Every one is sat at home working from their computers. Socially distancing and doing their part to flatten the curve. "It's our responsibility," they say, sipping their coffee and logging into Zoom. "I'm helping everyone stay healthy."
Or that's what the mental image of the last few months has been. The reality is far from that picturesque scene for far too many of us however. The grounds used to make that coffee eventually end up in a trash can that a sanitation professional needs to collect. The servers running those Zoom conferences are located in buildings that still need to be cleaned and maintained. Toilet tissue, paper towels, and disinfectant cleaners are shipped from warehouses staffed with packagers, loaded onto trucks and planes by more workers, and eventually delivered by postal and shipping employees.
The major difference between these two groups is evident with even the briefest of glances: their jobs and related economic classes. Those fortunate enough to have the flexibility and ability to work from home and keep earning an income are doing so on the backs of those that work to support the infrastructure that make such remote work possible. And most of the time, especially in large metropolitan areas, those workers are relying on public transportation to make their way to work.
The traditional metrics used to measure the success of public transit, and therefore the level of governmental support for transit, are heavily dependent on ridership. The shorthand is if people are riding, rail line or bus route is successful. The issue is that in the effort to social distance transit systems are seeing ridership drops of 70-90% (source), and in turn, decreases of service provided by as much as 75% (source). For those working from home, this seems appropriate. For an 'essential' worker, this can mean having to walk miles to reach a different route or wait 20 or 30 minutes longer for a bus to arrive; only to find it packed with others attempting to make their way their jobs cleaning hospitals, maintaining data centers, collecting trash, or delivering parcels.
The vast majority of these transit-dependent persons are, typically, lower income persons of color. Those that in pre-COVID times were already making a difficult decision to use transit rather than personal transportation for monetary reasons. They are the same people that are typically disadvantaged in being able to reach reliable sources of groceries and other necessary goods (i.e. living in food deserts). And usually living in housing located further from a central core of an urban area in order to pay a rent or mortgage that doesn't decimate their monthly budget. These same areas tend to be underserved by transit in the best of times, but are also the first routes cut when times get bad.
In light of the crisis we find ourselves in, the time has come to reevaluate the mission of public transit and its place in government budgets. Again, looking at the populations that are finding themselves less affected by COVID-19 and more able to work remotely, there is a clear bias toward the more affluent and white populations. Even once those people are 'cleared' to return to work, they will likely have the flexiblity, both economically and socially, to continue to work remotely in order to protect themselves. If not, they also will tend to have the ability to pay the necessary costs to switch away from their transit trips to a single-occupancy car and drive to work. Those 'essential' poorer workers will not have the luxury of a similar decision.
Because the success of transit has historically relied so heavily on ridership, the temptation will be to return service to those routes that historically had higher ridership first. Such an action would predominantly benefit riders living in denser urban areas with a higher cost of living. Such riders will be those more affluent persons with the luxury to decide to continue working from home or switching to driving to work. Those poorer riders will continue to be left in the cold waiting upwards of an hour for a minimal bus service to eventually arrive to shuttle them to work.
Transit agencies have a moral obligation to recognize their importance in providing connections for disadvantaged and at-risk populations to jobs, groceries, doctors, and other needed services. The time has come for a sea change in measuring how transit is succeeding in that goal, rather than just tracking a change in the number of passengers carried over time. Pressure must be placed on local governments to recognize the same obligation and change their funding strategies for supporting public transit. Ever since transit became public, the cost of the service has never been recouped by the fares paid. It is far past time for governments to depend on the farebox to reduce the amount of subsidy the local government spends to support public transit. There is no expectation of a fee to offset the cost of maintaining roads for private cars and there should be no expectation that the farebox would offset the cost of transit.
Public transit must serve the needs of those with no other option as a primary function. Efficiencies realized by carrying other affluent populations should be considered a bonus, not the baseline.
Michael Eckenreiter is a Transit Specialist at a major American transit agency.