Transportation expert Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit, says that public transport agencies must change the conversation around what their work is for.
Walker was speaking during a Swiftly webinar, Public Transit in the Time of Covid-19.
“This is an urgent opportunity to help everyone see that ridership isn't the only point of what we do,” he said. “We have to stop talking about ridership as though it’s the only measure of our success.”
With ridership plummeting all over the world, the role of public transport has been elevated to something much more important, he insists.
“What transit is doing right now is making it possible for everyone upon whom civilisation rests at the moment - everyone who works in medical, everyone that works at the grocery store, everyone that works in the supply chains behind the grocery store, everyone doing all of those things without which our civilisation would collapse right now - transit is making it possible for those people to do what they need to do. And we're going to need to take credit for that.”
Walker said the industry needed to “push back” against “a lot of the ways that our goals are usually framed”.
He conceded that ridership would come back as the crisis eases, but only "very gradually” because people will remain concerned about health issues.
“So this is an absolutely critical moment for everyone in transit to start thinking about how to change the conversation and change how we talk about what we do and why we do what we do,” Walker concluded.
