Reply to Interesting twist on DC "density argument" - Metro ridership continues to plummet

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There’s a pandemic.
If you haven’t noticed, car traffic is way way down too.
Should we tear up all the roads too?[/quote]

No, but [b]we should be assessing how commuting patterns will change [/b]before we commit to new road projects.  We'd be silly not to be doing similar assessments regarding the long term impact on metro riding.[/quote]

We don't know that.  Indeed, we can't *possibly* know the long-term impact on metro ridership right now.  We'd be idiots to make any plans or assessments before the pandemic is over and we see what *actually* happens.  You can't "assess" something that hasn't happened yet.  [/quote]

So you think planning is purely reactive and no effort should be made to forecast?  That's not how government or business works.

Of course we don't know exactly how things will shake out long-term.  And, yes, to the degree possible we should avoid making large, expensive, irreversible decisions before we have a better sense of how things will look post-pandemic.  But you can't put everything on hold for years, and it could easily take years for people to have a sense of how many/which changes will be permanent.  Also, nothing is ever "permanent," things constantly change and policy makers can't simply wait and wait because they don't know how things will change going forward.

In a related context, policy makers are already assessing what jobs will not come back (which itself will impact commuting, among other things) and trying to plan accordingly.  Do you think we should wait until we see permanent job loss (and for long would be enough for you?) before we start to try to take measures to help counteract these job losses?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/02/17/unemployed-workers-retraining/[/quote]

No.  I think we're in the middle of an unprecedented situation and we can't really forecast the effects right now.  Maybe lots of jobs will end up being remote, but I'd be shocked if most of the federal government goes full-time WFH. [b] Maybe people will move out to the suburbs for more space, and will rely on Metro even more to get to their jobs.  [/b]

Frankly, I think Metro should be using this time to make necessary repairs and improvements so that when ridership begins to climb again, it will be in a position to offer good service.  Cutting Metro is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they lack money, so they have to cut service, so fewer people ride, so they lose money, so they have to cut service, etc.  We should be putting money into critical infrastructure in general right now -- Metro, roads, power grid, etc. -- when unemployment is high and interest rates are low.  [/quote]

So true. If all those apartment dwellers suddenly move to Loudoun and now drive to park and ride 2 times a week to take metro, rather than walking to work, you could see a big boost to metro, maybe even more revenue since they are going on long rides.

But honestly we just don’t know what the after times will be like at all, so we have to adjust as best we can go. [/quote]

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