The story about the safety of public transit has changed since the early days of the pandemic.
Maxine Joselow checks in with a number of prominent transit advocates who make the case that not only is public transit safe, contrary to the dominant thinking at the outset of the pandemic, but that it's central to the health and recovery of communities.
Among the advocates cited in the article are Ben Fried, communications director for TransitCenter, Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, and Seth Solomonow, the co-author of Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution. The latter two made their case in an opinion piece published in June.
All of the advocates point to a growing body of evidence from around the world, like in Paris and Japan, that public transit has not been the source of major outbreak clusters of coronavirus infections. Unfortunately, contact tracing programs are less robust in the United States, so evidence of the safety of public transit is less robust here, but initial evidence cited to express fear about public transit has been largely debunked.
Setting aside the risks, the article also cites these advocates and other experts to make the case for the environmental and public health benefits of transit ridership.
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