The toll of the coronavirus on air transportation is well known: It’s emptied airports and pushed carriers to bankruptcy. Mass transit employs almost as many people as air transport in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and it’s also in a perilous state, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. While the airlines’ catastrophe followed a decade of record profits, transit ridership in the U.S. since 2014 had already been declining, a result of cheap gas, the emergence of ride-hailing, and decaying infrastructure. Now experts predict that U.S. rail and bus systems may never fully recover from the pandemic. That could present new obstacles to millions of low-income commuters and set cities on a course toward heavier congestion and failed climate goals. As shelter-in-place orders and business closures have kept millions of workers at home, the most-used transit systems are carrying 70 percent fewer riders than usual, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Those riders left include workers in essential industries — nurses, janitors, grocery and pharmacy clerks, and others that state and local governments deem pandemic-critical. About 2.8 million of these use public transit, making up 36 percent of all riders, according to an analysis of 2018 U.S. Census Bureau data by TransitCenter, a think tank.
