When you think of the AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, you probably conjure up thoughts of senior discounts, health insurance and retirement.  So it might surprise you to learn that they’re also actively engaged in driver safety and promoting access to mass transit. 

There’s another part of our transportation network being seriously affected by COVID-19 beyond our roads and rails: parking lots.

Welcome to Connecticut, the home of third world infrastructure. Tropical storm Isaias has shown, once again, that we don’t want to invest in our state’s physical plant and we don’t learn from our mistakes.  But we are all so ready to blame somebody else when stuff goes wrong.

Ridership on Metro-North is still down 85% from pre-pandemic levels, but in-state bus ridership is coming back… up to 70% of normal from a March low of 40%.
Why the difference? Because bus riders and rail riders are very different.

Every commuter on Metro-North owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to one man: Oz Griebel.  He is the reason we can ride the new M8 rail cars.

Which is the number one country in the world for transportation?  Certainly not the United States.  Not even countries in the EU.  No, you have to look farther east, as Marco Polo did in 1271, to find the future… in China.

In the history of American transportation, there is one crucial intersection between railroads and civil rights:  the formation in 1925 of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters by A. Phillip Randolph.  This was the first predominantly African-American labor union in the U.S.

Where the heck has the Connecticut legislature been for the past few months?  With so many pressing issues, why haven’t they met? Oh, they’ll tell you it’s because of safety that they couldn’t convene. But we know better.  Plenty of state legislatures… even the US House of Representatives… have carried on the people’s business virtually or well-masked while our pols went AWOL.

Why is it so hard for train and subway passengers to wear a face mask?  Does the MTA really need to do a PSA campaign (with pictures!) showing that a mask around your neck or not covering your nose and mouth isn’t protecting anyone?  Apparently so.  Non-compliant passengers are either stupid or uncaring, or both.

You’re on a Metro-North train headed for Grand Central, nervously looking at your watch.  “Will we be on time?  Will I be late for the meeting?” you ask yourself as you pass 125th Street, usually just 11 minutes from the final stop. Then, you hit congestion and the train crawls through the Park Avenue tunnel, stopping and starting.  You’re going to be late, and sure enough your train pulls onto the lower level platform five minutes after the scheduled arrival time.
But technically, your train is not late.  It’s on time.

As New York City businesses reopen it’s expected that one million people will get back to work, some of them from Connecticut.  But how they get to those jobs is the big question.

When COVID-19 hit us this spring, more than just our normal rail commuting patterns were disrupted.  One young entrepreneur’s business simply imploded… but now he’s coming back, stronger than before.

Am I going to have to change the name of this column to “NOT Getting There?” That’s what Gov. Ned Lamont says. Post-COVID he predicts the end of daily commuting as we know it.  Lamont told Bloomberg that his New York business buddies tell him they’re saving so much money by having people work from their homes they may cut office space in the city by 30%.

You know those big brown trucks that are keeping us well-delivered during this time of COVID-19? Well, there’s some interesting history and tech to United Parcel Service, or UPS.

The road ahead for commuters may be less crowded, or maybe more. One theory has it that, as people gradually return to work, they will shun mass transit out of safety concerns and commute, instead, by car.  That could create problems on our roads if people try to drive five days a week. The other speculation is that the “new normal” will mean less commuting overall as people have found they can be just as productive from home and will commute less than the normal five days a week.