The history of transit ridership in the US is what it is: But it matters enormously how we talk about it. Many US transit agencies will be facing the voters in the next two years, seeking new funding to plug their structural deficits and forestall destructive service cuts. Many agencies are already involved in fights for more funding in their state legislatures, sometimes winning, as in Illinois, but often losing, as in Pennsylvania and Oregon. Most of the voters or legislators in these debates are not well informed, so they can be swayed by the rhetoric used. So transit agencies need to be carefully choosing their language. And we should be talking as an industry about what messages are helping and what aren’t. I found myself provoked this morning by this well-intentioned tweet from the fine folks at the San Francisco Peninsula regional rail agency Caltrain: It made me ask: When are we going to stop describing our ridership as a percentage of pre-COVID? Because as long as that’s…
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