- I can tell you this, that people wonder, will mass transit ever go back to what it was.

I don't believe it will.

I think the working from home phenomenon is really profound and it has huge implications for mass transit because mass transit is so expensive to operate that without the ridership and the revenue, that burden is going to fall on basically governments and more taxes, perhaps an increase in the gas tax.

Once the federal aid runs out, the MBTA is going to be faced with this very serious problem of how to fund operations, not really knowing what ridership will be.

And I've heard some projections, outgoing Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack, that she doesn't see it coming back in one year, two years, perhaps three years back to what it was and perhaps never.

This of course makes it very challenging and difficult for transportation planners trying to do their job.

The advocates are keeping up their pressure to make sure that service isn't cut.

So, we have a lot of changes that we're going to be going through in the months ahead as we come out of this pandemic.