Transit's Financial Prognosis: Findings from a Survey of U.S. Transit Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned significant financial distress and uncertainty for many U.S. transit operators. In the face of this crisis, the federal government provided substantial supplemental operating support. To understand how this fiscal turmoil and relief have affected U.S. transit systems, we conducted two nationwide surveys of transit agency staff in 2020 and 2021-2022. While pandemic-induced financial shortfalls affected service in 2020, with capital projects delayed too, these effects became much more muted by 2021/2022. Most systems reported moderate to substantial increases in federal funding during the pandemic, more so than other funding categories. However, nearly half foresee financial shortfalls once federal relief funding expires. Agencies with higher pre-pandemic ridership and farebox recovery are particularly affected by fare revenue losses and more likely to anticipate shortfalls. In the near term, difficulty hiring and retaining front-line workers was a pressing concern, while very few had plans to maintain pandemic fare suspensions. © The Author(s) 2023.

Pandemic Transit: A National Look at the Shock, Adaptation, and Prospects for Recovery

While the COVID-19 pandemic in some way affected every person and enterprise on the planet, the temporary hollowing out of concentrated economic, political, and cultural agglomerations in cities dealt a devastating and potentially enduring blow to the public transit systems that depend on them for so many of their customers. This chapter draws on a survey of 72 U.S. public transit systems and semi-structured interviews with 12 transit agency staff, both conducted in the late summer and early fall of 2020, to consider how the pandemic shocked the transit industry at the outset, and how the industry adapted to deliver transit services. We find that: transit agencies adapted quickly, and many of their changes are now standard operating procedure;the pandemic tended to affect large and small transit agencies differently;transit’s role as a social service provider took on increased visibility and importance;and financial collapse has been averted, but funding shortfalls may become a pressing issue in the years ahead when federal emergency funding runs out. We conclude that while transit systems have adapted remarkably to dramatic change and that federal funding has largely forestalled fiscal crises, the longer term future of public transit in the U.S. remains very uncertain. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

LOST and Found: The Fall and Rise of Local Option Sales Taxes for Transportation in California Amidst the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected the ability of localities to pay for their transportation systems. We explore the effects of the pandemic on local option sales taxes (LOSTs), an increasingly common revenue source for transportation in California and across the U.S. LOSTs have many advantages over alternative finance instruments, including that they can raise prodigious amounts of revenue. However, LOSTs rely on consumer spending, which lags during times of economic weakness. This is precisely what we observed in California counties during the initial months of the pandemic. LOST revenues did recover after the initial economic shock of COVID-19, albeit to a lower level than they would likely have otherwise. LOST revenue trends during the pandemic were affected by national and regional economic conditions and government policy as well. This public health crisis illustrates both the pitfalls and resilience of LOSTs during economic downturns and recoveries. The lessons from the pandemic’s effects on LOSTs will be useful for policymakers and analysts in preparing for inevitable future crises and associated economic turbulence. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.