The COVID-19 pandemic and the future of telecommuting in the United States.

This study focuses on an important transport-related long-term effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: an increase in telecommuting. Analyzing a nationally representative panel survey of adults, we find that 40-50% of workers expect to telecommute at least a few times per month post-pandemic, up from 24% pre-COVID. If given the option, 90-95% of those who first telecommuted during the pandemic plan to continue the practice regularly. We also find that new telecommuters are demographically similar to pre-COVID telecommuters. Both pre- and post-COVID, higher educational attainment and income, together with certain job categories, largely determine whether workers have the option to telecommute. Despite growth in telecommuting, approximately half of workers expect to remain unable to telecommute and between 2/3 and 3/4 of workers expect their post-pandemic telecommuting patterns to be unchanged from their pre-COVID patterns. This limits the contribution telecommuting can make to reducing peak hour transport demand.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Telecommuting in the United States

This study focuses on an important transport-related long-term effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: an increase in telecommuting. Analyzing a nationally representative panel survey of adults, we find that 40-50% of workers expect to telecommute at least a few times per month post-pandemic, up from 24% pre-COVID. If given the option, 90-95% of those who first telecommuted during the pandemic plan to continue the practice regularly. We also find that new telecommuters are demographically similar to pre-COVID telecommuters. Both pre- and post-COVID, higher educational attainment and income, together with certain job categories, largely determine whether workers have the option to telecommute. Despite growth in telecommuting, approximately half of workers expect to remain unable to telecommute and between 2/3 and 3/4 of workers expect their post-pandemic telecommuting patterns to be unchanged from their pre-COVID patterns. This limits the contribution telecommuting can make to reducing peak hour transport demand.

The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Travel Behavior in the United States: A Panel Study on Work from Home, Mode Choice, Online Shopping, and Air Travel

A critical challenge facing transportation planners is to identify the type and the extent of changes in people’s activity-travel behavior in the post-Covid-19 pandemic world. In this study, we investigate the travel behavior evolution by analyzing a longitudinal two-wave panel survey data conducted in the United States from April 2020 to May 2021. Encompassing nearly 3,000 respondents across different states, we explored the effects of the pandemic on four major categories of work from home, travel mode choice, online shopping, and air travel. We utilized descriptive and econometric measures, including random effects ordered probit models, to shed light on the pandemic-induced changes and the underlying factors affecting the future of mobility in the post-pandemic world. Upon concrete evidence, our findings substantiate significant observed (i.e., during the pandemic) and expected (i.e., after the pandemic) changes in people’s habits and preferences. According to our results, 48% of the respondents anticipate having the option to WFH after the pandemic, which indicates an approximately 30% increase compared to the pre-pandemic period. In the post-pandemic period, auto and transit commuters are expected to be 9% and 31% less than pre-pandemic, respectively. A considerable rise in hybrid work and grocery online shopping is expected. Moreover, 41% of pre-covid business travelers expect to have fewer flights (after the pandemic) while only 8% anticipate more, compared to the pre-pandemic.

Transportation resilience: Behavioral impact analysis of disruptions and pandemic on public transit

Most definitions for the Smart Cities paradigm have one common characteristic: being resilient. Transportation is associated with all aspects of urban life, including recreation, education, and business. Ensuring an efficacious, accessible, and integrated transportation system is vital to building resilience in our cities. Reduction in the transportation system's performance, as the heart of urban life, may compromise the city's operations across several sectors, leading to large and costly disruptions. A resilient transportation system is crucial to avoid such incidents, and it can provide accessible service to the public even during disruptions, emergencies, accidents, and special eventsPublic transit disruption is becoming more common across different transit services and can have a destructive influence on the resiliency of the transportation system. Even though transit agencies have various strategies to mitigate the probability of failure in the transit system by conducting preventative actions, some disruptions cannot be avoided because of their either unpredictable or uncontrollable nature. Utilizing recently collected data of transit users in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, the current study analyzed how transit users respond to unplanned service disruption and disclose the factors that affect their behavior. The results of the analysis reveal that a wide range of factors, including socio-demographic attributes, personal attitudes, trip-related information, and built environment, are significant in passengers' behavior in case of unplanned transit disruptions. Our findings provide insights for transportation authorities to improve the transit service quality in relation to user satisfaction and transportation resilience. These insights help transit agencies to implement effective recovery strategies.We also focused on another threat to public transit and the transportation system, which is the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we investigated risk perceptions toward using shared mobility solutions during the pandemic. It is vital for policymakers to accurately characterize the different types and degrees of behavioral changes among various social groups. Risk perception of using various modes is one of the major factors which can substantially explain individuals' travel behavior changes during a health crisis. This study focused on public transit and ridesharing services since these options are the most widespread forms of shared mobility in the current transportation system. We utilized a recent multidimensional travel-behavior survey data conducted in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, focusing on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals' travel behavior. According to the results, a wide range of explanatory variables is found to be significant in the risk perception model, including socio-demographic variables, built environment, health condition, virus spread, and the restriction factor. Our findings provide insights into the influential factors on being risk-averse versus risk-taker with respect to use shared mobility services during the pandemic. The findings assist policymakers in two main directions. First, the results showed that minority groups, including African Americans and extremely low-income families, were more at risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus while using shared mobility options. Such findings highlight the importance of achieving "equity" in access to a safe transportation system, especially during a health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, the results revealed that risk perception behaviors might vary based on places' spatial characteristics, where individuals reside. Besides, the spread of the novel coronavirus might also affect the risk perception behavior in each neighbor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

A database of travel-related behaviors and attitudes before, during, and after COVID-19 in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted billions of people around the world. To capture some of these impacts in the United States, we are conducting a nationwide longitudinal survey collecting information about activity and travel-related behaviors and attitudes before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey questions cover a wide range of topics including commuting, daily travel, air travel, working from home, online learning, shopping, and risk perception, along with attitudinal, socioeconomic, and demographic information. The survey is deployed over multiple waves to the same respondents to monitor how behaviors and attitudes evolve over time. Version 1.0 of the survey contains 8,723 responses that are publicly available. This article details the methodology adopted for the collection, cleaning, and processing of the data. In addition, the data are weighted to be representative of national and regional demographics. This survey dataset can aid researchers, policymakers, businesses, and government agencies in understanding both the extent of behavioral shifts and the likelihood that changes in behaviors will persist after COVID-19.

Perceived risk of using shared mobility services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused our daily routines to change quickly. The pandemic provokes public fear, resulting in changes in what modes of transport people use to perform their daily activities. It is imperative for transportation authorities to properly identify the different degrees of behavioral change among various social groups. A major factor that can substantially explain individuals' behavioral changes is the personal risk perceptions toward using shared mobility solutions. Thus, this study explores the risk that individuals perceive while using public transit and ridesharing services (as the most widespread forms of shared mobility) during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, we designed and implemented a multidimensional travel-behavior survey in the Chicago metropolitan area that comprises socio-demographic information and retrospective questions related to attitudes and travel behavior before and during the pandemic. Utilizing a bivariate ordered probit modeling approach to better account for the potential correlation between unobserved factors, we simultaneously modeled the perceived risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus in case of riding transit and using ridesharing services. A wide range of factors is found to be influential on the perceived risk of using shared mobility services, including the socio-demographic attributes, built environment settings, and the virus spread. Further, our results indicate that the mitigation strategies to increase the ridership of shared mobility services should be adaptive considering the spatial variations.

The potential stickiness of pandemic-induced behavior changes in the United States.

Human behavior is notoriously difficult to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring about long-term behavioral changes. During the pandemic, people have been forced to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. A critical question going forward is how these experiences have actually changed preferences and habits in ways that might persist after the pandemic ends. Many observers have suggested theories about what the future will bring, but concrete evidence has been lacking. We present evidence on how much US adults expect their own postpandemic choices to differ from their prepandemic lifestyles in the areas of telecommuting, restaurant patronage, air travel, online shopping, transit use, car commuting, uptake of walking and biking, and home location. The analysis is based on a nationally representative survey dataset collected between July and October 2020. Key findings include that the "new normal" will feature a doubling of telecommuting, reduced air travel, and improved quality of life for some.

How is COVID-19 reshaping activity-travel behavior? Evidence from a comprehensive survey in Chicago.

The novel COVID-19 pandemic has caused upheaval around the world and has led to drastic changes in our daily routines. Long-established routines such as commuting to workplace and in-store shopping are being replaced by telecommuting and online shopping. Many of these shifts were already underway for a long time, but the pandemic has accelerated them remarkably. This research is an effort to investigate how and to what extent people's mobility-styles and habitual travel behaviors have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore whether these changes will persist afterward or will bounce back to the pre-pandemic situation. To do so, a stated preference-revealed preference (SP-RP) survey is designed and implemented in the Chicago metropolitan area. The survey incorporates a comprehensive set of questions associated with individuals' travel behaviors, habits, and perceptions before and during the pandemic, as well as their expectations about the future. Analysis of the collected data reveals significant changes in various aspects of people's travel behavior. We also provide several insights for policymakers to be able to proactively plan for more equitable, sustainable, and resilient cities.