Over the past few years, I have been writing about the fall off in public transit ridership that we have seen as a result of the pandemic. Most recently, I mentioned it in my predictions for 2023.
This topic doesn't seem to get a lot of air time, but it is a problem. Because the standard way to operate a transit system in North America is at a loss.
According to this recent WSJ article, the average fare recovery ratio across the US is somewhere around 1/3, with the remaining 2/3 of operating costs being covered by public money.
(Somehow Japan has figured out a way to make money on rail.)
During the pandemic, federal aid was disbursed in order to maintain service levels. The MTA in New York, for example, received $15.1 billion. But these aid packages will eventually run out, and ridership has yet to fully return:
New York’s subway system has regained about two-thirds of its pre-pandemic ridership with about 91 million trips in November, according to the MTA. But that is about 50 million fewer rides than in November 2019. Officials worry usage has stalled out at that level.
In San Francisco, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, recorded 3.7 million trips in November—a little more than one-third of the ridership before Covid.
The obvious answer is likely to be a combination of service cuts and/or more public money. But an even better answer would be to use this opportunity to figure out how to make our transit systems a little more Japanese.
That is, let's make them more financially sustainable. And yes, that is going to necessarily involve looking at how we build around and on top of transit.
I’ve written quite a bit about the advantages of a “rail + property” model when it comes to building public transit. It’s a model that works quite successfully in other parts of the world, such as in Hong Kong.
However, in North America the notion of land value recapture or of transit authorities acting as real estate developers is still very much in its infancy. We’re myopically focused on rail.
Which is why I said about 3 months ago that if the stations along the new Eglinton Crosstown LRT line in midtown Toronto became single storey and single purpose buildings, that we will have missed an enormous city building opportunity.
Since that post I had a number of conversations with the folks over at Metrolinx and I was delighted to learn that there were in fact plans to build additional density on top of the stations. And as of today they’ve gone completely public with that intention.
Metrolinx, with the help of Avison Young, has just issued a request for proposal (RFP) for 4 sites along Eglinton Avenue in the city. Two of them are at Keele Street, one of them is at Weston Road, and the last one is at Bathurst Street. The 4 sites could generate between $14M - $22M.
The objective is to find suitable developer partners to help them build on top of their planned LRT stations. And it’s a step in exactly the right direction for Metrolinx and this city.
Image Source: Google Streetview