riredale

Saw this on Yahoo this morning. A Bloomberg article said that both driving and mass transit took a big hit with the virus, but that driving now seems to be a more-preferred way of getting around as the economy recovers. I would assume that folks are scared of visions of packed subway cars and the conclusions reached in NYC that the subways were major contributors to the spread of the virus.

As autos rebound so will the oil industry.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/car-s...110000205.html

Kense

I think the bigger factor is traffic is way down. People here take BART(Train system) because the traffic is so terrible.

jwong77

Yeah I heard the expectation was for traffic to increase some 46% higher than before the virus hit. But I'm so tired of these bloated predictions, everyone seems to want to scare people by making bold headline making predictions that never turn out to be true. Since my employer has asked us to work from home for the rest of the year, I'll get to watch this from the sidelines.

RNM GS3

NYC survives bec of the Subway infrastructure in addition to MetroNorth, LIRR etc
Take that away and economic recovery will never occur.

During rushour - you can’t move an inch on subway and you are rubbing against several ppl whether your sitting or standing.

Unfortunately there is no easy way out of this.

703

With unemployment on the deep ascent, people will become poorer and probably just ride around in bicycles.

auto industry will not rebound for the foreseeable future.

bagwell

agreed.

unemployment around 20+% is not a good thing



https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gr...rse-2020-05-08

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

i for one will likely NEVER get on mass transit again, unless forced to, like the train out to the terminals from the main building at the airport. i will endeavor not to touch anything and i will wear a mask. i certainly will never set foot on a city mass transit ever again if i can avoid it.

a terrible thing for those economically affected. the 'haves' will continue to arrive by limo and helicopter but who's going to clean and maintain their buildings?

Mike728

I've been driving to downtown Chicago about once a week, now that I'm doing most of my work from home. It's about a 35 mile drive and is taking me about a half hour. Once the city opens up again, no chance I'm going to keep driving. It will take over an hour each way, on good days. The train gets me there in about 40 minutes. I will go back to that method of transportation and not worry about it. Life will go on.

RNM GS3

Most of the ppl taking MetroNorth and LIRR are very wealthy coming from Connecticut, Westchester and Long Island. Its just much quicker to get to midtown then being driven unless you commute before 6am.

Therefore rich and poor would be affected but definitely the subway riders would feel it much worse.

riredale

Keep in mind that humans have been through virus infestations many times before, a big one being Spanish Flu in 1918. Once you have the antibodies, the flu just--poof!--essentially disappears. A thoroughly-normal way of life reappears within a year or two. Hugs, handshakes, baseball. Your body already has had to fight off literally thousands of potentially life-ending critters, and survived. This current bug is becoming understood. Unless your immune system is shot AND you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will come out the other end and no need then for alcohol wipe-downs and face masks.

Kense

Except this isn't the Flu and people have relapsed and gotten it twice. Most people don't recover for 2 weeks. It behaves different in everybody. Some people are now getting weird symptoms and the virus is mutating. The virus is unpredictable and dangerous and not worth taking a chance on . Nearly every Physician who isn't some stooge for Trump is very concerned about this.

EZZ

I think they said the relapse thing was a combination of people getting positive diagnosis due to them expelling dead coronavirus remains and some never recovering from their first bout. If you have the antibodies, you can't get it again unless you have an immune response deficiency. Once the vaccine arrives, life will get back to normal. You are right about the virus itself being very very nasty. The flu it definitely is not...

Kense

The Problem now are all the conspiracy lunatics who are against vaccines and won't take it and continue to spread it to people with compromised immune systems. For some reason people think compromised immune system means old people or cancer etc, when there are millions of healthy people with Asthma and other issues that normally wouldn't kill them.

EZZ

You can't help the stupid. They resist intelligence and logic stubbornly so it's waste of time. Mass transit is frankly scary as hell right now and will continue to be but I will fly in a couple months because of job and other commitments.

Kense

I'm paranoid to fly, flying is bad enough when there isn't a pandemic. My wife got the Flu from flying and was sick for weeks. Planes are filthy.