“But in fairness… it’s really not time to focus excessively on it until you’re confident that we’re filling the bucket.” “It would be nice to continue to support the regeneration of nightlife and theater and everything with even more frequent service,” Janno Lieber, the head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in an interview. They face little choice but to sacrifice something if they want to woo new kinds of riders, which risks leaving those who still must commute literally stranded.

Regardless of the calls to think bigger or differently about their operations, slow revenue growth is weighing heavily on public transit agencies. And the pleas born out of that financial anxiety are aggravating a divide between rural and urban state lawmakers while the same transit operators face pressure to avoid spending new cash on the old practices that helped put them in their current bind. Transit chiefs have urged Congress to do another round of relief, a dim prospect in a divided Washington.

“The whole thing has to be rethought and reevaluated.” “It’s a new day for transit in terms of ridership, the people delivering the services - from drivers to mechanics,” former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in an interview. And even though New York lawmakers struck a deal last week to fill a transit budget gap, it’s not enough to avoid a fare hike. Public transportation executives from Los Angeles to New Jersey are warning of a fiscal cliff in just a few years that risks raising ticket prices and cutting service on workers who can least afford it. Despite being rescued with $55 billion in federal Covid relief money in 20 after watching their farebox revenue evaporate, 10 of the nation’s largest transit systems will soon need to find billions of dollars a year to stay afloat.

Old septa bus