTA, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA in and around Philadelphia, WMATA in and around Washington, D.C., Chicago’s CTA and Metra, Metrolink and L.A. Metro in Los Angeles, and the major providers in the Bay Area: BART and San Francisco’s Muni.

I did not have time for an exhaustive study of the more than 50 agencies in the United States that operate some level amount of rail transit, since some of them run only one light rail or streetcar line, and others run only a few genuine commuter trains, with no rail service at any other time. That is not to say that the smaller providers are not also facing severe financial problems as the federal funding runs out. In addition, there are hundreds of local agencies, including community transportation providers, who offer no rail service and are suffering, too, but those bus-only agencies are beyond our purview.

New York Has a Solution, Others Only a Reprieve

In our research into the major transit systems that I examined for this series, the results showed only one provider that appears to be doing well toward permanently solving the problems created by the events since the virus struck. That bright spot among these providers is New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates the New York City subways, the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North, the Staten Island Railway, and hundreds of bus lines in New York City’s five boroughs. Through a combination of new taxes and fees, with proceeds going to the MTA, the system has been able to project balanced budgets through FY27 (fiscal years for all agencies mentioned here run from July 1 to June 30). While this is good news for the operating side, the MTA’s capital budget has taken a hit with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to halt the highly controversial Congestion Pricing program that would have imposed tolls on motor vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60^th Street and given the proceeds to New York City Transit (80%), with some for the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North (10% each), specifically for capital improvements and projects.

Many non-motorists live in New York City, and they depend on the transit system. Andrew Albert, who is also a rider-representative on the MTA Board and Vice-Chair of the Rail Users’ Network (RUN), told Railway Age: “The State Legislature and the governor are finally treating the MTA as the essential service it is, like police, fire and sanitation. They have given us a balanced budget or the next five years. I have been on the Board since 2002 and never remember anything like that.”

New Jersey Transit will survive essentially in its present form until the end of June 2029 due to the new “Corporation Transit Fee” as Gov. Phil Murphy called it. This year’s proceeds will go to the state’s general fund, so they will not be used to support transit until July 2025. Still, this marks the first dedicated funding approved by the legislature for the agency since it was founded in 1979.

All the other agencies I studied got their own reprieves, and some of those temporary measures that will expire soon. It appears that transit in and around San Francisco and Los Angeles will continue to operate without major service cuts through FY26, thanks to a state measure that will provide $5 billion in funding; a large amount, considering that the state is running a $31 billion deficit. San Diego is not doing quite as well, with financial problems expected to crop up during the summer of 2025. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates six Metro Rail lines and many bus routes, will survive through FY26. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Metra, which runs regional rail service in Chicagoland, have enough money to last for now, but those agencies will face the fiscal cliff late in 2025 or early in 2026. Two major system in the Northeast are hanging on temporarily: the MBTA in Boston and SEPTA in Philadelphia. The former could end up in severe trouble when the current fiscal year ends in June, while the latter could face shortfalls as soon as this fall, because a deal in the legislature that would have provided more money for transit fell through. These are the results that I reported earlier in this series.

Although I only reported on eight major systems in detail, I checked on other agencies that also operate rail transit, and they appear to be in the same situation as the large systems I studied. As mentioned previously, San Diego’s transit is subject to state aid, like those in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, but that system might face the fiscal cliff sooner.

I also checked on the situations in Seattle, the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Baltimore, Denver, Salt Lake City, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Portland, Ore. While transit in all these places will survive for now (at least for the next ten months or so, until the next fiscal year begins), our searches yielded little mention of the fiscal cliff in local news coverage. In our previous article, I quoted Boston-area advocate and former journalist Dennis Kirkpatrick as saying: “Those of us who have been watching developments at the T and the State House knew that the fiscal cliff was coming, but much of the press was surprisingly silent about it. They would mention it, but there would not be a ‘breaking news’ quality about their stories.”

While Kirkpatrick spoke specifically about the situation in his home city, it appears that his analysis is correct on almost a nation-wide basis. This raises the question of whether the media in many cities actually care very much about the local transit and the mobility it supplies for non-motorists and motorists alike. I will have more to say about that issue in a closing commentary in this current series, but that inquiry is only one of several fundamental questions about policy, mobility, and inclusion that the current fiscal cliff has placed before the nation, whether media or elected officials care or not.

Devastating Impacts

There can be little doubt that much of transit in the United States, especially regional rail and rail transit in all its forms, is in serious trouble, except for New York’s MTA. In theory, a significant increase in ridership could bring in enough revenue to restore the transit picture magically back to where it was five years ago, before the virus ravaged the country in so many ways.

In practice, that will not happen. Even if transit providers could somehow get enough money from the farebox to support the operations they ran five years ago (and today’s level of service is generally only slightly less than the service that ran then), that “comeback” would only adjust the supply side of the equation. The demand side has changed, and the result is less ridership, which also means less revenue from fares. I know that there are still fewer five-day commuters than there were before the virus hit. I predicted as early as July 22, 2020 here in Railway Age that the decrease in full-time commuting would become a permanent feature of the new transit landscape. The current facts bear this prediction out, especially with the lower ridership on many systems on Mondays and Fridays, compared to the midweek days. While employers are forcing as many employees as are willing to yield to the pressure back into the office five days a week, others continue to work “remotely” every day, go to the office only occasionally, or make the commute two or three times a week, rather than five. Some transit providers are eliminating new fare products that lent themselves to “part-time” commuting, so they are rescinding those discounted fares. Still, commuting will not be the same as it was before COVID, and agencies will eventually have to face that reality. For their own sake, the sooner they do so, the better. This “new normal” affects not only regional rail, but local transit as well. The primary difference for the agencies is that it is easier to adjust schedules on local rail transit (and buses, too) than on regional trains, but the MBTA in and near Boston seems to have made the adjustment better than anybody else.

Transit providers will also need to promote themselves more effectively to the public, and especially to elected officials and business leaders, who can wield the power and influence that ordinary riders can’t. I will have more to say about that in the closing commentary for this series, but local economies often depend on having enough transit to give non-motorists the mobility they need to get to their jobs and to other places, and also provide an incentive for motorists to use transit for discretionary trips; a result that is far more likely to occur on a system with rail than on one that operates only buses.

If those elected officials and business leaders in the communities serviced by transit do not consider it a vital part of a city’s or a region’s mobility map, the loss of the COVID-19 relief money could (and will probably) trigger the classic death spiral that has threatened transit in other unsettled times. Less revenue, without government funds to make up the shortfall, inevitably results in higher fares and less service. While both are painful for riders, higher fares curtail mobility indirectly, and mostly for people with limited financial means. Service cuts curtail mobility directly, because there is simply less of it available for everybody. Motorists are less likely to use transit for discretionary trips, because it has become less convenient. Non-motorists are in a worse position. They can’t go to some places as often as they could before the service was cut. There are some places that will become entirely off-limits to them, unless they have enough money to take taxis everywhere (even if that taxi is called Uber or Lyft). That means fewer job opportunities, less access to education sites, and a lower quality of life generally.

As necessary as it might become, cutting service also reduces operating costs, but it does not reduce overhead, unless rail lines are eliminated entirely. Most rail lines are full-service lines, so the result would be a drastic decrease in mobility for non-motorists and less choice of mobility for motorists. With less service, fewer motorists would ride, and non-motorists would have fewer places they could go, so they would probably not ride as often as before, either. That further reduces an agency’s revenue. Taken to its logical conclusion, which probably would not occur, the result would be the complete elimination of all transit and the dissolution of the provider. That has happened to some bus-only systems, including in Hammond, Indiana and Tioga County, New York (between the counties that contain Binghamton and Elmira, on the state’s Southern Tier). It also happened in Clayton County, Georgia in the Atlanta suburbs, and it took expansion of Atlanta’s MARTA to restore some buses there.

These are serious issues, and failure to act could cause devastation for transit providers and their riders. I will say more about these issues and possible results in a commentary to conclude this series for now.

David Peter Alan is one of North America’s most experienced transit users and advocates, having ridden every rail transit line in the U.S., and most Canadian systems. He has also ridden the entire Amtrak and VIA Rail network. His advocacy on the national scene focuses on the Rail Users’ Network (RUN), where he has been a Board member since 2005. Locally in New Jersey, he served as Chair of the Lackawanna Coalition for 21 years and remains a member. He is also a member of NJ Transit’s Senior Citizens and Disabled Residents Transportation Advisory Committee (SCDRTAC). When not writing or traveling, he practices law in the fields of Intellectual Property (Patents, Trademarks and Copyright) and business law. Opinions expressed here are his own.