As federal funding from the CARES Act runs out, transit agencies are running up against bleak financial shortfalls, and will have to cut service to the bone without emergency assistance. We spoke with three transit riders about how the loss of service would affect them.

As protests across the nation call for an end to police violence and discrimination against Black people, the board of BART in the SF Bay Area is taking steps to overhaul the agency’s approach to public safety on transit.

The MBTA has developed a flexible approach to service provision tailored to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

TransitCenter spoke with Commissioner Calise, a daily subway rider who uses a wheelchair, about his priorities for his tenure on the MTA Board.

The MBTA now offers crowding information on 23 of its bus routes, enabling riders to make decisions about how to minimize risk as they travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

To meet the needs of people who have been most affected by the pandemic, agencies should go beyond the initial transition to weekend schedules and adapt service in response to shifting travel patterns. 

The $25 billion for transit in the CARES Act, which passed in March, bought agencies in major cities a few months. But CARES funding was not sufficient to address the scale of the transit crisis, nor was it targeted well.

Advocates in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Durham, N.C. are distributing masks to riders, and using mask giveaways as an occasion to organize riders to demand better transit service. 

In a new report, the Bus Turnaround Coalition calls on Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio to advance an equitable recovery from the COVID-19 crisis in New York City by making bus improvements a top priority.

While HEROES Act funding would significantly reduce anticipated shortfalls, it would still address less than a year’s worth of the expected deficit for many large and mid-sized transit agencies.

Universal mask-wearing on transit will be fundamental to managing COVID-19's spread. Portland’s TriMet and San Francisco’s BART provide an early look at how agencies are managing this shift.