NEW YORK, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The one-year-long COVID-19 pandemic has drained New York's subway of nearly all its riders, sickened thousands of the city's transit workers and plunged North America's largest public transit agency into its worst financial emergency ever, reported The New York Times on Tuesday.
An infusion of billions of dollars in federal aid has kept the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) afloat. And the agency, which operates the subway, buses and two commuter rail lines, was further lifted by another 6 billion U.S. dollars in President Joe Biden's sweeping rescue plan.
But the MTA's long-term survival depends on the return of riders and their fares, which make up the agency's largest funding source. Nearly 40 percent of the agency's operating revenue comes from fares, a higher percentage than almost any other major American transit system.
Unfortunately, the current ridership on the subway has crept back up to only a third of its usual levels, from an all-time low of 7 percent last spring, said the Times.
Now, as the city's mass vaccination campaign reaches more people and urban life slowly rebounds, public transit officials are confronting a sobering reality: a growing consensus that ridership may never return entirely to its pre-pandemic levels and that the agency will have to reshape and reduce service to reflect new commuting patterns.
With many office workers still working from home, the MTA has already scaled back service on both its commuter rails, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road, where ridership has plateaued at about a quarter of pre-pandemic levels. Even as the pandemic subsides, some companies are shifting workplace rules to make at least some remote work a permanent option.
The uncertainty makes projections challenging, but an analysis by McKinsey & Company commissioned by the MTA found that ridership might eventually reach 80 percent to 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels -- and not until the end of 2024. Enditem
