Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Uh, pretty sure that stuff went on pre-pandemic. I don't think people stopped riding transit in March 2020 due to "junkies".
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Right. Like I said before, the quality and/or safety/cleanliness of the public transit infrastructure has little to nothing to do with the low ridership numbers we are still seeing.
It has to do with pandemic induced mass shift to semi-permanent remote work.
Sure, there might be a handful of people that are scared to ride public transit due to highly publicized crimes, but the vast majority would return to riding public transit if they had to out of necessity for work, or for convenience. Remote work is out of the control of public transit agencies, so for now, they have to focus on improving convenience. It could also be said that crime might actually go down if riders were to return at pre-pandemic levels. More witnesses, less opportunities to get away.
We could have police officers on every single train car in America and ridership numbers would still stay the same. Maybe it'll go up 0.01%, but that's about it.