COVID-19 Bringing Short- and Long-Term Impacts to Transportation

by Sean Slone, CSG Senior Policy Analyst

The unprecedented state and federal responses to the coronavirus pandemic have brought travel nearly to a halt over the last few weeks. The upheaval being experienced by transportation across all modes is now prompting many to consider whether some of the impacts could be more long-lasting than originally anticipated. Here’s a rundown of some recent items:

Traffic & Mobility

With stay-at-home orders in many states, reduced traffic on the nation’s roads has brought with it numerous impacts both good and bad.

  • As we noted in this space a couple of weeks ago, many state transportation officials are expressing concern about a sharp drop in state revenue from fuel taxes that reduced traffic volumes are expected to bring this year. Some have asked Congress for an immediate $50 billion to prevent major cuts to road and bridge projects over the next 18 months.
  • The news isn’t all bad for road construction however. States like Colorado, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey and South Carolina report that virtually empty streets have allowed them to expedite some projects this year. Transit projects in California and Nevada have been able to make progress as well.  
  • The Bangor Daily News reported that the pandemic has forced a delay in Maine’s construction season as the construction industry assesses how best to protect the health of workers.
  • City Lab notes that while vehicle traffic and public transit ridership have declined in recent weeks, essential workers are still commuting and homebound Americans must still make trips for survival goods. Local governments have taken action to allow that critical movement to happen more easily. “They’re striping new bike lanes, retooling traffic signals, suspending transit fares, closing some streets to vehicle traffic, and taking other temporary transportation measures,” writes City Lab’s Laura Bliss. The New York Times also reported that cities like Boston, Minneapolis and Oakland are repurposing streets into car-free zones and giving pedestrians and cyclists extra room to practice social distancing. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall has surveyed residents on which city streets should be converted for walking and biking during the pandemic.
  • The jury is out on whether reduced traffic automatically means reduced traffic accidents. The Los Angeles Times reported that the number of vehicle collisions on California roadways have been cut in half. Missouri on the other hand reports a three percent increase in traffic fatalities for the year so far.

Public Transit

Public transit systems around the country are experiencing an existential crisis unlike any they’ve experienced before due to a variety of factors:

  • Axios notes that while ridership has collapsed and funding streams have been squeezed during the pandemic, more than 36 percent of essential workers have continued to rely on public transportation to get to work. Public transit systems have continued to operate—sometimes at as low as 10 percent capacity—despite concerns about worker health and safety in some places. Transit agencies predict an annual shortfall of as much as $38 billion and say it’s unlikely their systems will be able to bounce back as fast as other modes once the pandemic is over. The contagious nature of COVID-19 could make passengers hesitant to sit shoulder-to-shoulder for a substantial period of time and could prompt many to rely more on personal vehicles once they return to work.
  • Transit workers in King County, Washington (Seattle) have asked county leaders to consider more transparent reporting of COVID-19 cases to front line workers, reduced hours, hazard pay, full personal protective equipment and training for bus cleaners, and daily changing of bus filters, KOMO News reported.
  • Wired reported on how cuts in public transit service are hurting essential workers and making their commutes much more challenging.
  • Timothy Papandreou, a contributor to Forbes, writes that many transit systems “have put in extra measures from disinfecting their rolling stock more often, protecting their drivers with the appropriate equipment, indicating where people should sit or not sit to keep the social distancing minimums while seated, and some have removed fare payment and front door boarding altogether to protect the driver. These measures aren’t free and will have deep impacts on their already strained budgets. They will be faced with even harder choices over the next few months between providing essential coverage and reducing service frequency and service overall.”
  • New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order over the weekend that will require riders and transit workers alike to wear cloth face coverings on New Jersey buses and trains. The order also limits the number of riders a vehicle can carry at one time to 50 percent of capacity, Mass Transit Magazine reported. In addition, it calls for the implementation of contactless pay options, continued sanitation of high touch areas and signage encouraging six feet of separation between riders.

Air & Rail Travel

  • A recent Inverse piece predicts profound long term effects on business trips by air and long-distrance rail journeys. The piece argues they “are vulnerable to being replaced by videoconferencing, and we may see less commuting as people and organizations get more used to remote working.” The authors also suggest that more walking, cycling and driver-only car journeys will likely result, as people become more reluctant to share space with others.
  • In that vein, a number of arilines have announced they’re blocking off middle seats on flights, The Washington Post reported.
  • Delta Air Lines has new boarding procedures aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus as well, USA Today reported. Passengers are being asked to wait until their row is called and board the plane from the back to the front to reduce the chances that passengers have to pass each other as they find their seats.

Autonomous Vehicles

  • The California Department of Motor Vehicles has issued a permit to a company called Nuro to operate two self-driving delivery vehicles on select streets in the Bay Area without a safety driver present, Smart Cities Dive reported. Waymo received a similar permit in 2018. Sixty-five other companies in the state have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a human safety driver. According to the article, “cities were increasingly seeing an uptick in interest in delivery robots and vehicles from elected officials even before COVID-19 confined many people to their homes under social distancing policies.”
  • Tech Crunch reports that Starship Technologies has launched a robotic food delivery service in Tempe, Arizona and has accelerated plans for growth as the demand for contactless delivery has expanded exponentially in recent weeks.
  • The World Economic Forum recently took a look at how COVID-19 could open doors to more driverless deliveries but only with some additional work on the regulatory front. The permit given to Nuro, for example, required a lengthy petitioning process that the company will have to repeat once it reaches the end of its fixed-term exemption in order to continue to operate. “Given the exceptional circumstances facing the world, this regulatory band-aid seems like an unnecessarily lengthy hurdle to a potentially beneficial technology,” the WEF’s Tim Dawkins writes. “Of course, many of these regulations exist to ensure the safe development of this nascent technology, and it would be foolish to scrap such safety guidelines. But given the potential for AVs to assist in this crisis, regulators should consider the merits of agile, performance-based technology frameworks for automated vehicles.”
  • Not everyone is convinced that our current challenges are fully advancing the cause of autonomous vehicles however. As Axios noted recently: “the coronavirus has brought the entire U.S. auto industry to a screeching halt. When it finally sputters back to life, many companies may be forced to change, defer — or even abandon — their ambitious plans for self-driving vehicles.” With no clear business model in place for AVs before the pandemic hit, industry consolidation, shifting priorities and potentially dwindling investment capital in the months ahead could prompt further delays in the autonomous revolution.

Electric Vehicles

  • The electric vehicle marketplace could face similar challenges as well with new models delayed as automakers suspend manufacturing to focus on making medical equipment, Axios reported. Tesla, the popular electric car maker, announced this month it would cut pay for all salaried employees and furlough hourly workers until May 4, when the company plans to resume production. On a brighter note, the company also said it had its highest ever monthly sales last month in China, the world’s largest auto market. 

Car Sales

  • Meanwhile in this country, some are saying it couldn’t be a better time to buy a car—if you’re willing to shop from home and negotiate by e-mail or phone, that is. As The Los Angeles Times reported, with showrooms closed, inventory bloated and dealers bleeding cash, “negotiating power in favor of the buyer has rarely been so lopsided.”

Tolling

  • The COVID-19 crisis may now make the end of cash tolling and human toll booth collectors inevitable in states like Maryland, Maryland Matters reports. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on March 17 directed the Maryland Transportation Authority to pull its toll-takers off the job as part of efforts to reduce the spread of the virus, eliminating the cash option—at least temporarily—for Maryland drivers on some tolled facilities in the state. But as the newspaper notes, several facilities no longer had human toll-takers and the pandemic seems likely to hasten the demise of cash tolling statewide despite the hesitancy of some Marylanders to embrace E-ZPass transponders as the preferred method of automatic toll payment.

High-Speed Rail

  • The pandemic could derail a high-speed rail project in Texas. The project’s developer, Texas Central Partners, laid off 28 employees last month, citing the outbreak and pandemic-related issues with partners in Italy, Spain and Japan, The Eagle newspaper reported. Subsequently, more than two dozen state lawmakers asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to end work on the project that would pass through the Brazos Valley, saying the developer “simply does not have the financial resources required or expertise employed to continue with his project.”