3 cities show why expanding transit still makes sense in a hybrid work world

It's not about the commute

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Four-and-a-half years since the onset of the pandemic, several recovery metrics have plateaued. According to the latest American Time Use Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which gathered data from 2023, 35 percent of American workers did some or all of their work at home last year, just 1 percent more than in 2022. 

Office occupancy, though increasing bit by bit each year, particularly on peak days, is still just 50 percent on average around the country, according to national key-card data from Kastle Systems.

The metric that actually seems to be changing – and has the potential to be changed even more – is transit ridership. According to the American Public Transit Association, the more than 7 billion public transit rides in 2023 exceeded 2022’s numbers by 16 percent. And the second quarter 2024 report shows a 7.5 percent increase in rides across all transit systems for the year to date. 

Given the dominant narrative about the prevalence of hybrid work and urban doom loops, betting on transit feels risky, even backward looking to some. But we need to remember that commuting has never been the majority of U.S. travel; as DW Rowlands and Tracy Hadden Loh of the Brookings Institution write, people want to get to places other than work:

activity centers are not just job hubs—they are clusters of economic, consumption, community, institutional, and tourism assets, and contain a high concentration of regional assets and activity. A holistic look at total travel demand—not just work trips—shows that even with the rise of remote work, people still want to go to places that are servable by transit.

Not only is there demand from residents, but there’s an economic development strategy to win here. In an economy where it’s much harder to create new jobs than in the past, transit may be one of the few economic levers cities can actually adjust. By adding transit capacity, cities are unlocking latent economic activity and creating new value for the real estate that has access to that transit. Transit can help guide where to put housing (or vice versa), but it can also help cities compensate for a lack of affordable housing near jobs or amenities.

As I’ll discuss more below, New York City is rezoning a part of the Bronx and adding four commuter rail stops that will sit amidst 7,000 new housing units. For all the people who already live near those new transit stops, their homes just became many times better located with a super fast access point to Manhattan. Given that the East Bronx has a poverty rate nearly 10 percent higher than the rest of New York City, this investment shows what equitable transit infrastructure can look like. Surely these new transit stops will help residents commute, but they will also change the whole range of amenities and activities that are within a 20-minute ride.

Below the paywall I’ll explore:

• A continued look at transit investments in New York City, including a new light rail line in the boroughs, as the city looks past commuters coming into Manhattan

• The expansion of the Sydney train station and a high-speed driverless rail line, and how that could transform the city’s car culture

• Seattle’s investment in new light rail line stations, rapid buses, and on-demand minivans, and controversial service cuts in white-collar areas, in an attempt to speed up the city’s ridership recovery

Finally I’ll share some thoughts on why transit remains an important part of city life even if the office is dead.