Practically overnight, the pandemic shifted how our communities and cities function. It disrupted our daily routines, and realigned our priorities. Even as the region has begun to reopen and recover, travel patterns are radically different than before the crisis, and it seems unlikely, even with no policy interventions that those patterns will go back to ​“normal” once the pandemic is behind us. Can our transportation systems--our streets and transit networks--safely and equitably get people back to work? What short and long term changes need to be implemented to ensure that people can get to their jobs without putting themselves and others at risk?

These are some of the most important questions that we need to address as the economy reopens. In this post, we focus on how we get people in and out of the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD), the region’s economic engine and densest concentration of jobs. In particular, we estimate the number of people that will need to be accommodated by the road and transit network under different short-term scenarios.

Overall, seven times more people took a train, bus, or ferry than those who drove to work in the CBD. More came by transit than any other mode, regardless of the commuter’s origin.

The number of people commuting to the CBD dropped from over two million to just over half a million.

The pandemic and ensuing economic shutdown, has dramatically changed travel and commuting patterns. The region lost two million jobs, including an estimated 450,000 lost in the CBD, while stay-at-home orders left businesses scrambling to find ways to allow their employees to work remotely. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that 61 percent of workers at service firms and 27 percent of workers at manufacturing firms in the region were working from home as of late March.

It is unclear how many people worked from home prior to the pandemic, since there are different ways to measure it. Some data sources record jobs at their business location, even if workers do not commute to that location. In addition, many workers with the option to work from home may only do so a few days a week or month. An analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that as many as 11 percent of workers worked entirely from home ​“on some days,” but this includes people who may only do so a few times per month. The analysis presented here used journey-to-work data from the U.S. Census Transportation Planning Products (CTPP), which classified 2% of CBD workers as working primarily from home prior to the pandemic.

When combined with job losses, the number of people estimated to be working from home resulted in more than one-and-a-half million fewer people commuting to jobs in the CBD, or about three-quarters of the pre-COVID level.

As the economy has reopened, far more people are biking or driving than taking a train or bus, with ridership on subways and commuter rail especially depressed.

Short-term scenarios depend on the trajectory of pandemic and public response.

There is still a wide range of potential scenarios for how quickly the region’s economy will recover. The pace of COVID-19 infections and illness will determine what’s possible, with any number of possible consumer, business and public policy responses. Whether and when new surges in the virus occur, when and how schools reopen, and how much federal assistance will come to individuals, businesses and public agencies are among the most important and still unanswered questions.

To identify where the transportation system would undergo the most stress as more people come back to work, we modeled and compared two plausible scenarios for the next six-to-nine months:

• Stalled Recovery: This scenario assumes that the country experiences recurrent COVID-19 flare-ups and a weak national recovery, and that further job losses from business closures will negate any job gains from people returning to work. It also assumes that 75 percent of workers with jobs considered teleworkable continue to work from home by applying estimates of jobs that can be done from home by occupation.
• Steady Recovery: Based on a ​“Muted Recovery” scenario by McKinsey, this assumes that half of the jobs reported as ​“temporary job losses” are restored by the end of 2020, and that half of teleworkable job workers continue to work from home.

The roads will fill up, while transit ridership will remain well below normal.

We estimated the change in travel into the Manhattan CBD by estimating how different types of trips--for work, school, medical appointments, shopping, etc--would change for different modes of travel. These estimates were driven by two overriding assumptions. First, that those who are able to drive would choose to do so in much greater proportions than previously due to continued reluctance to get on a train or bus. Second, that people will be more likely to travel for work purposes than for nonessential activities like shopping or entertainment.

The result is that auto travel into Manhattan almost reaches pre-COVID levels in a Stalled Recovery and is slightly higher in a Steady Recovery. The main reason that auto traffic doesn’t increase even more is the same reason that auto travel into the CBD hasn’t increased for years, in spite of a substantial increase in jobs. The level of congestion approaches a point where the roads would become gridlocked with any more cars or trucks.

In both scenarios, transit ridership fails to fully recover, though it comes closer under a Steady Recovery. For transit, the sustained decrease from pre-COVID levels is due to a combination of job losses, ability to work from home, health and safety concerns about public transit, and a shift to auto for people with the ability to drive. Even this reduced level of transit ridership--49% of pre-COVID ridership in Stalled Recovery and 74% in Steady Recovery--assumes that the extensive health and safety measures undertaken by the MTA will convince enough riders to return.

The implication is that, in addition to making the trains and buses as safe as possible, we need to prioritize road and street space for pedestrians, cyclists, buses and high-occupancy vehicles. These include:

• Implement congestion pricing as soon as possible to reduce auto traffic and provide funds to the MTA that are desperately needed.
• Reform placard use to stop the parking impunity that inconveniences and endangers other New Yorkers.
• Consider high-occupancy vehicle policies, like those enacted after 9/11.
• Expand the number of dedicated BRT and bus lanes to create space for safer and more efficient public transit.
• Expand Citi Bike and the bike lane network, prioritizing low-income and communities of color, as proposed in RPA’s Five Borough Bikeway report.