
Covid-era Americans are using public transit less and having more car crashes – theguardian.com
Oliver Milman
The Covid-19 pandemic has seen two pernicious trends emerge as to how Americans are getting around their country: public transit is struggling with a reduced number of paying customers, while there has been a sharp increase in car crash deaths.
The shuttering of businesses, the rise of working from home and a fear of contracting the coronavirus saw public transport use plummet across the US – commuter rail alone reported a 79% decline in ridership in the year to September 2020. Despite a slight resurgence in 2021, trips taken on all modes of public transit are still around half of what they were before the pandemic, federal government figures show.