Uncertain future for rail service
‘Our ridership will evolve,’ Metro-North official assures
As COVID-19 spread across the country, traditional office workers stopped riding Metro-North’s commuter trains and stayed home, toiling at computers on kitchen tables and make-shift desks.
For Metro-North — the busiest commuter line in the nation — the sudden loss of its bread and butter customer represented a financial disaster. Ridership in Connecticut and New York State plummeted, forcing service cutbacks as revenue dried up.
With a post-pandemic world now on the horizon, many are wondering what the Metro-North Railroad will look like in the months and years to come, and whether it can survive if office workers continue working remotely, a trend many believe is likely.
“To those who are predicting the demise of Metro-North, I don’t see it,” said Catherine Rinaldi, the railroad’s president. “We are quite bullish on Metro-North’s future.”
Metro-North officials say the post
world could bring a permanent 10 to 20 percent reduction in traditional commuters — those working 9 to 5 shifts at a Manhattan or Stamford office tower five days a week.
But they also see future growth in “intermediate” commuters, those who travel shorter distances, either within the New York City region or Connecticut. Those commuters typically include grocery store and retail employees, construction workers and health care professionals.
The railroad is also banking on increased “discretionary” travel to entertainment and retail destinations once life returns to normal.
“There certainly will be an impact on Metro-North,” Rinaldi said. “It’s no secret a lot of riders are able to work from home and in the future will continue to work from home.”
Rinaldi added “Metro-North has continued to reinvent itself over the years. I think our ridership will evolve and continue to evolve.”
In recent years, Metro-North enjoyed record growth, attracting well over 40 million riders a year. Overall ridership in December, however, was down between 70 and 90 percent compared to last year.
As 2020 came to a close, ridership on the New Haven Line was down 67.7 percent compared to 2019, according to numbers reported by the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council.
The Danbury line was down 69.1 percent; the Waterbury line 58.9 percent; and the New Canaan line 66.7 percent.
“The COVID reality is that many businesses found they can successfully have their employees work from home,” said Jim Gildea, president of the commuter council.
“That will be a challenge to overcome,” Gildea said. “”However, I believe as the world becomes safer, the collaboration, camaraderie and productivity that comes by working with others in a office setting, and as more shops and businesses open, this will create a situation where ridership will again begin to come back.”
Working remotely
For many, the virus provided a welcome break from the daily grind of commuting — crowded rail cars and stations and traffic backed up for miles on I-95 and other highways.
Will that trend continue when the pandemic fades into a bad memory and most are protected by a vaccine?
Gartner Inc, a Stamford based global research and business advisory company, found that 90 percent of those surveyed plan to allow employees to work remotely at least part of the time, even after the COVID-19 vaccine is widely adopted.
Sixty-five percent of those respondents said their organization will continue to offer employees flexibility on when they work, the Gartner survey found.
“The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a huge experiment in widespread remote working,” said Elisabeth Joyce, a Gartner vice president.
“As business leaders plan and execute reopening of their workplaces, they are evaluating more permanent remote working arrangements as a way to meet employee expectations and to build more resilient business operations,” Joyce said.
“The question now facing many organizations is not how to manage a remote workforce, but how to manage a more complex, hybrid workforce,” Joyce added. “While remote work isn’t new, the degree of remote work moving forward will change how people work together to get their job done.”
Mike Soycher, human resource counsel for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said he expects remote work will impact Metro-North and other forms of public transportation.
“It’s been an amazing experiment in working remotely,” Soycher said, noting companies have become comfortable with production levels.
“There will be a sustained degree of working remotely when the tasks are appropriate and suitable for doing from someone’s home,” Soycher noted. “I’ve heard of companies downsizing the office footprint.”
Soycher said that will translate into fewer Metro-North riders.
“I think generally there will be fewer people commuting whether on Metro-North, highways or buses,” Soycher said.
“There will be employees who have convinced employers they can be highly effective working remotely and there are savings to be achieved,” he added. “I imagine there will be a reduction.”
Upwork, a Mountain View, Calif., agency that specializes in matching freelance professionals with temporary jobs, said the success of working remotely means the national economy is likely to undergo a “major shift” in the coming years.
Adam Ozimek, the agency’s chief economist, said the savings from not driving to work — estimated at $183 million a day nationally — will likely be spent in other areas, such as dining out, vacations and home improvements.
The Brookings Institution in April said about half of U.S. adults with jobs were working at home. A recent Brookings survey found that 20 percent of chief financial officers said they planned to permanently continue remote work for about 20 percent of their workforce.
Planning the future
Rinaldi said she expects ridership will rise as the economy improves. She said the railroad is now operating at about 63 percent of pre-COVID levels.
“I think the economy is going to roar back and the combination of people returning to work and people engaging in leisure activity, and the reverse and intermediate ridership, will take Metro-North to a different place,” Rinaldi said.
She conceded that the traditional commuter, the 9 to 5 office worker, is not riding the train.
“Those not riding now are working at home, and they expect to [work at home] at least part time in the future,” Rinaldi said. “Some of that ridership will come back.”
Rinaldi said Metro-North is also seeing different workers on the trains, such as health care professionals, grocery clerks and tradespeople. They are often younger and earn lower wages, she noted.
“We were seeing growth in weekend ridership, reverse commutes; various types of ridership,” Rinaldi said. “That’s different than getting on in Greenwich and riding to Grand Central.”
Ben Cornelius, MetroNorth’s director of operations, planning and analysis, told the state’s commuter council last week that the ridership numbers remain bleak.
“As commutation has tanked, discretionary riding didn’t tank nearly as much,” Cornelius said, finding a bright spot in the data.
“It’s interesting; people are still comfortable riding the train and going out to do things,” Cornelius said. “This discretionary ridership has dropped the least, down 55 percent or so. Office occupancy is going to be a slow return, but people are going to want to go out.”
Gildea noted the branch lines are doing better than the more heavily used New Haven Line.
“Most people acknowledge that ridership will come back slowly and can take up to five years,” Gildea said.