C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022
commuter
officials said. VRE is pursuing
new weekend service and addi-
tional weekday trains, but MARC
officials say they can’t expand
anytime soon because of capacity
constraints.
Transit officials in Washington
and across the country say they
are hopeful a resurgence in traffic
congestion, as miserable as it is,
will help woo back riders lost to
driving. Many major metro areas,
including the D.C. region, are re-
porting traffic congestion ap-
proaching pre-pandemic levels.
In some case, it’s even surpassing
them.
“That’s going to wear on a daily
commuter,” said KellyAnne Gal-
lagher, chief executive of the Com-
muter Rail Coalition. “Are they up
for doing it one or two times a
week? I don’t know. It can get
pretty brutal.”
That feeling resonates with
Herndon resident Nelson Rich-
ardson, 35, who said he has driven
to his IT job at the Capitol
throughout the pandemic only
when he needed the flexibility for
child care. But he mostly has stuck
with VRE or Metro, opting for the
solitude of the train over an in-
creasingly jammed Interstate 66.
“Traffic, driving is a nightmare,
especially coming from the Hern-
don area,” Richardson said re-
cently after hopping off a VRE
train at Union Station.
Germantown resident Henry
Choi, 55, a pharmacist, said he has
enjoyed mostly empty MARC
trains throughout the pandemic
on his daily commute to Chil-
dren’s National Hospital in D.C.
His other options — taking Metro
or driving 11 / 2 hours each way —
would cost him time.
“That commute is a little bit
more of a pain,” he said.
Metrolink, the third-largest
commuter rail system in the coun-
try, saw 90 percent of its passen-
gers evaporate early in the pan-
demic. It has gained back almost
one-third, and agency officials
hope that will grow to 44 percent
by midsummer.
Kettle, its chief executive, said
he is eyeing residents who moved
farther out for more affordable
space during the pandemic and
took on a longer commute, even if
it’s less often. He said he hopes the
return of Southern California’s
stifling traffic congestion will
help make the case for riding rail.
“In the past, they wouldn’t have
taken the train,” he said, “but now
they have a 40-mile commute.”
Experts say the extent to which
many systems recover — and how
long it takes — will depend on
unknown factors, such as wheth-
er another variant emerges, how
long employers permit hybrid
schedules and how comfortable
passengers feel riding long dis-
tances in enclosed spaces. An-
other big question: how much two
years of working from home has
dampened some long-distance
workers’ willingness to schlep to
and from an office, even a few
days a week.
Scott Zuchorski, global group
head of infrastructure and project
finance for Fitch Ratings, said he
believes the long-term effects
won’t be clear until late this year,
after the crisis phase of the pan-
demic is presumably over and
more workers have settled into
new commuting routines.
“It’s just a matter of when peo-
ple return to that pre-pandemic
lifestyle and to what extent,” he
said. “There probably will be
some people who don’t return
fully or make other choices in
their lifestyles.”ing a public service, officials say,
long-distance transit helps re-
duce traffic congestion and vehi-
cle emissions while attracting and
focusing growth around stations.
The Massachusetts Bay Trans-
portation Authority moved some
of its Boston-area commuter
trains last spring from the morn-
ing and evening peaks to provide
regular hourly service throughout
the day.
The new service is noticeably
busy in the mid-afternoons, prob-
ably because it now serves 7 a.m.
to 3 p.m. work schedules common
in health-care and construction
jobs, Poftak said. He said two
years of teleworking also seem to
have left commuters with new-
found flexibility to leave the office
early, such as to pick up children,
before finishing the workday at
home. Running trains through-
out the day entices passengers
who previously might have wor-
ried about getting home quickly
for a midday emergency, he said.
“We give customers the option
to do that, because we’re running
a train every hour, whereas in the
old days, we were really focused
on getting people in and out of the
city around that 9-to-5 window,”
Poftak said.
In the Washington region, VRE
recently adjusted its schedule in
response to customers’ requests
to fill morning and afternoon
gaps. The last morning and eve-
ning trains leave later, while oth-
ers are designed to be more reli-
able by reducing conflicts with
other trains.
However, officials for both VRE
and MARC say they can expand
service only if Amtrak and the
freight railroads that own the
track their commuter trains run
on grant them more space. That
would require funding to add
more track and other capacity,ic levels until summer 2023.
“If someone was commuting
five days a week and is now com-
muting three, that’s a 40 percent
drop in how often that person
rides,” said Maryland Transit Ad-
ministrator Holly Arnold. “If you
take that across all of our riders, it
does add up. We’re trying to make
sure we’re ready for that.”
Ridership on Virginia Railway
Express hit 16 percent of pre-pan-
demic levels this month, its high-
est customer load since the pan-
demic began. Los Angeles’s
Metrolink and Chicago’s Metra
commuter rail systems are at
30 percent, according to the agen-
cies. In New York, the Long Island
Rail Road and Metro-North lines
have fared better, with ridership
above 50 percent. New Jersey
Transit reports rail ridership at
50 percent.
Ensuring the viability of long-
distance trains and buses is criti-
cal, industry experts say, because,
like all mass transit systems, their
operations rely on public subsi-
dies. The less ridership revenue,
the more the government must
make up the difference without
service cuts. In addition to provid-dard wait times throughout the
weekday. It also has encouraged
passengers to take the train more
often for errands and leisure trips
by extending late-night service
and creating a flat $2 weekend
fare.
But replacing the revenue lost
from daily commuters will be a
challenge, Metro officials say.
“Will they come back?” Metro
General Manager Paul J. Wie-
defeld said in a recent House
subcommittee hearing on the
agency’s outlook. “No one knows,
of course, but will they come back
to the scale that we were? I doubt
it, to be frank.”
Ridership on Maryland’s
MARC commuter rail bumped up
to 23 percent of pre-pandemic
levels as more offices reopened
this month. Like other commuter
rail systems, MARC has begun
offering a discounted and more
flexible fare pass for fewer trips. It
also has experimented with a new
evening express train to speed up
the trip between Union Station
and Baltimore.
Even so, state officials don’t
expect MARC ridership to recover
to even 65 percent of pre-pandem-ers will continue teleworking at
least a couple of days a week also
will deal an outsize financial blow
to regional subway systems such
as Metrorail, which relies finan-
cially on charging more for lon-
ger-distance rides during peak
commute times.
Metrorail ridership rebounded
recently to 29 percent of pre-pan-
demic levels, after more offices
reopened Tuesday. Even so, Metro
officials have predicted that over-
all ridership on the rail and bus
systems will reach just 53 percent
by summer and 75 percent by
mid-2024 — with the biggest
l osses among long-distance com-
muters.
Rail trips taken during the tra-
ditional morning and evening
rush have hovered at 15 to 25 per-
cent of pre-pandemic levels, lag-
ging behind the off-peak rider-
ship of 35 to 45 percent. Trips
beyond 15 miles are at about
15 percent of pre-pandemic levels,
according to Metro.
Metro, already hampered by
more than half of its rail cars
being sidelined for safety prob-
lems, has shifted trains from peak
commute periods to create stan-systems have lagged, as the bulk
of their more affluent customers
with more flexible desk jobs con-
tinue to telework or turn to driv-
ing.
Two years into the pandemic,
those trends have transit officials
in the Washington region and
elsewhere considering how to fill
seats while shuttling fewer work-
ers from outer suburbs to city
cores. The D.C. area’s two long-
distance commuter rail systems
have been among the slowest to
rebound.
“Those are systems built for a
commuter who won’t ever return
or won’t return in the numbers
they used to,” said Joe McAndrew,
who oversees transportation is-
sues for the Greater Washington
Partnership, made up of chief ex-
ecutives between Richmond and
Baltimore.
McAndrew said 53 percent of
Washington-area jobs can be
done remotely — the second high-
est of any U.S. region behind the
San Francisco area — and many
major employers expect nearly
30 percent of their employees to
telework on any given day. As of
Feb. 23, buildings in the D.C. met-
ro area served by office security
firm Kastle Systems were at about
33 percent capacity — below the
37 percent average recorded
across 10 major metro areas.
With commuter rail and bus
lines running up to two hours
each way, passengers also have a
bigger incentive to stay home.
Many who moved to outer sub-
urbs for more space during the
pandemic probably did so with
the intent of commuting less, ex-
perts say.
That hasn’t stopped rail sys-
tems from courting them as tran-
sit agencies adjust fares and
schedules to try to broaden their
customer base and hold on to less
frequent commuters.
Chicago’s Metra commuter rail
system is sending free fare cards
to residents who recently moved
into its suburban service area.
New Jersey Transit is touting its
commuter trains and buses as a
convenient ride to Manhattan’s
entertainment and a more flexi-
bly priced commuting option for
the city’s stage, restaurant and
hotel workers.
Many commuter rail systems
have started offering discounts to
less frequent commuters as an
alternative to the traditional
monthly pass. Some are adjusting
to more flexible work schedules
and targeting nonwork trips by
moving rush-hour trains to all-
day service. Others are trying to
lure weekend customers with flat
fares and free rides for children.
“We can’t keep just thinking
about the white-collar worker
who’s going from Claremont, Cali-
fornia, to Los Angeles,” said Dar-
ren Kettle, chief executive of the
Los Angeles area’s Metrolink
commuter rail. “We have to sort of
rethink who we are.”
The Massachusetts Bay Trans-
portation Authority shifted some
Boston-area commuter trains
from peak commute times to mid-
day to try to resuscitate ridership,
which hovers at 39 percent of
pre-pandemic levels.
“I don’t think ‘worried’ is the
word,” said Steve Poftak, the au-
thority’s general manager. “I
think we are watching carefully
how ridership comes back and
what trends we’re seeing in the
employer community. I think
we’ll need to adapt.”
The expectation that many rid-
RAIL FROM C1
As workers make fewer o∞ce trips, rail systems struggle to fill^ empty seats
PHOTOS BY AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTTOP: A MARC commuter rail
train at Union Station. State
officials don’t expect MARC
ridership to recover to even 65
percent of pre-pandemic levels
until summer 2023.
LEFT: A passenger sits on a
Baltimore-bound MARC
train on Wednesday.(202) 919-9209 (301) 778-4222 (703) 650-9337