IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v163y2022icp338-352.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of COVID-19 on future public transport use in Scotland

Author

Listed:
  • Downey, Lucy
  • Fonzone, Achille
  • Fountas, Grigorios
  • Semple, Torran

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of changes in future public transport use in Scotland after the COVID-19 pandemic. An online questionnaire was distributed to 994 Scottish residents in order to identify travel habits, attitudes and preferences during the different phases of the COVID-19 outbreak and travel intentions after the pandemic. Quota constraints were enforced for age, gender and household income to ensure the sample was representative of the Scottish population. The respondents indicated that they anticipated they would make less use of buses and trains at the end of the pandemic. Over a third expect to use buses (36%) and trains (34%) less, whilst a quarter expect to drive their cars more. As part of the analysis, a random parameter bivariate probit model with heterogeneity in the means of random parameters was estimated to provide insights into the socio-demographic, behavioural and perceptual factors which might affect future public transport usage. The inclusion of random parameters allows for the potential effects of unobserved heterogeneity within the independent variables to be captured, whilst making allowances for heterogeneity in the means of the random parameters. The model estimation showed that several factors, including pre-lockdown travel choices, perceived risk of COVID-19 infection, household size and region significantly affected intended future use of public transport. In addition, several variables related to age, region, pre-lockdown travel choices and employment status resulted in random parameters. The current paper contributes to our understanding of the potential loss of demand for public transport and the consequences for future equitable and sustainable mobility. Our findings are highly relevant for transport policy when developing measures to strengthen the resilience of the public transport system during and after the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Downey, Lucy & Fonzone, Achille & Fountas, Grigorios & Semple, Torran, 2022. "The impact of COVID-19 on future public transport use in Scotland," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 338-352.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:163:y:2022:i:c:p:338-352
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2022.06.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856422001598
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2022.06.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rajesh Paleti & Lacramioara Balan, 2019. "Misclassification in travel surveys and implications to choice modeling: application to household auto ownership decisions," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1467-1485, August.
    2. Gupta, Arpit & Mittal, Vrinda & Peeters, Jonas & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2022. "Flattening the curve: Pandemic-Induced revaluation of urban real estate," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 594-636.
    3. Redman, Lauren & Friman, Margareta & Gärling, Tommy & Hartig, Terry, 2013. "Quality attributes of public transport that attract car users: A research review," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 119-127.
    4. Élise Labonté-LeMoyne & Shang-Lin Chen & Constantinos K. Coursaris & Sylvain Sénécal & Pierre-Majorique Léger, 2020. "The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Mitigation Measures on Mass Transit and Car Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-13, November.
    5. Thombre, Anurag & Agarwal, Amit, 2021. "A paradigm shift in urban mobility: Policy insights from travel before and after COVID-19 to seize the opportunity," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 335-353.
    6. Eisenmann, Christine & Nobis, Claudia & Kolarova, Viktoriya & Lenz, Barbara & Winkler, Christian, 2021. "Transport mode use during the COVID-19 lockdown period in Germany: The car became more important, public transport lost ground," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 60-67.
    7. Panayotis Christidis & Aris Christodoulou & Elena Navajas-Cawood & Biagio Ciuffo, 2021. "The Post-Pandemic Recovery of Transport Activity: Emerging Mobility Patterns and Repercussions on Future Evolution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-17, June.
    8. Stradling, S. G. & Meadows, M. L. & Beatty, S., 2000. "Helping drivers out of their cars Integrating transport policy and social psychology for sustainable change," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 207-215, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Haiyan Liu & Jaeyoung Lee, 2023. "Contributing Factors to the Changes in Public and Private Transportation Mode Choice after the COVID-19 Outbreak in Urban Areas of China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-21, March.
    2. Pengxiang Ding & Suwei Feng & Jianning Jiang, 2023. "The Impact of Urban Rail Transit Epidemic Prevention Measures on Passengers’ Safety Perception," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(5), pages 1-17, February.
    3. Faber, R.M. & de Haas, M.C. & Molin, E.J.E. & Kroesen, M., 2024. "Investigating changes in within-person effects between attitudes and travel behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    4. Ishibashi, Sumiko & Kobayashi, Taiki & Taniguchi, Mamoru, 2024. "Does emphasis change in transportation mode choice affect workers’ actual mode choice? Implications from Japan in the COVID-19 era," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 343-355.
    5. Semple, Torran & Fonzone, Achille & Fountas, Grigorios & Downey, Lucy, 2023. "An empirical analysis of the factors influencing Scottish residents’ compliance with COVID-19 travel restrictions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    6. Kwang-Sub Lee & Jin Ki Eom, 2024. "Systematic literature review on impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding measures on mobility," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(5), pages 1907-1961, October.
    7. Karimi, Sina & Samadzad, Mahdi & Lesteven, Gaele, 2024. "Navigating public transport during a pandemic: Key lessons on travel behavior and social equity from two surveys in Tehran," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    8. Cheng, Xusen & Zhang, Shuang & Ran, Yanyue & Ma, Baojun, 2024. "Enhancing the perceived resilience of the road transportation system: Utilizing cues from ridesharing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    9. Li, Xinghua & Yang, Yueyi & Guo, Yuntao & Souders, Dustin & Li, Jian, 2023. "Understanding the role of risk perception and health measures in ridesourcing usage in the post-COVID-19 era," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    10. Gorji, Mohammad-Ali & Shetab-Boushehri, Seyyed-Nader & Akbarzadeh, Meisam, 2023. "Evaluation and improvement of the resilience of a transportation system against epidemic diseases: A system dynamics approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 27-44.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vega-Gonzalo, Maria & Gomez, Juan & Christidis, Panayotis, 2023. "How has COVID-19 changed private car use in European urban areas? An analysis of the effect of socio-economic characteristics and mobility habits," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    2. Christidis, Panayotis & Navajas Cawood, Elena & Fiorello, Davide, 2022. "Challenges for urban transport policy after the Covid-19 pandemic: Main findings from a survey in 20 European cities," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 105-116.
    3. Shuai Yu & Bin Li & Dongmei Liu, 2023. "Exploring the Public Health of Travel Behaviors in High-Speed Railway Environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic from the Perspective of Trip Chain: A Case Study of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Urban Agglomera," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-22, January.
    4. Habibian, Meeghat & Kermanshah, Mohammad, 2013. "Coping with congestion: Understanding the role of simultaneous transportation demand management policies on commuters," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 229-237.
    5. Timmer, Sebastian & Merfeld, Katrin & Henkel, Sven, 2023. "Exploring motivations for multimodal commuting: A hierarchical means-end chain analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    6. Bagdatli, Muhammed Emin Cihangir & Ipek, Fatima, 2022. "Transport mode preferences of university students in post-COVID-19 pandemic," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 20-32.
    7. Štefancová Vladimíra & Harantová Veronika & Mazanec Jaroslav & Mašek Jaroslav & Foltýnová Hana Brůhová, 2023. "Analysis of Passenger Behaviour During the Covid-19 Pandemic Situation," LOGI – Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 203-214, January.
    8. Mohammadjavad Javadinasr & Tassio B. Magassy & Ehsan Rahimi & Motahare & Mohammadi & Amir Davatgari & Abolfazl & Mohammadian & Deborah Salon & Matthew Wigginton Bhagat-Conway & Rishabh Singh Chauhan &, 2021. "The Enduring Effects of COVID-19 on Travel Behavior in the United States: A Panel Study on Observed and Expected Changes in Telecommuting, Mode Choice, Online Shopping and Air Travel," Papers 2109.07988, arXiv.org.
    9. Soria, Jason & Edward, Deirdre & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2023. "Requiem for transit ridership? An examination of who abandoned, who will return, and who will ride more with mobility as a service," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 139-154.
    10. Wang, Chunan & Jiang, Changmin, 2022. "How do pandemics affect intercity air travel? Implications for traffic and environment," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 330-353.
    11. Ashutosh Sarkar & Debadyuti Das & Arindam Debroy, 2024. "Panic Buying, Product Substitution and Channel-Shifting Behaviour During Pandemic," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 13(1), pages 25-43, January.
    12. Enrico Mancinelli & Umberto Rizza & Francesco Canestrari & Andrea Graziani & Simone Virgili & Giorgio Passerini, 2022. "New Habits of Travellers Deriving from COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey in Ports and Airports of the Adriatic Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-16, July.
    13. Ali El Zein & Adrien Beziat & Pascal Pochet & Olivier Klein & Stephanie Vincent, 2022. "What drives the changes in public transport use in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic? Highlights from Lyon metropolitan area," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(S1), pages 122-141, November.
    14. Qihao Liu & Yuzheng Liu & Chia-Lin Chen & Enrica Papa & Yantao Ling & Mengqiu Cao, 2023. "Is It Possible to Compete With Car Use? How Buses Can Facilitate Sustainable Transport," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 69-83.
    15. Toşa, Cristian & Sato, Hitomi & Morikawa, Takayuki & Miwa, Tomio, 2018. "Commuting behavior in emerging urban areas: Findings of a revealed-preferences and stated-intentions survey in Cluj-Napoca, Romania," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 78-93.
    16. Alessandro Vitale & Giuseppe Guido & Daniele Rogano, 2016. "A smartphone based DSS platform for assessing transit service attributes," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 315-340, September.
    17. Grotenhuis, Jan-Willem & Wiegmans, Bart W. & Rietveld, Piet, 2007. "The desired quality of integrated multimodal travel information in public transport: Customer needs for time and effort savings," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 27-38, January.
    18. Bergeaud, Antonin & Eyméoud, Jean-Benoît & Garcia, Thomas & Henricot, Dorian, 2023. "Working from home and corporate real estate," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    19. Lina Bjerke & Steven Bond-Smith & Philip McCann & Charlotta Mellander, 2025. "Work-from-home, relocation, and shadow effects: Evidence from Sweden," Working Papers 2025-1, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    20. Federica Ciocchetta & Elisa Guglielminetti & Alessandro Mistretta, 2024. "What Drives House Prices in Europe?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 86(5), pages 1089-1121, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:163:y:2022:i:c:p:338-352. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.