Public transportation on the brink

Urban transportation systems are cash-starved because of the pandemic.  Many are reacting by cutting back on service.  That hurts those who rely most on these services.

As I've mentioned many times, I attended college at Loyola University of Chicago.  As an out-of-towner, I lived in a dormitory on Loyola's Lake Shore Campus, which sits on Lake Michigan near the city's northern border with Evanston.  But most of my classes were at Loyola's Water Tower Campus, some 18 miles due south, along the North Michigan Avenue shopping and commercial district. 

My father, who at the time of my birth was a factory worker taking night classes, had risen by then to the executive suite, so our family was fairly well off compared to many of my high school classmates in our manufacturing town.  The family was prosperous enough that I was allowed to drive a hand-me-down car during my senior year of high school, a sporty-looking but underpowered '74 Chevy Camaro.  But only in the loosest manner of speaking was it my car: my father still owned it, and I had to share it with my two sisters who were next in line among us seven siblings.  I drove us to and from high school every day.  And when I went off to college, the car stayed home; by then, my sisters had just about run it into the ground anyway.

All of which is to explain: at college, I relied on public transportation to get to and from my downtown classes.  One of the rail lines of Chicago's rapid-transit "el" (elevated) train system stops a block from my dormitory and, after running past Wrigley Field, plunges underground to traverse the downtown area as a subway, where it let me off about three blocks from my downtown campus classes.

After my junior year of college, rather than return home for the summer, I rented a cheap, roach-infested below-street-level apartment near the Lake Shore Campus, found myself a job selling Time Life books over the phone, and struck out on my own.  One does not make much money selling books over the phone, unless one is willing to engage in flim-flammery which would have crossed the line of my personal moral code.  And owning a car along Chicago's densely populated North Side lake shore strip is an expensive proposition.  Parking is not free in the commercial districts, and many residents also pay to rent a residential parking space.  Otherwise, one had to rely on street parking, which could be difficult to find in that crowded area - many times, I have driven around for 20 minutes or more, looking for a place to park within walking distance of my destination.  For a single, poor person like me, it was a lot cheaper and more convenient just to rely on public transportation.  The el train stopped at our local stop every few minutes.  And Chicago had a network of bus routes that would, if one had sufficient patience, get the rider virtually anywhere in the large city.  An express bus which took me to the entryway of my Time Life job stopped just steps away from the front door of my crummy apartment.  It got me to my office building in about 20 minutes, if traffic wasn't too awful.  Within a few months, I had become pretty expert at getting around, virtually anywhere in the city.  In those days, a monthly pass, offering unlimited bus and train rides, cost less than $50/month.  And my el line, and quite a few of the bus routes, ran 24x7x365. 

Riding trains and buses to get around all day isn't without its pain points.  One spends a lot of time outside waiting, or walking to and from train stations and bus stops.  When it is freezing cold, or snowy and slippery, or hot and muggy, or pouring buckets of rain, that's pretty unpleasant.  (I still own weather gear that turns heads in the suburban area where we live now; a suburbanite's idea of protecting himself from the rain is to put a newspaper or plastic grocery bag over his head as he dashes from the store to the parking lot.  I don't know anyone else around here who wears galoshes; I've had the same pair for at least 20 years, and for protecting footwear, they're hard to beat.)  During rush hour, one gets wedged into trains and buses with many, many other sweaty, stressed commuters.  Nor is one shielded from the social problems which beset any urban area: one is always at risk of encountering the mentally ill element or the criminal element on buses and trains.  But on the whole, for getting around, it worked rather admirably.  And I was far from unique in relying solely on public transportation; there were many thousands of other individuals and families who commuted just as I did.  It's part of that city's urban culture.  I didn't buy my first car until I was in my late 20s and already married.  By then we had moved away from the lakefront, and I didn't want to ride a discount airport bus line anymore to visit my parents.

What spurs this little reminiscence on my part is a NY Times article by Christina Goldbaum and Will Wright which reports that urban public transportation systems are getting pounded by the pandemic:

In Boston, transit officials warned of ending weekend service on the commuter rail and shutting down the city’s ferries. In Washington, weekend and late-night metro service would be eliminated and 19 of the system’s 91 stations would close. In Atlanta, 70 of the city’s 110 bus routes have already been suspended, a move that could become permanent.

And in New York City, home to the largest mass transportation system in North America, transit officials have unveiled a plan that could slash subway service by 40 percent and cut commuter rail service in half.

Across the United States, public transportation systems are confronting an extraordinary financial crisis set off by the pandemic, which has starved transit agencies of huge amounts of revenue and threatens to cripple service for years.

The profound cuts agencies are contemplating could hobble the recoveries of major cities from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, where reliable transit is a lifeblood of the local economies.

It seems there are three interlocking sets of problems:

• Because of the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, many jobs have been eliminated, or work hours cut back, so the need to commute is much reduced
• Many office workers who haven't been furloughed have been sent home by their employers to work remotely
• New York's spike in infections and deaths last spring planted the idea in people's minds that public transportation is unsafe.  That's not unintuitive (cf the wedging-in-during-rush-hour).  But it seems that neither are subway cars and buses the death traps which have taken hold in the popular imagination.  

Public transportation systems are not private businesses which can reinvent themselves to serve new markets when one market dries up.  They are more like public utilities which are necessary to support urban living.  Their options for getting revenue are limited:

[W]e have two sources of revenue, it’s either the farebox or the subsidies from our local and state government,” said Paul J. Wiedefeld, the general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. “They are both under tremendous financial distress right now, so where do we turn?”

Goldbaum and Wright note that the bipartisan pandemic aid proposal being considered in Congress does provide some relief for public transportation - about half the money the transit agencies have requested - but passage of the bill is still uncertain.

Public-utility goods like electricity and running water - and transportation - need to be provided in sufficient quantity for each individual consumer.  Cutting back on transportation by reducing train schedules or eliminating bus routes is similar to reducing electricity availability to just a few hours a day: it renders the community unlivable. 

And those who are hurt the most are those who rely on public transportation the most, who are the poorest.  I see this even in my ministry work with homeless and in-need families here in the suburbs.  We have some public transportation in the suburbs, but it never has reached the critical mass of availability which would allow one to easily rely on it.  And over the past 30 years, the suburban agency has cut some bus routes completely, and has reduced service on many others.  When I had an office to work from, I would have been quite happy to ride buses to commute.  My office was about eight miles away from my home, close enough that sometimes I rode a bicycle to work when weather permitted.  This area isn't exactly bicycle-friendly either, but that's another whole set of issues.  But just to get to a bus which would get me within a mile of my office, I would have had to walk or get a ride of three miles.  It just didn't work.  But I am lucky enough to own a car.  Some of our clients don't have that luxury.  So they walk three miles, or more, each way every day.

Our parish is amazingly generous in its support for our Outreach ministry.  But there are still many, in the parish and elsewhere, who grumble, 'Instead of taking our handouts, why don't those people get a job?'.  My answer is, Many of them would like nothing better than to have steady, reliable, safe work which pays a living wage and treats employees well.  If we want our Outreach clients to get hired into those jobs, we must be willing to provide financial support for a way for them to work and back home again.