Friday, March 29, 2024

The transportation agency is trying to lure you back

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Last week at In Washington, DC, the board of directors of the Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority has done something almost unheard of: it provides more services to passengers with less money.

During this period Coronavirus disease During the pandemic, the agency reduced subway and bus services in the area due to financial difficulties caused by declining passenger numbers. Now it promises to increase the number of buses and trains on weekdays, weekends and late at night, and some bus lines operate more frequently than before the pandemic. At the same time, passengers will pay a fixed fee of $2 on weekends instead of paying a fare based on the distance they travel. They don’t have to pay for bus transfers, and they will get a weekly bus pass. The plan will “better meet the needs of existing passengers, reflect changes in new travel modes and lifestyles, and attract repeat customers and new customers”, The person in charge of the subway said.

These new travel patterns are still unclear. But officials in Washington and elsewhere are considering the role of buses, subways, and trains in cities that have been transformed by a year-long public health crisis. They want to win back the drivers-and they are willing to try some out-of-the-box strategies to do this.

Agency in Boston, Cleveland, Las Vegas, This San Francisco Bay Area, with New Orleans Temporarily offer reduced fare or free ride services to attract people to take public transportation again. Others are considering cancelling fares altogether.Los Angeles is Explore the 23-month pilot This will provide free ride services for students and low-income residents.The Kansas City Regional Transportation Authority cancelled the fare in March 2020, and Don’t plan to bring them back“The return on investment of empathy, compassion and social justice far exceeds the return on investment of concrete and asphalt,” Robbie Makinen, CEO of the agency, Tell Stateline last week.

Others are targeting the more sacred cow: peak-hour service.

Historically, commuters carrying briefcases and laptops have been the main target audience for public transport.and so Public transit Designed to meet their needs. Commuter trains that shuttle between suburban and downtown business districts run more frequently during peak hours. Institutions bought more buses and subway cars to cope with crowds during peak hours, and sometimes even paid drivers extra to stay for a few hours during peak travel times. They created a park-and-ride service to help people who drive to work but don’t want to deal with traffic jams in densely populated cities.

right now The future at the peak is complicated. Big employers such as Apple, Amazon and American Express say they will continue to allow employees Telecommuting Several days a week, even after most people are vaccinated and the office reopens. On average, this means there are fewer crowds during peak hours. Simultaneously, Planners noticed increased interest in off-peak services Since the mid-term, the service has been redesigned to make it more useful for people who work shifts, run errands after school, or participate in social situations.

Agencies are taking advantage of the gloomy period of pandemic recovery to change schedules. In Los Angeles, officials at the local commuter rail Metra said this month that they will test new timetables that are “away” from pre-pandemic peak-hour norms and “support a more balanced approach” to make trains more evenly spaced throughout the day . In Boston, officials continued to implement pre-pandemic plans in April and began to run more frequent commuter trains outside of the nine-to-five schedule. Transforming the system into a more equitable regional rail network to provide more services than traditional office workers is part of a larger vision. Passengers during off-peak periods are more likely to be immigrants, women, people of color, and low-income people. Pandemic, as a local advocacy organization TransitMatters observed, May give local institutions “political space” to carry out long-term planned changes. There are now fewer and fewer people complaining that operators have taken their particular trains.


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