Metro’s board batted around ideas in recent days to solve a nearly $700 million puzzle. While several of its pieces are missing amid sunken ridership levels, the dwindling of Metro’s largest pre-pandemic customer base is perhaps the biggest obstacle to a financial rebound.
About 40 percent of Metro commuters on rail and buses were federal workers before the pandemic upended workplaces and transit agency budgets. A recent customer survey of current Metrorail commuters showed only 14 percent were federal workers as ridership hovers at one-third of its earlier levels.
Washington’s rail system was built to serve downtown office buildings teeming with federal workers who enter the city’s core in the mornings and leave in the evenings. As ridership hovers near historic lows, Metro’s leaders are hopeful federal workers soon will return en masse, but they acknowledge they need other options if that group stays away.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Justin George over at The Washington Post/a>
