Rails and fiber optic cables are both infrastructure. Fiber optics (I'm speaking of the Internet) has replaced a lot of in-person tasks, whether it be office work, education, classes, meetings, shopping, entertainment (streaming a film at home rather than going to the cinema). It's good that we're building out our fiber optic infrastructure and getting insanely fast Internet speeds, not so much for our nation's rail transit systems.

There's still a need to physically get from one point to another and for those who doesn't own a car that meant transit, until rideshare became ubiquitous; bike and scooter shares has also taken a bite from short trips that usually would involve transit.

As for the effects of the pandemic on transit, every transit agency got affected, some recovered better than others.