I busted my tail getting down to Washington in the "blizzard" in order to attend the TRB meeting, and one of my favorite things is to attend the committee subcommittee meetings. Here's some stuff from the Commuter Rail Subcommittee.
https://trbap0654.blogspot.com/
Here's a PowerPoint deck from the presentation from last week (Jan. 7). Aside from the usual bureaucratic boilerplate, there's some good data on ridership recovery from the Covid pandemic.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jO3WGlWGs2QE_RCmlF8ruzMUK7ADuYei/edit#slide=id.p1
Overall, ridership has recovered to about 75% of pre-pandemic. Looks like MBTA is actually exceeding 2019 ridership levels, while poor old MARC is lagging behind in the rear. (That's for what they call the "legacy" systems, the "New Start",post 1980s, systems aren't doing as well.) Maybe this will change if the new president orders Federal employees back into the office. The consensus seems to be that "commuter" rail is going to have to transition to "regional" rail with all-day service and attention paid to other travelers besides people who have to go downtown for their jobs (although those sorts of people aren't going away.)
https://trbap0654.blogspot.com/
Here's a PowerPoint deck from the presentation from last week (Jan. 7). Aside from the usual bureaucratic boilerplate, there's some good data on ridership recovery from the Covid pandemic.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jO3WGlWGs2QE_RCmlF8ruzMUK7ADuYei/edit#slide=id.p1
Overall, ridership has recovered to about 75% of pre-pandemic. Looks like MBTA is actually exceeding 2019 ridership levels, while poor old MARC is lagging behind in the rear. (That's for what they call the "legacy" systems, the "New Start",post 1980s, systems aren't doing as well.) Maybe this will change if the new president orders Federal employees back into the office. The consensus seems to be that "commuter" rail is going to have to transition to "regional" rail with all-day service and attention paid to other travelers besides people who have to go downtown for their jobs (although those sorts of people aren't going away.)
