A lot of American cities are experiencing budget shortfalls thanks to the WFH trend and other factors, and it will exacerbate problems with many important and popular services.
Here in Boston, we just found out that the estimated cost for fixing the subway system is $24.5 Billion (https://www.universalhub.com/2023/maybe-if-we-held-bake-sale...). It's been neglected and mismanaged for years, and no city or state agency can come up with that kind of money (it's about half of the commonwealth's annual budget).
> no city or state agency can come up with that kind of money
Every major city can come up with that kind of money. Spread it out over 20 years and raise taxes 10%. So sales tax goes from 6.25% to 6.875%, property tax goes from 0.1% to 0.11%. If a city with 675000 people needs to raise $24B, they just raise taxes $3500 per person per year for the life of the project.
You're not going to spend the $24B in a single year, so you don't have to raise the money in a single year.
MBTA claims a daily ridership of ~800,000. Raise the fair $0.25 per ride and you get an extra $50M/year.
I'm not saying you would be popular, but you could raise the money. Shutting down the subway wouldn't be popular either. Aren't those your options? Either it's worth the money or it isn't.
Ridership of public transit in Boston has slowly improved but it's still down something like 40% since pre-pandemic. I don't know how much is WFH--auto traffic seems and everyone I've talked to agrees as bad as ever or worse. But it certainly doesn't help on the funding site, especially to the degree that low ridership leads to service cuts which make for even lower ridership.
Here in Boston, we just found out that the estimated cost for fixing the subway system is $24.5 Billion (https://www.universalhub.com/2023/maybe-if-we-held-bake-sale...). It's been neglected and mismanaged for years, and no city or state agency can come up with that kind of money (it's about half of the commonwealth's annual budget).
The NYC subway is in a similar situation, but at a much larger scale. There are similar problems all over the country - see "America’s Trains and Buses Are Speeding Toward a Cliff"(https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/americas-mass-transi...)