Northern California's Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, has struggled to regain pre-pandemic levels of ridership compared with major transit systems in the rest of the country, reports NBC News.
Weekday ridership is down to 32% of what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic as remote work has become a way of life for many office workers. Just two weeks ago, California lawmakers passed a state budget that includes provisions to bail out transit agencies facing a "fiscal cliff" with federal coronavirus aid running out.
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who denied public transit agencies a lifeline in his latest spending plan, has yet to sign it.
According to data reviewed by NBC News, BART's traffic last month was 3.9 million rides, or around 40% of the level from May 2019.
New Jersey Transit, comparatively, carried 18.4 million passengers in May, or about 80% for the same month in 2019.
"I think the main reason is that the Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, continue to have some of the highest rates of remote and hybrid work among major urban areas in the U.S.," Sebastian Petty, transportation policy manager for the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, told the news outlet.
"Secondarily, there have been issues with public perception of cleanliness and safety."
BART spokesman James Allison told NBC he wouldn't "speculate on whether BART will ever get back to 100% pre-pandemic ridership."
"Our ridership is closely tied to office occupancy in downtown San Francisco. We assume the shift to remote work is here to stay."
Other U.S. transit systems have also suffered, including those in Kansas City, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Albuquerque, and Boston.
"If anyone says that they know the way out of this difficult situation, they're fooling themselves," Brian D. Taylor, the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently told The New York Times. "This is a really challenging time."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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