How Climate Change is Hurting Transit Ridership - StreetsBlog
By Kea Wilson
Climate-saving transit trips are dropping even as climate change makes weather worse, a new study finds — and to stop the vicious cycle, America needs to better climate-proof its transit networks and encourage more people to choose shared modes now.
A recent study of 43 major U.S. transit networks revealed that ridership dropped during long stretches of rain, heat, or other prolonged extreme weather events that scientists link to climate change, at least in the 17 years between when the National Transit Database began collecting stats and 2019, the last year before the pandemic decimated ridership. That held true even when researchers controlled for what constitutes "extreme" weather in climates as diverse as Philadelphia and Phoenix, as well as how baseline transit ridership tends to differ depending on the race, education, and income mix of each community.
