Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the boom in remote work, the San Francisco region’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) was orried about capacity constraints and started planning for a second rail tunnel between Oakland and San Francisco. But, an analysis of ridership data published by BART suggests that the new tunnel, estimated to cost $29 billion, is no longer needed, in part due to the expected long-term changes to travel patterns induced by COVID-19.
To its credit, BART publishes hourly station entrances and exits by station pair on its website. For each hour, the data set shows how many individuals traveled