Transit is a function of people working in downtown offices. That is a very 20th Century idea. With Metra ridership down 91.5%, railway adding new air purification system to restore confidence - Chicago Sun-Times.
Government stimulus funding is helping the company financially as it saw a 5.5 million fewer passenger trips during the month of January compared to pre-pandemic ridership.
Because spending money on outdated technology is surely what government is best at.
In January of last year, passengers took nearly six million trips, but a year later, ridership this past January barely broke 500,000 trips, which is 5.5 million fewer than last year. Last month’s number was even lower, at 493,000 trips. Metra had earlier estimated that passenger trips would reach 20% of pre-pandemic levels by 2021.
How many people will return to downtown offices? Now that companies have a year to guage how remote working works, and whether it costs or saves money... You could also look at vacancy rates for downtown office space.
This story is about Metra - part of the transit system in and around Chicago - but I'm sure that similar problems are hitting NYC, and other cities.
Do you ever read The Antiplanner?
ReplyDeletehttps://ti.org/antiplanner/
Sorry, too much work to make a link on mobile.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, that works. I will take a look...
DeleteActually, for those of us who know how to type, and I type as fast as I can talk, mostly, doing anything on mobile is a pain.
DeleteIt would be easier to use mobile if you could use Morse code to enter words.
Gboard has a Morse Code keyboard.
Delete