A report co-authored by Janette Sadik-Khan, the former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, and Seth Solomonow, co-author of Streetfight: Handbook for Urban Revolution describes how COVID-19 fears led officials to point to public transit as the “super spreader” when in reality, new evidence points to the contrary.
Prior to the pandemic in March 2020, New York’s subway system carried 5.5 million people on an average workday in 2019. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an MIT economic professor concluded that New York subway was a major disseminator if not THE principal transmission vehicle in the City’s virus outbreak. Unfortunately, this statement was made without any real evidence to support the claims.
Transit systems, a means for essential workers to get to their jobs while acting as a major engine of economic stability and equity, became the red-headed stepchild of the transportation industry. By the time the MIT report appeared, ridership on bus and rail systems had dropped by 74% in New York, 79% in Washington DC, 83% in Boston, and 87% in the San Francisco Bay area from pre-pandemic levels.
Interestingly in May, the number of bus riders in New York surpassed the number of subway riders. Usually buses attract only 33% as many riders as the subway. Some transit advocates believe that riders felt more comfortable above ground than in trains and stations and, therefore, limited the amount of time spent in contained areas.
When the New York Stock Exchange re-opened in May, traders were required to avoid public transportation while the CDC told American employers to encourage employees to avoid transit and to drive alone to work in offices if possible. This ongoing, unfounded rhetoric kept people living in fear and prevented them from feeling comfortable enough to use public transit.
The report, covered in The Atlantic, provided additional interesting findings, showing mass transit has not been the culprit for the virus spreading.
- A recent study in Paris found that none of the 150 identified Coronavirus infection clusters from early May to early June originated in the city’s transit system. A similar study in Austria found that not one of the 355 clusters in April and May was traceable to riding transit. These studies/research suggest a far less sinister role for transit than the MIT report described.
- Logically, if transit were a global super spreader, then a large outbreak would have been expected in Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people dependent on a public transportation system. Before the pandemic, Hong Kong was carrying 12.9 million people a day. Yet, Hong Kong has reported only 1,100 Wuhan Chinese cases, one-tenth the number in Kansas which has fewer than half as many people.
- Eleven percent of American infections and 33% of U.S. deaths by early May had occurred in nursing homes. By mid-June, over 40% of the deaths had occurred in nursing homes.
- Hard hit cities, such as Milan, that have reopened their transit systems, have not seen infection spikes. Japan, which has some of the world’s busiest rail networks, had very few infections at all, only about 17,000 or less than 1% that of the United States. There have been no reported upticks in Tokyo since Japan reopened its economy.
The Atlantic article indicates that CDC guidance is wrong. Shifting transit commuters to single occupancy vehicles would asphyxiate cities with congestion and pollution and reinforce the deadly outcomes of a century of car-focused urban planning that cities have been trying to escape. Before the pandemic, cities were acting locally to fight climate change, make their streets safer, and achieve greater equity among neighborhoods.
Every year, 1.3 million people die in traffic crashes worldwide. About 37,000 annual deaths occur in car crashes in the United States and the Atlantic reports another 4.2 million die globally from health impacts of air pollution – clearly a bigger worry than most realize.
With a push to provide more street space for safe walking and biking, residents in cities throughout the U.S. could likely become furious if their elected leaders in the major Democratic-run cities restored their cities to maximum traffic and increased car dependency.
This means transit systems will continue to be necessary. But, transit systems must look and feel safe and agencies must create a new transit culture that reinforces public hygiene and promotes washing hands before and after trips. Expanding contactless payment and protecting transit workers can help reduce touch points and get cities working again until a vaccine and effective treatments are available.
Instead of scaling back on public transit, cities across the country need a massive transit expansion that will enable them to avert the mobility meltdown that threatens to swallow them even if a fraction of former transit commuters take to cars.
With appropriate precautions, transit riders can feel comfortable swiping their metro cards again and agencies can start building the post-Wuhan Virus transit systems that cities and their residents want to see.
The question remains, will former transit riders return to shuttles, buses, and trains? Or will they instead turn to single occupancy vehicle (SOV) use? Will they bike or buy a scooter? Or will employees continue to telework? All of this is unfolding before our eyes.