Three's a crowd? Examining evolving public transit crowding standards amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected public transit systems around the globe. Because transit systems typically move many people closely together on buses and trains, public health guidance demanded that riders should keep a distance of about two meters to others changed the definition of "crowding” on transit in 2020. Accordingly, this research examines how U.S. public transit agencies responded to public health guidance that directly conflicted with their business model. To do this, we examined published crowding standards before the COVID-19 pandemic for a representative sample of 200 transit systems, including whether they started or changed their published standards during the pandemic, as well as the reasons whether agencies publicize such standards at all. We present both descriptive statistics and regression model results to shed light on the factors associated with agency crowding standards. We find that 56% of the agencies surveyed published crowding standards before the pandemic, while only 46% published COVID-19-specific crowding standards. Regression analyses suggest that larger agencies were more likely to publish crowding standards before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely because they are more apt to experience crowding. Pandemic-specific crowding standards, by contrast, were associated with a more complex set of factors. We conclude that the relative lack of pandemic standards reflects the uncertainty and fluidity of the public health crisis, inconsistent and at times conflicting with the guidance from public health officials, and, in the U.S., a lack national or transit industry consensus on appropriate crowding standards during the first year of the pandemic.

Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California.

We examine pre-COVID declines in transit ridership, using Southern California as a case study. We first illustrate Southern California's unique position in the transit landscape: it is a large transit market that demographically resembles a small one. We then draw on administrative data, travel diaries, rider surveys, accessibility indices, and Census microdata for Southern California, and demonstrate a strong association between rising private vehicle access, particularly among the populations most likely to ride transit, and falling transit use. Because we cannot control quantitatively for the endogeneity between vehicle acquisition and transit use, our results are not causal. Nevertheless, the results strongly suggest that increasing private vehicle access helped depress transit ridership. Given Southern California's similarity to most US transit markets, we conclude that vehicle access may have played a role in transit losses across the US since 2000.

Three's a crowd? Examining evolving public transit crowding standards amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected public transit systems around the globe. Because transit systems typically move many people closely together on buses and trains, public health guidance demanded that riders should keep a distance of about two meters to others changed the definition of "crowding " on transit in 2020. Accordingly, this research examines how U.S. public transit agencies responded to public health guidance that directly conflicted with their business model. To do this, we examined published crowding standards before the COVID-19 pandemic for a representative sample of 200 transit systems, including whether they started or changed their published standards during the pandemic, as well as the reasons whether agencies publicize such standards at all. We present both descriptive statistics and regression model results to shed light on the factors associated with agency crowding standards. We find that 56% of the agencies surveyed published crowding standards before the pandemic, while only 46% published COVID-19-specific crowding standards. Regression analyses suggest that larger agencies were more likely to publish crowding standards before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely because they are more apt to experience crowding. Pandemic-specific crowding standards, by contrast, were associated with a more complex set of factors. We conclude that the relative lack of pandemic standards reflects the uncertainty and fluidity of the public health crisis, inconsistent and at times conflicting with the guidance from public health officials, and, in the U.S., a lack national or transit industry consensus on appropriate crowding standards during the first year of the pandemic.

Pandemic transit: examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles

While the COVID-19 pandemic upended many aspects of life as we knew it, its effects on U.S. public transit were especially dramatic. Many former transit commuters began to work from home or switched to traveling via private vehicles. But for those who continued to work outside the home and could not drive—who were more likely low-income and Black or Hispanic—transit remained an important means of mobility. However, most transit agencies reduced service during the first year of the pandemic, reflecting reduced ridership demand, increasing costs, and uncertain budgets. To analyze the effects of the pandemic on transit systems and their users, we examine bus ridership changes by neighborhood in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles from 2019 to 2020. Combining aggregated stop-level boarding data, passenger surveys, and census data, we identify associations between shifting travel patterns and neighborhoods. We find that early in the pandemic, neighborhoods with more poor and non-white households lost proportionally fewer riders;however, this gap between high- and low-ridership-loss neighborhoods shrank as the pandemic wore on. We also model ridership change controlling for multiple factors. Ridership in Houston and LA generally outperformed Boston, with built environment and demographic factors accounting for some of the observed differences. Neighborhoods with high shares of Hispanic and African American residents retained more riders in the pandemic, while those with higher levels of auto access and with more workers able to work from home lost more riders, all else equal. We conclude that transit’s social service role elevated during the pandemic, and that serving travelers in disadvantaged neighborhoods will likely remain paramount emerging from it. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11116-022-10345-1.

Rating the composition: Deconstructing the demand-side effects on transit use changes in California

Transit use in the U.S. has been sliding since 2014, well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest state, California, was also losing transit riders despite substantial public investment and increased service in the pre-pandemic period. This downturn prompted concern among transit managers and planners interested in service-side interventions to reverse the decline. However, relatively little is known about changes in the demand for public transit and how shifts in demand-side factors have affected patronage. Drawing on California data from the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys, we quantify demand-side changes as a function of two factors—changes in ridership rates of various classes of transit riders (“rate effects”) and changes in the composition of those rider classes (“composition effects”). Statewide, we find that while shifts in the population composition were in some cases associated with lower levels of ridership, the largest declines in transit patronage were associated with falling ridership rates. Specifically, those with limited automobile access and Hispanic travelers rode transit far less frequently in 2017 compared to 2009. Transit ridership rates and rider composition in the San Francisco Bay Area were relatively stable during the study period, while both rate and compositional changes in the Los Angeles area were associated with much lower levels of total ridership. Overall, our findings demonstrate the important role of demand-side factors in understanding aggregate transit use, and suggest that planners and managers may have limited policy tools at their disposal when seeking to bolster ridership levels.