On the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus station is almost empty on weekday mornings, when the Delhi Metro carried more than half the passengers. In Rio, unpaid bus drivers have gone on strike. New York City subway traffic is one-third of what it was before the epidemic.
In one year of the coronavirus epidemic, many cities around the world are hanging from public transport threads. Riders stay at home or they are afraid to get on buses and trains. And without their fares, public transport revenue has fallen off a cliff. In some places, the service has been cut. In others, fares have risen and transport workers are facing layoffs.
It’s a disaster for the world’s ability to overcome another global crisis: climate change. Provides a relatively easy way for cities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention any way to improve air quality, noise and congestion.
“We are facing perhaps the most significant crisis in the field of public transport in different parts of the world,” said Sergio Aveleda, director of urban mobility at the World Resource Institute and former transport secretary in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “It’s urgent to work.”
But how to behave? Transport agencies that have been granted bail by the government are wondering how long the generosity will last, and almost everywhere, as cities begin to emerge from the epidemic to get a figure on how transport experts can better adapt to public transport in the needs of riders. Rubbing.
For now, people just don’t move much. Even in cities like Delhi, where most businesses are open, many office fee workers are working from home and universities have not resumed individual classes. There is a curfew in Paris at 6 p.m.
In some places, people have jumped into cars out of fear of the virus. In the United States, used car sales have increased and so has used car prices. In India, the company, which sells second-hand cars online, saw its sales increase in 2020 and, according to news reports, the company has a net worth of 1 1 billion. Elsewhere, bike sales have increased, indicating that people are pedaling a little more.
Concerns about the future are twofold. If passengers remove public transport for cars because their cities are free from epidemics, which have a huge impact on air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, if transportation systems continue to lose passenger freight revenue, they may not be able to make the investments needed to be efficient, safe and attractive to passengers.
There are a few outliers. In Shanghai, for example, the number of public transport declined in February 2020, but riders have returned as new coronavirus infections have dwindled and the economy has improved.
But the picture is grim in many more cities.
On the Paris Metro, ridership was more than half the normal in the first two months of this year. Ile-de-France Mobilits, a large Paris-based transport agency, said it had lost 2.6 billion euros (3 3 billion) last year. The agency is proposing a shortfall of an additional billion euros this year.
In Amsterdam, the number of riderships on city trams and buses is around one-third of the normal, and the transport agency’s website advises people to “travel only when necessary.” Metro rides in Rome remain below half of the predetermined level.
One of the world’s busiest metro systems, the London Underground, which typically carries about four million passengers per week, is currently operating at about 20 percent of its normal capacity. Buses tend to be slightly more populated, with about 40 percent running normally. The city transportation agency, which once estimated a budget surplus for 2020, relies on government securities after the epidemic hit. It expects it to take at least two years for public transport usage to return to predefined levels.
“To be perfectly honest, it’s been very disastrous,” said Alex Williams, London’s director of city planning for transport. “One of our concerns is the significant reduction in the use of public transport and high-end cars.”
London is one of the handful of cities in the world with congestion designed to reduce car traffic in the city center. Both London and Paris demanded the use of lockdowns to widen bike lanes.
The subway reopened last September in the Indian capital, New Delhi, after months of suspension. Ridership was within 2.6 million in February 2021, up from 7.7 million in the same month last year, and bus traffic was more than half of the predefined level.
Luckily those agencies, like India and Europe, are subsidized by their governments. There is even more trouble in cities where people rely heavily on private bus companies.
In Lagos, Nigeria, fares have doubled on private bus lines for rides longer than a kilometer or a little more than half a mile.
In Rio de Janeiro, the once celebrated bus network is in shaking. The private company operating the system has cut one-third of its fleet and laid off 0.00 employees as the number of passengers has halved since last March, according to the city’s transport department. The bus journey has become slow and chaotic due to the strike by the bus drivers.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Jose Carlos Sacramento, 68, leader of the Rio Bus Workers’ Union, which has been working in the public transportation sector for five decades. “I think it will never be normal.”
City officials said they hope to use the crisis as an opportunity to improve the system, including persuading private bus companies to be more transparent about their operations in exchange for possible financial help from the government.
Ultimately, the head of the city’s transportation department, Maina Salidonio, said a clean, efficient bus system is critical for Rio not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to clean its air. “It’s not just an environmental issue, but a public health issue,” Ms. Said Salidonio.
Mohammad Mezghani, head of the International Association of Public Transport, said all major cities now have to fix their large transport systems so that passengers can return. They can adjust the peak hour service as telecommuting from home has become commonplace, simply increasing bus coverage which makes travel more efficient and comfortable or assures citizens that public transport riders are safe.
“Those cities that used to invest will be stronger,” Mr Meghghani said. “People will feel more comfortable traveling in the new modern public transport system. It’s about the concept in the end. “
Shola Laul And Hari Kumar Contributed report.
