Politico - Annette Choi
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in spring 2020, Americans largely stopped commuting, swapped restaurant meals and bar crawls for walks or hikes, and started shopping for groceries and nearly everything else online.
One of the most severely affected parts of the economy was passenger travel. Public transit ridership, in particular, saw a steep downturn in March and April of 2020, according to the Department of Transportation. Major transit agencies like New York City’s MTA and Washington, D.C.’s WMATA recorded substantially low ridership, with decreases of 63 percent and 79 percent, respectively, in 2020.
