Is Baltimore transit doomed?

Bus operator under COVID

The Regional Transit Plan is nearing its completion deadline in October. It was legislated when expanding Baltimore region transit was a viable option in principle, except that only Maryland's Governor had thwarted it throughout his time in office. Now with COVID still upon us, transit's perspective looks even more difficult. 

Critiquing a recent article in CityLab I am making the point that this is even less a time to cut transit funding or services. 

When even a progressive voice such as CityLab questions transit's future because of the pandemic, one has to wonder. This article takes a critical look at some of the predictions expressed in a CityLab article dubbed a A Post-Pandemic Reality Check for Transit Boosters.

Already the title choice is dubious. The the urban news and opinion service, which was formerly published under the flag of the Atlantic now sails under Bloomberg with Hyundai as one of its main sponsors. The title implies that those who promote transit somehow miss reality. This is an assumption usually found among conservatives who think that transit is a lost cause anyway.  Laura Bliss, who has written many well informed and illuminating articles about transportation in CityLab, assembled a number of expert opinions which culminated in the suggestion that the future of transit is to be a "social service" focusing on essential workers and a few routes with high frequency reliable service.

“For many years we have a lot of aspirations for transit: We want it to beat traffic, fight climate change, and revitalize communities. But the two things it has demonstrably done in last half century is provide mobility for those without — whether that’s due to age, income, or disability — and allow highly agglomerated places function. My educated guess is that we will see the rise of transit as a social service.” (Brian Taylor, an urban planning professor and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles)

London bus in front of St Paul Cathedral  March 2020: Cashless and fully
enclosed operators were typical for London buses for years

The piece has more problems than just the headline.
It appropriately begins with a historic reference to the Spanish Flu which occurred during the hey days of transit, especially streetcars. But it concedes that transit recovered pretty quickly which does little to support the notion that transit boosters need a reality check because of COVID 19.

In 1918, streetcars were the top urban transportation mode in the United States. And they were packed: Americans made about 140 trips per capita, about 15 billion trips total, that year. [...]Still, the popularity of mass transit did not suffer dramatically in the succeeding years (Laura Bliss)

To get to the period when transit really declined drastically from its 1918 peak, the author has to throw in the Great Depression, the rise of the automobile and World War II, all three not related to the Spanish flu and thus, telling us little about transit after COVID-19. But the limping historic precedent is just the beginning. Much more concerning is what follows couched in the opinions of experts.  The arguments either don't add up or they are alarming for their implications on social equity and climate change.

Transit (blue) takes a beating in cities around the world (Apple Mobility)

The article states correctly that transit ridership after a boom during the 2008 financial crisis decreased again in recent years. As the main reason Laura Bliss  and her her transit experts indicate that data show that formerly "transit dependent" riders were lost in greater numbers than "choice riders". Here this important section of the article:

Explanations for ridership’s downward slide during these years abound. Cheap gas and easy credit for auto loans increased the appeal of car use, while service quality deteriorated on the older parts of transit systems. Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft emerged, and a housing affordability crisis pushed many people outside the range of reliable transit.

In Southern California, Taylor and his colleagues have found that the largest drops in ridership have come from groups that were traditionally the heaviest, most economically dependent users of transit. Lower-income immigrants in particular have abandoned buses as car ownership among those communities has increased. While the share of discretionary riders has increased slightly, thanks to increased investment into rail and rapid bus service geared toward more affluent commuters, “their added trips are still overwhelmed by lost trips from others,” Taylor said.

Bus with front portion temporarily blocked for driver safety

If this analysis would hold for major transit systems across the country, it would seem curious why the article recommends to focus on the the very group that left transit in droves and to ignore the riders that seem to have come to transit more recently. But this is exactly what is suggested in the article:

But the best indication of the future face of transit may be the people on board right now.

In other words, focus on those super dependent riders that can't let go of transit, even in the midst of a pandemic. That would be a stunning reversal of the past efforts of attracting the so called choice riders and increase the pool of transit riders beyond those who have no other option. The article isn't subtle about who the "captive" riders are:

Transit, an urban mobility navigation app, has found that 68% of the people using it to plan bus and metro trips right now are women, most of them black and Latinx.

To be sure, the desire to attract "choice riders" has been rightly criticized by folks who bemoan the lack of equity in transit systems where the fancy rail lines and commuter buses serve the wealthier populations while poor neighboorhoods have to take the unreliable and slow bus. On closer inspection, though, achieving equity is more complicated than not providing service for wealthier folks any longer. It is no solution to eliminate the better services and leave poor riders with the crappy service. One has to remember that the desire to cut services and concentrate investments on buses instead of rail has always come from those who use equity only as a smoke screen to defund larger transit investments, just like Hogan did.

Transit is always about the network. Cutting services and routes will hit the riders hardest who have no other choice of mobility: Transit limited to the poorest neighborhoods and the low paying job centers would essentially not only lock those essential workers (those "on board right now) into the geographic areas of concentrated poverty which currently have the longest commute times but also deprive them to make any other "non essential") trips.

In the neighborhoods in which these workers live and work, most everything is seen as a "social service", from substandard public housing to substandard schools. It is precisely this attitude of seeing basic functions such as mobility, housing or education as something that should be delivered differently for the rich and the poor, that is one of the the causes of inequity in the first place. 

Airport bus, Dulles International: The problem of safe
transit under Corona is universal 

Social scientists, educators, architects and transit professionals have long realized, that improvements on those services can only be achieved if  they are provided to a economically diverse clientele. In other words, only if transit providers need to worry about "choice riders" going elsewhere, precisely because they have a choice, will they provide an acceptable service. Not, if riders consist exclusively of those who have no other choice but to accept whatever crappy service they get.

The article concedes that service reduction would cause even more ridership reduction. This is, in effect, cutting the legs off its own argument.

“There’s an elasticity that shows if you cut service by 10%, you can generally expect ridership goes down 3-6%,” Greg Erhardt, civil engineering professor at the University of Kentucky, specialist in travel behavior and transportation planning.

Admittedly, as long as the risk of catching a potentially deadly virus exists, transit will not be the most attractive form of transportation for those who can alternatively hop into their own car in which no virus threat exists. But the article also concedes, that the car is not an option for large cities.

Who will ride in the wake of coronavirus? Passengers will inevitably return in dense cities with extensive systems, such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, where transit is critical for thriving urban economies to function (Taylor)

If transit can't be substituted in those large cities, it has to be made functional and safe during a pandemic. That is where the real challenge resides. If transit can be made safe in large cities, it can work even better in smaller ones. The solution is not service reduction and giving up on transit as a solution to congestion, bad air and climate change, just as the pandemic cannot be the excuse for giving up on education.

As widely understood now,  the pandemic enlarges existing problems and accelerates existing trends. In the case of transit, it means that transit experts and agencies have to solve the long standing issues of unreliable, crowded and unhygienic bus transportation by making buses more pleasant and comfortable, offer faster and more reliable service and by supplementing fixed route, fixed schedule service with flexible on-demand type services that seamlessly integrate with existing transit. This is exactly what the buzz word transit as a service  means which had become popular before the pandemic. COVID-19 has shown that transit is essential to keep this society going. But one can't just  put this insight on its head by saying it needs to function only for essential workers. That is as deeply flawed as  to say water is needed for survival so one can cut food. It makes much more sense to say: if transit can be fixed and made safe, reliable and even enjoyable for essential workers, it can be that also for everybody else.

This is my no means a small challenge. As the action group Dream Corps - Green for ALL notes in the its current "issue paper":

Transit agencies must now tackle a host of new questions: How do we protect transit workers and riders from the virus? How can we innovate service delivery to prioritize essential workers and those dependent on transit to meet basic needs? How do we fund public transit operations in the short and long term? And, how do we fund other ongoing and critical projects such as transitioning fleets to cleaner fuel technologies and zero-emission vehicles — actions necessary to combat climate change and protect public health — in the midst of uncertain budgets? (DreamCorps)

Many Issues that have been debated for decades. They must now be implemented. That means investing in transit instead of further disinvestment.  Measures that merit investment include:

Report by DreamCorps

•  fully integrated regional fare compacts in which one single ticket is valid among all forms of transit mobility in the entire region. 
• cashless and contact free forms of payment that accelerate service and provide increased operator safety
• "last mile" services that integrate services known as ride-sharing, bike sharing and scooters
• Express or commuter direct service routes with limited stops that originate not only in posh suburbs and go to choice employment centers but also originate in poor neighborhoods and go to low paying jobs.  
• Emission free vehicles that improve air quality and reduce carbon emission. The impact would be especially useful in poor neighborhoods where parks are scarce and emissions from incinerators, factories and diesel trucks are concentrated.

There is no way that the pandemic should be accepted as an excuse to open up another round of anti-urban policies, defunding transit or given the single occupant automobile another lease on life since those exact repeats would throw us back decades in the fight against climate change and wasteful use of limited resources such as open space, challenges that will ultimately prove much more difficult and dangerous than COVID-19.

 Klaus Philipsen, FAIA