Reported by Diana Ionescu
In a hearing of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on highways and transit, federal lawmakers and industry experts weighed in on the state of public transit in the United States.
Dan Zukowski describes the meeting in Smart Cities Dive, writing, “Experts from the transit industry and labor unions called for more federal funding for operations. Others recommended ways that transit agencies could adapt to changes in ridership such as schedules that provide more off-peak and weekend service.”
Trending changes in transit operations include the addition of on-demand microtransit, which can help fill transit gaps in rural and less dense communities, but which some transit advocates say could drain resources from fixed-route options. Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department. said “even the worst-performing bus routes are more cost-effective than microtransit,” and lawmakers should make “a renewed commitment to providing stable, flexible, and sufficient funding for transit operations.”
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