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Governments are largely aligned in reducing emissions. Many have received a direct mandate from their citizens and others believe it is the popular choice. Every day there is another announcement about budgets being allocated to different types of clean energy to steadily reduce reliance on fossil fuels. These are fun announcements for those involved; positive, difficult to quantify, and difficult to judge retroactively. The problem is that regardless of these announcements some recent shifts are steadily increasing the reliance on fossil fuels. A poster child for this problem is reduced public transit usage post-COVID. Solving these boring problems would take fewer dollars than many of the high-profile green announcements, but they are not receiving funding. Let’s focus on the shift in public transit behaviors and how it can be solved.
Subway usage has yet to regularly exceed pre-COVID highs in many areas, but this has regularly occurred in terms of driver miles traveled. There is certainly less commuting across all transit options with the rise of remote work, but the larger recovery in driver miles suggests many former commuters are simply driving instead of taking the subway. This is a terrible change for per capita energy consumption. The negative impact greatly exceeds many high-profile clean energy projects, some of which are even getting announced at municipal levels. Steady work to get people back on the subway needs to be done.
A great case study for the dynamics driving this behavior is New York. Before the pandemic, New York City’s subway system had been experiencing a steady increase in ridership. According to data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the subway system had a record-high ridership of over 5.5 million average riders in 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent restrictions, led to a sharp decrease in subway ridership in 2020. At its lowest point in April 2020, subway ridership was down more than 90% year over year. This part makes perfect sense during COVID. What doesn’t make sense is the recovery. According to MTA data from January 2022, subway ridership was still down by about 50% compared to January 2020.
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When surveyed by the MTA, New York City subway riders ranked keeping safe on the transit system as their top concern. Specifically, “personal safety & security” ranked top of the list. The next priorities that followed included items such as “people behaving erratically” which really seems like it should be bucketed with safety. Fourth or fifth on the list was regular items you’d expect such as “more stops”. New York is not alone in struggling with ridership and realistically runs one of the best programs in the entire country. Major centers across North America face this safety problem, showcased most recently in Toronto with several high-profile transit crimes.
The problem is now compounding in these metros as the lack of safety is keeping more riders away, and a lack of people can further reduce rider safety. Safety is a problem that cities have solved before, and it typically takes some dollars and simple steps. Returning public transit to the number of riders seen before COVID, and then exceeding it, is critical in reducing per capita energy consumption. Improving transit safety may not meet the same applause as some of the recent clean energy announcements but the impact will be immediate and substantial. It needs to be viewed as similar win to get the attention it deserves.
