Public transit in the United States is ailing. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, transit ridership fell by more than 800 million annual transit trips, or about 7.5%, between 2014 and 2019. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 only compounded these losses. Both before and during the pandemic, the changes in transit ridership were uneven, varying across metropolitan areas, built environments, times of day, days of the week, trip purposes, operators, modes, and directions.
