How American Cities Have Responded to Telework's Disruption of Transit and Housing
Metropolitan Planning Organizations and transit agencies have not been passive in the face of post-pandemic travel disruption. The GAO’s 2026 survey of all 410 MPOs found that at least 80 percent reported taking one or more actions in each of three domains — transit, vehicle use, and housing — since 2019. The range of those actions, and their uneven results, sketch a useful map of where American cities stand.
On the transit side, roughly 80 percent of MPOs reported that providers in their communities adjusted service in some form. About half reported increased or improved service — more frequent routes, extended evening and weekend hours, updated trip-planning apps. About a third reported decreased service, typically due to reduced ridership or budget shortfalls. Both directions are responses to the same underlying shift: commute trips down, fare revenue down, the old service pattern no longer matching actual demand.
The results are uneven. Cincinnati Metro redesigned its bus network around cross-town and off-peak service and surpassed 2019 ridership levels by fiscal year 2024. Richmond, Virginia’s Greater Richmond Transit Company eliminated fares in 2020 and recovered ridership above 2019 levels by 2023. Denver’s Regional Transit District upgraded its trip-planning app and introduced event-based transit search — and as of 2024, ridership had recovered to only 61 percent of 2019 levels. Service quality improvements are necessary but not sufficient when the underlying demand has structurally contracted.
Fare adjustments cut both ways. Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority raised fares 21.5 percent in 2025 to close a budget gap. Other agencies reduced or eliminated fares to lower barriers to entry. Thirty-one percent of MPOs reported identifying new funding sources — state ballot initiatives, dedicated sales taxes. Nashville voters approved a half-cent sales tax funding a $2.3 billion, 15-year transit improvement plan. Hamilton County, Ohio established a transit-dedicated sales tax in May 2020 after four failed attempts over 40 years.
On roads and land use, nearly 70 percent of MPOs reported changing roadway configuration — adding bike lanes, removing parking, creating pedestrian infrastructure. San Francisco permanently closed two pandemic-era car-free corridors. Cincinnati’s MPO reported a substantial post-pandemic increase in pedestrian and cycling project requests from residents. Forty percent of MPOs reported changing the scope of capital roadway projects; Colorado replaced a planned Denver highway expansion with bus rapid transit.
Housing actions — now formally part of MPO planning requirements under the IIJA — were nearly universal. Sixty-six percent reported considering affordable housing in planning; 55 percent incorporated housing into transportation planning; 53 percent revised zoning to encourage housing development; 39 percent took steps to incentivize adaptive reuse of vacant commercial buildings. The office-to-residential conversion pipeline, still early in most cities, is a direct response to the surplus of underutilized downtown commercial space that telework produced.
The pattern that emerges across all three domains: large communities moved faster and more comprehensively than medium and small ones. Ninety-two percent of large MPOs reported changing roadway use, compared to 78 percent of medium and 54 percent of small communities. Large communities have been more affected, and they have more institutional capacity to respond. But 26 percent of large-community transit agencies continue to report ridership at or below 61 percent of 2019 levels, which indicates that action volume and outcome quality are not the same thing.