Four and a half years ago when the pandemic started, I was a transit-dependent college student, unsure of how the pandemic would impact my future. At the time, transit was my connection to everything: school, work and everywhere I needed to go. But when COVID hit and changed the world overnight, I was forced to face the reality that transit was under threat.
Transit ridership dropped, revenue sources plummeted and I faced constant cynicism about the future of transit. People told me VTA would fail and that I could do nothing to prevent cuts. Some people even went as far as to suggest we replace buses and public transit with Uber and Lyft.
Despite all of this, I knew how vital transit was to my community and believed in its recovery and a positive future. I reached out to Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, my VTA board representative, and said I wanted to prevent transit cuts and preserve service for people in our community. She listened and responded honestly, saying she didn’t know what would happen — but we could try.
From that moment, she helped me and a ragtag group of mostly young people fight to save VTA transit service. With support from Supervisor Chavez and her staff, I started a campaign to push back against transit cuts, even before anything was officially proposed. By fall 2020, VTA proposed a 20% cut, and I found myself fighting an uphill battle at board and committee meetings. The battle was so tough that we lost most of the initial committee votes before social distancing health orders and concerns over passenger pass-ups caused VTA to pump the brakes on cuts.
Then, things started to shift after the 2020 election. With Biden in office, federal stimulus funding for transit increased, vaccines became available and getting out of the pandemic seemed possible. With new hope, the VTA board came together, prioritized service restoration and approved a budget that included full service in June 2021. Over the next few years, service was gradually restored, starting with a return to 15-minute bus headways on the most popular routes in October 2021.
After the October 2021 service restoration, ridership recovered more quickly, especially as schools and the economy reopened. As a rider, I was able to watch VTA slowly come back to life day by day and month by month.
Four years after the initial cuts were proposed, VTA has reached a major milestone: 100% of overall pre-pandemic bus ridership. Among large transit agencies in the U.S., VTA has had one of the strongest recoveries — ranking No. 2 in 2022 and No. 5 in 2023. VTA is likely the first large transit agency in California to achieve full bus ridership recovery.
None of this would have been possible without the people who made this happen every day, especially the VTA operators who kept the service running even under the most difficult circumstances. They don’t get nearly enough credit, but they are true heroes who made it possible for many of us to rebuild our lives coming out of the pandemic.
As we celebrate this milestone and move forward, it’s important to remember that so much is possible if we believe in things and never give up. Even underdogs like VTA can achieve some of the best recovery results in the nation with hard work, persistence and faith.
San José Spotlight columnist Monica Mallon is a transit advocate and rider in Santa Clara County. Monica’s columns appear on the first Thursday of every other month. Contact Monica at [email protected] or follow @MonicaMallon on X/Twitter.
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