Post-covid realities could spell doom to VTA’s deeply flawed transit system

It may be too late for VTA’s light rail system—widely panned as the nation's worst performing system—to ever realize anything resembling sustainable returns. Especially given ridership losses during the pandemic. Mario Polèse unpacks the problems in City Journal.

For cities with already-weak urban transit systems, the situation is grim. Financing public transit will become even more of a political hard sell locally. Looking back, the first two decades of the twenty-first century may have been the last chance to establish functional public transit systems in many cities—that is, before the inevitable move to electric vehicles and clean technologies, robbing environmentalists of a powerful argument against car use. Covid will have struck the final blow

One does not need an advanced degree in social psychology to understand that driving alone and working at home are not conducive to social interaction. Therein lies Covid’s most potentially troubling urban legacy. The rediscovered focus on home may reenergize anti-development forces in cities, especially regarding new housing construction. With fresh impetus from public health arguments, they will push back even harder on density.

Read the whole thing here.

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