Free Republic

As I’ve been pointing out for a while now, mass transit is dying thanks to a pandemic that has accustomed many white collar workers to spending one or two days a week at home. The situation is especially grim in the Bay Area which was once considered one of the best rail and bus systems in the country.Its pre-COVID ridership is unlikely to return in the next decade, making BART’s future especially perilous as transit agencies across the Bay Area and the nation project massive budget shortfalls.In its worst-case scenario, BART would impose mass layoffs, close on weekends, shutter two...

On a sunny Friday morning, Lindsey Baker was waiting at a bus stop across from Carlow University in Oakland. Clad in typical summer clothing — shorts and a T-shirt — Ms. Baker, 23, was biding her time for a bus to take her to Robinson, where she works as an assistant manager at the clothing store Maurices. But one piece of clothing she was wearing is becoming increasingly unnecessary in Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania — a mask. The Pennsylvania Department of Health is lifting its order requiring universal face coverings on Monday, but this doesn't apply everywhere. The Centers for Disease...

I’ve written before about the problems on BART trains which include rising crime and a substantial increase in the number of homeless people using the trains as a moving shelter (and occasionally a bathroom). Not surprisingly, those and other problems have led to a substantial decrease in ridership. Though trains continue to fill during rush hour, fewer people are riding BART to museums, parks or shopping centers.Outside the peak commute times, ridership plummeted — from 62.2 million in 2015 to 52.7 million last year…A recent BART survey of 662 commuters in five counties may help explain the evening and...

Miami-Dade’s beleaguered transit system took its worst plunge in use ever in the past fiscal year, new figures reveal. Ridership among all four transit modes declined a combined 9.6% as almost one in every 10 riders disappeared. ....just as the county is promoting plans for six new legs of mass transit in its multi-billion-dollar Smart plan....

As the Northstar Commuter Rail line nears its first birthday, ridership has fallen below expectations. A week after it was announced that plans to expand the rail line to St. Cloud have been shelved, officials released numbers showing ridership is about 5 percent below projections. Officials blame the economy and expect the gap to widen.

Those hoping to ride the state's high-speed train next decade will have to dig much deeper into their wallets than officials originally thought, a harsh reality that will chase away millions of passengers, according to an updated business plan released Monday. The average ticket on the bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now estimated to cost about $105, or 83 percent of comparable airfare. Last year, the state said prices would be set at 50 percent of comparable airfare and predicted a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles would cost $55. As a result of the...

Metro Delivers Hundreds of Thousands to 9/12 Rally Posted September 15th, 2009 at 4.58pm in Ongoing Priorities. Much has been made over the attendance at the march and rally in DC on September 12. Reports varied, with many on the left clinging to an unofficial DC Fire Department estimate of 60,000 to 70,000. Some reports from overseas went as far as to say two million. However, one completely objective source of information is the number of people who rode Metro, Washington, DC’s mass transit subway system. Washington Metro measures and releases its ridership numbers and these numbers have been used...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...