Unsustainable? How the Pandemic Turned our Transit Model on its Head

The Covid epidemic, and the public response to it, has changed the business of public transit here and across the nation. At one point in 2020, King County Metro, lost a devastating three-quarters of its riders. As of mid-July 2024, its ridership was still down 26 percent from the pre-Covid level of July 2019.  

One measure of the economic health of a transit agency is operating costs, which include the pay of bus drivers and other Metro employees, and the cost of fuel and maintenance. In 2019, Metro’s average cost to operate a bus was $168.87 an hour. By 2023, it had jumped to $254.90, an increase in four years of 57 percent. 

A century ago, bus transit was a profit-making business. Fares covered all the operating costs as well as the capital costs, including the cost of purchasing the buses. That era is long gone. In the 21^st century, the goal has been for fares to cover 25 cents of each dollar of operating costs. Metro almost achieved the 25-cent mark each year from 2008 through 2019. In 2019 its fares covered 24.1 cents of every dollar of operating cost.

In 2020, when Covid hit and buses emptied out, fares covered only 6.9 cents on each dollar of operating cost. That figure crept up to 7.1 cents in 2021, 8.9 cents in 2022, and 8.8 cents in 2023. One reason for the low farebox coverage is “non-revenue boardings” — riders who don’t pay. 

Fortunately for Metro, the farebox is not its main source of money. Sales taxes are. Still, farebox revenue is an indicator — and at 8.8 cents on the dollar, it’s indicating that the post-Covid world is a less favorable market for transit.

Another number that analysts consider is the operating cost per boarding — each rider’s share of the cost. From 2003 to 2019 this figure crept up from $3.35 per rider to $5.67. Then came Covid, when that critical figure more than doubled, peaking in 2021 at $13.47, falling to $11.89 in 2022 and $10.80 in 2023.

The person raising an alarm over these numbers is Charles Prestrud, a retired state transit planner now writing for the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank based in Seattle. “The transit agencies aren’t in danger of running out of money,” he writes. Sales taxes are strong. But ridership, he says, has fallen “far short of the levels assumed in adopted plans.” In particular, Prestrud casts doubt on the Puget Sound Regional Council pre-Covid forecast, which shows Metro’s annual boardings nearly tripling (from 128 million to 360 million) between 2018 to 2050.

Metro expects a new forecast by the spring of 2026. The new forecast will still show ridership going up. The critical question is how fast. Metro’s boardings and service hours have partly recovered. From 2022 to 2023, the agency says, bus boardings are up 18 percent and vanpool boardings are up 48 percent. But four and a half years after the pandemic hit, total boardings and service hours are not fully recovered.

When and if ridership does more fully recover, Metro bus ridership will look different than before. Its routes in south King County and routes that offer all-day, frequent service, such as RapidRide, have lost less ridership than average. Its rush-hour commuter runs have lost more, because of the people choosing to work at home. This pattern, Metro admits, “will likely persist for many years.”

In response to these post-Covid trends, and also to Sound Transit’s rail expansion, Metro says it will “restructure bus service rather than restore service to pre-pandemic conditions.” It plans “a targeted, income-based approach to fares. This includes free youth transit fare and low-income/subsidized transit fares for people with disabilities, people with lower incomes, seniors, and youth.”

There are two big reasons for having tax-subsidized bus transit: reducing the congestion and air pollution from cars and serving people who don’t have cars. In the future, Metro intends to focus more on the second. People who don’t have cars need a service that is frequent and all-day, which keeps Metro’s buses and drivers busy. What’s less clear is how to serve runs with only a handful of riders.

Prestrud, the analyst with the Washington Policy Center, suggests that Metro could partner with Uber or Lyft to provide on-demand service for low-income riders. “Among transit people, they have been regarded as the enemy,” he says. “The advantage of Uber and Lyft is that they are tremendously convenient.”

Metro responds that it is offering a couple of services with much of that flexibility, Dial-A-Ride Transit (DART) and Metro Flex. Though many of these services were cut in 2020 because of Covid, Metro has restored some of them over the past two years, and is considering new services across KING County.

 “Metro has been focusing its resources towards bringing back and growing ridership,” the agency says. The post-Covid rise in the cost of bus service — how much it costs to attract and keep one more rider — has made that work more difficult.

Bottom line

“Metro has been focusing its resources towards bringing back and growing ridership,” the agency says. To its credit, it has dug most of its way out of the Covid hole. But the rise in the cost of attracting and keeping new riders is making it more and more difficult to achieve the long-term goal of “getting people out of their cars.”