I “Eye” Street bus lane by BeyondDC licensed under Creative Commons.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser declared on Thursday that the post-COVID-19 recovery process presents a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to reopen in a way that builds a more equitable DC.”

Expressing an urgent need to tackle disparities seen as contributors to higher burdens of COVID-19 among persons of color, Bowser proposed twelve subject-based committees to advise a recovery initiative entitled “Reopen DC”, including one focused on transportation and infrastructure.

Transportation has always been a major factor boosting or impeding equity. What role could there be for sustainable transportation modes like transit, biking, and walking in helping reshape a DC with more equitable access to jobs, health, education and other opportunities?

Focus on “getting back to where we were,” or seize the moment for transformative change?

The mayor’s emphasis on equity in DC’s rebuilding efforts adds an important dimension to both how the District deals with a dramatic drop in revenue, and what policies will guide its recovery once social distancing ends. Transportation will be a big part of both discussions, as transit and active transportation priorities could face cuts, while also being fundamentally important to an equitable post-COVID economy.

Mayor Bowser’s District Economic Recovery Team (DERT) has been soliciting ideas about what will support DC’s growth and social welfare. Part of the DERT’s mandate is to “make and implement long-term plans to restart the District’s social and economic spheres, informed by the insights of other jurisdictions, economists, and practitioners.” Meanwhile, organizations have already started lobbying around the DC budget, set to be released on May 12th and expected to contain around $722 million in cuts.

Crisis is one of the few exceptions to the typical policy-making approach of solving problems incrementally, so the Mayor’s announcement reflects some insight into the broad priorities that will guide decision-making. How officials decide now to spend diminished funds and other resources will shape the universe of possibilities District employees and advocates can work with for years to come.

Barring significant upheaval, there will be no policy, no legislation, no congressional act, no single elected official more important to the future the greater Washington region than the policy consensus developing right now. That will manifest itself first in budget decisions, and also in longer-term policies leaders put in place to grow the economy again.

What can transportation do for an equitable recovery plan?

Once the immediate threat of COVID-19 is addressed, people will need to get to jobs and services again, even though this is likely to happen on a gradual basis. It won’t be like flipping on a switch: appropriate health precautions, significant declines in Metro ridership and budgets, will create questions about priorities for leaders. Transportation advocates across the country are discussing the roles that transit corridors, safety, and efficient allocation of precious public space can play in ensuring the mobility and access that support a healthy economy can also promote equity, health and protect the environment.

A few leaders have expressed recognition that transit systems are integral to economic recovery. On Friday April 10th, Councilmember Charles Allen tweeted, “Every recovery plan needs to make our transit systems a critical element — for workers & employers, for fixing equity gaps, for neighborhood connections, for economic growth, for resilience & sustainability, & even more.”

At a recent virtual roundtable about the future of transportation policy, David Bragdon, Executive Director of TransitCenter, an organization focused on equitable and sustainable transit, suggested that the pandemic highlights the critical role of transportation in underpinning the basic functions of a city. “I think we’re seeing the indispensability of transit right now, across the country, to keeping the vital parts not just of our economy but our health system and our food distribution system.”

That value could also play out in urban resilience planning, in part through promoting better baseline indicators such as health and economic status to people most vulnerable to crisis (whether health or otherwise). While a global pandemic is generally viewed as a once in a lifetime event, extreme weather events from climate change and other dynamic events (including the emerging economic crisis) are likely to cause future instability, including to transportation systems. Having one crisis can make future crises more likely, not less; the difference is how effectively we respond.

Leaders can learn from the pandemic about what keeps our cities functioning on a basic level during a crisis, to plan for better resilience in the future and to minimize the number of residents living on the brink of devastation.

What to watch for in DC’s recovery plan

As participants in a recent webinar about the challenges facing transit agencies pointed out, many transit agencies have adapted effectively to quickly evolving needs, making changes that would have been “unthinkable” just six weeks ago, like cutting fares.

Any newfound flexibility might serve agencies well, as needs evolve further in a post-COVID 19 world. Bragdon noted a broader need to address public fear of crowded public spaces, not just transit, to avoid getting derailed on fundamentally important equity and other objectives. “For cities, it’s imperative that they do, because there’s no other way to reach our climate goals, or have broader economic access and socio-economic justice for all kinds of people, and not have these barriers by race and age and gender in terms of economic participation and social participation. None of that can be achieved without really strong transit. So we need to bring transit back not just to what it was, but better than ever.”

The District has set explicit goals with respect to carbon emissions, transportation equity, and safety, and identified a variety of transportation-related ideas to achieve them such as bus lanes, electric buses, dynamic curbside management techniques, and possibly congestion pricing. Any jurisdiction can struggle with the economic, social or cultural costs required to achieve such goals. But there’s no way around tremendous economic and social costs now, due to the unprecedented upheaval of the COVID-19; only what we decide to make those costs pay for.

Reflecting on the potential costs of returning to a car-priority paradigm if transit isn’t invested in, Jarrett Walker recently wrote in CityLab: “[If] we all drive cars out of a feeling of personal safety, we’ll quickly restore the congestion that strangles our cities, the emissions that poison us and our planet, and the appalling rates of traffic carnage that we are expected to tolerate. Once again, we’ll need incentives, such as market-based road pricing, to make transit attractive enough so that there’s room for everyone to move around the city. That will mean more ridership, [but] ridership isn’t exactly the point. The point is the functioning of the city, which again, all of us depend on.”

While much is up in the air in terms of specific policies, decisionmakers can still be influenced by the priorities voiced by communities, businesses, and advocacy organizations. Among the efforts to pinpoint what those priorities should be for the sustainable and equitable transportation community, New Normal, a sort of pop-up research project housed at Mobility Lab, a global non-profit (and distinct from Arlington’s group of the same name), is running a survey to help define what transportation priorities should be post-COVID 19.

Waiting to board DC’s Metrorail by Ralf Roletschek licensed under Creative Commons.

Public transportation faces an uncertain financial future

Broad prescriptions for renewing investments in public transportation could come up against hard realities in terms of plunging revenues and ridership, as well as external factors like gas costs.

To help address financial losses due to COVID-19, the federal CARES Act allocated $25 billion for transit agencies. But this falls short of what is needed, according to Transportation for America, TransitCenter and other groups who say the lost revenue for transit agencies from COVID-19 may reach as much as $40 billion. This leaves open questions about how one of the core functionalities of American cities will meet cities’ needs in the post-COVID 19 era. WMATA’s Board nodded to this uncertainty in its 2021 budget, reserving the right to “revise fare and service changes approved in this Resolution prior to July 1, 2020 based on the expected budgetary impacts relating to the Coronavirus pandemic.”

A Bloomberg article last week drew attention to an expected significant drop in personal vehicle prices, owing to a glut of vehicles left on the market during the pandemic and economic fallout. It’s also plausible that the federal government will use its resources to try to incentivize car purchases, thus “bailing out” the car industry, again. Since carshave a strong substitution effect for public transportation, it’s reasonable to speculate that in the short term, more of the commuting public might be more inclined to drive, given the choice and without policy intervention.

But even ignoring DC’s climate, health, safety and social justice goals, which policymakers might be tempted in this fraught time to erroneously dismiss as luxuries, car and oil prices are not going to stay low forever. Public and active transportation systems need to respond to cities’ long term needs, not what they look like during the next 12 — 18 months.

Can innovations in streets and other public spaces support an equitable recovery?

Suddenly, the conversation about what to do with all our public resources — including space — carries different weight from even two months ago.

Some advocates argue for a re-think of public space distribution altogether to reflect our evolving understanding of what it means to share public space safely. Riding a bike or scooting won’t suffer the stigma that riding public transit will in terms of coronavirus risk, but would-be cyclists need quality, connected infrastructure — a lot of it — to feel safe doing it.

When was the last time we saw a meaningful shift toward a more sensible long-term use of these precious resources, based on vision rather than inertia? While Mayor Bowser (eventually) agreed to widen a few sidewalks to allow for short-term safe social distancing, New Zealand is emerging as a leader in planning ahead in this respect, dedicating funding to opening up significant space in central business districts over a period of several months or even longer, in recognition of the shift in what people need to exist safely in public space..

With projected cuts of $600 million from the 2021 budget, allocating extensive space to a largely substitutable practice — driving — at the cost of others’ commute times, health and safety, without charging drivers a dime, may not be seen as an affordable luxury. Other cities have put in place congestion pricing initiatives, and found them not to stifle economic growth but to bolster it. Measures that limit congestion and boost transit efficiency directly promote access of transit users (half of bus riders in DC live on incomes of $30K or less per year) to jobs and other opportunities. Leaders may see an opportunity to step back and reconsider what value cities get out of different means of mobility.

Why focus on long term issues when the short term seems so threatening?

Crisis changes the parameters of the acceptable and the possible. Seeing the effects of economic, social and health disparities writ fatal might just change what tradeoffs District leaders are willing to make in investing in equitable mobility.

The economic hardship facing many Washington-area residents is far bleaker than anything most of us could envision, with up to 20% of workers nationally expected to file for unemployment in April alone. Competing narratives of what policies (including transportation) are best for the region’s economic health will characterize fights over very rapidly diminishing city budgets. If cars and oil stay cheap in the near term, and if workers with a choice don’t feel safe on public transit, it may not be easy for decision-makers to champion policies that favor sustainable transportation.

But traffic congestion won’t help cities like DC meet their equity and environmental goals, nor create a thriving, pro-equity business environment.

At Thursday’s press conference, the Mayor said “we should not let this opportunity pass us by.” In a situation that might otherwise favor continued prioritization of cars over public transit and anything that could be cast as a “luxury” like cycling or scooting, the Mayor and other leaders are signalling interest in policies and initiatives — including transportation — that could forge a different future for DC. We’ll be following discussions closely for signs of how policy consensus develops that will define urban equity and sustainability in the region for years to come.