ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted public transit services through plummeting ridership during the lockdown and subsequent budget cuts. This study investigates the equity impacts of reductions in accessibility due to transit service cuts during COVID-19 and their association with urban sprawl. We evaluated transit access to food and health care services across 22 US cities in three phases during 2020. We found stark socio-spatial disparities in access to basic services and employment in food and health care. Transit service cuts worsened accessibility for communities with multiple social vulnerabilities, such as neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, low-income workers, and zero-vehicle households, as well as poor neighborhoods with high concentrations of black residents. Moreover, sprawled cities experienced greater access loss during COVID-19 than compact cities. Our results point to policies and interventions to maintain social equity and sustainable urban development while benefiting diverse social groups during disruptions.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted public transit services through plummeting ridership during the lockdown and subsequent budget cuts. This study investigates the equity impacts of reductions in accessibility due to transit service cuts during COVID-19 and their association with urban sprawl. We evaluated transit access to food and health care services across 22 US cities in three phases during 2020. We found stark socio-spatial disparities in access to basic services and employment in food and health care. Transit service cuts worsened accessibility for communities with multiple social vulnerabilities, such as neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, low-income workers, and zero-vehicle households, as well as poor neighborhoods with high concentrations of black residents. Moreover, sprawled cities experienced greater access loss during COVID-19 than compact cities. Our results point to policies and interventions to maintain social equity and sustainable urban development while benefiting diverse social groups during disruptions.
ABSTRACT
Inequality to food access has always been a serious problem, yet it became even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated social inequality and reshaped essential travel. This study provides a holistic view of spatio-temporal changes in food access based on observed travel data for all grocery shopping trips in Columbus, Ohio, during and after the state-wide stay-at-home period. We estimated the decline and recovery patterns of store visits during the pandemic to identify the key socio-economic and built environment determinants of food shopping patterns. The results show a disparity: during the lockdown, store visits to dollar stores declined the least, while visits to big-box stores declined the most and recovered the fastest. Visits to stores in low-income areas experienced smaller changes even during the lockdown period. A higher percentage of low-income customers was associated with lower store visits during the lockdown period. Furthermore, stores with a higher percentage of white customers declined the least and recovered faster during the reopening phase. Our study improves the understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on food access disparities and business performance. It highlights the role of COVID-19 and similar disruptions on exposing underlying social problems in the US.