Despite a return to semi-normalcy, public transit ridership remains well below 2019 levels.

While it may feel like life has returned to normal, local public transit ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and is only slowly gaining ground.

On May 9, Monterey-Salinas Transit General Manager Carl Sedoryk presented MST’s board with a report on ridership trends. In January 2020, ridership was at about 96 percent of the level it had been for the previous three years; just two months later – when shelter-in-place orders started – it dropped to about 15 percent. Sedoryk says that until the hospitality industry fully recovers and more conventions are booked, climbing back to 2019 ridership levels won’t be attainable anytime soon.

“Our largest percentage of riders are hospitality workers,” Sedoryk says. “Until those large events come back to regularity, we’re going to be struggling to get back to full ridership.”

Another notable data point is that over the last nine months, MST is only recovering 8 percent of its income from passenger fares, about half of what it was pre-Covid. That’s important because of a 1971 state law requiring transit agencies in a county with less than 500,000 residents – Monterey County has about 433,000 – to generate at least 15 percent of their income from fares.

That law was suspended during Covid, and Sedoryk says MST is among various transit agencies in the state lobbying Sacramento to have the law reformed or revoked, and calls the law “archaic.” He says it forces MST to charge higher fares, and is out of step with the push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But he adds MST has always qualified for state funding in the past, which requires compliance with that funding threshold: “There are ways you count your money.”