What If No One Wants to Ride a Bus Again?

Eighty-five percent of American workers usually drive to work, according to the 2018 American Community Survey. Only 5 percent usually take public transportation, a paltry figure that has barely changed in years. It's going to change now and not in a good way. Mass transit use has plummeted because of the coronavirus pandemic. It will be hard to lure any but the most desperate back onto buses and subways. According to a Gallup survey fielded during the first week of April, nine out of ten Americans are now avoiding public transportation.

Public transportation is being hammered by the coronavirus. Not only are transit drivers at heightened risk of becoming infected with Covid-19, but their passengers are too. Research is documenting the disease's spread through public transportation. According to a National Bureau of Economic Research study, public transportation—specifically the subway—appears to be the primary way coronavirus infected tens of thousands in New York City. To make this determination, economist Jeffrey E. Harris of MIT superimposed maps of subway turnstile entries with coronavirus incidence in New York City by zip code through the month of March. The results, he says, show the subway system to have been "a major disseminator—if not the primary transmission vehicle—of coronavirus infection."

This is a problem for the nation's large cities and their once vibrant economies. If mass transit is a primary vector through which communicable diseases spread widely and deeply, what is the future for cities where a large share of workers depend on public transportation to get to work?

Cars are not the answer. Not only do they create traffic jams and pollution, but private vehicles are unaffordable for many. Strict social distancing on buses and subways? Only if we want to slow city life to a crawl. Walking works only for those who live close to their employer, a luxury few can afford. But one mode of transportation checks all the boxes: inexpensive, socially distant, and healthy: the bicycle. Only 0.5 percent of American workers usually bicycle to work. Many more would do so if cities became not just bike friendly but bike ferocious, freeing streets of cars to make room for tens of thousands of  bicycle commuters. In Berlin, 13 percent of workers commute by bicycle. In Copenhagen and Amsterdam, the majority bike to work. We can do it too. Bicycles could be the route to resilience for America's large cities.