IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i11p8821-d1159656.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tracking the Transit Divide: A Multilevel Modelling Approach of Urban Inequalities and Train Ridership Disparities in Chicago

Author

Listed:
  • Danial Owen

    (Geographic Data Science Lab, Department of Geography and Planning, Roxby Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK)

  • Daniel Arribas-Bel

    (Geographic Data Science Lab, Department of Geography and Planning, Roxby Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK)

  • Francisco Rowe

    (Geographic Data Science Lab, Department of Geography and Planning, Roxby Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZT, UK)

Abstract

Using a multilevel modelling approach, this study investigates the impact of urban inequalities on changes to rail ridership across Chicago’s “L” stations during the pandemic, the mass vaccination rollout, and the full reopening of the city. Initially believed to have an equal impact, COVID-19 disproportionally impacted the ability of lower socioeconomic status (SES) neighbourhoods’ to adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions: working-from-home and social distancing. We find that “L” stations in predominately Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino neighbourhoods with high industrial land-use recorded the smallest behavioural change. The maintenance of higher public transport use at these stations is likely to have exacerbated existing health inequalities, worsening disparities in users’ risk of exposure, infection rates, and mortality rates. This study also finds that the vaccination rollout and city reopening did not significantly increase the number of users at stations in higher vaccinated, higher private vehicle ownership neighbourhoods, even after a year into the pandemic. A better understanding of the spatial and socioeconomic determinants of changes in ridership behaviour is crucial for policymakers in adjusting service routes and frequencies that will sustain reliant neighbourhoods’ access to essential services, and to encourage trips at stations which are the most impacted to revert the trend of declining public transport use.

Suggested Citation

  • Danial Owen & Daniel Arribas-Bel & Francisco Rowe, 2023. "Tracking the Transit Divide: A Multilevel Modelling Approach of Urban Inequalities and Train Ridership Disparities in Chicago," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-18, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:8821-:d:1159656
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8821/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8821/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ahmed El-Geneidy & Michael Grimsrud & Rania Wasfi & Paul Tétreault & Julien Surprenant-Legault, 2014. "New evidence on walking distances to transit stops: identifying redundancies and gaps using variable service areas," Transportation, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 193-210, January.
    2. Daniel Carrión & Elena Colicino & Nicolo Foppa Pedretti & Kodi B. Arfer & Johnathan Rush & Nicholas DeFelice & Allan C. Just, 2021. "Neighborhood-level disparities and subway utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    3. Wang, Haoyun & Noland, Robert B., 2021. "Bikeshare and subway ridership changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 262-270.
    4. Power, Anne, 2012. "Social inequality, disadvantaged neighbourhoods and transport deprivation: an assessment of the historical influence of housing policies," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 39-48.
    5. 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.
    6. Beck, Matthew J. & Hensher, David A., 2020. "Insights into the impact of COVID-19 on household travel and activities in Australia – The early days of easing restrictions," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 95-119.
    7. Stephen M. Kissler & Nishant Kishore & Malavika Prabhu & Dena Goffman & Yaakov Beilin & Ruth Landau & Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman & Brian T. Bateman & Jon Snyder & Armin S. Razavi & Daniel Katz & Jonatha, 2020. "Reductions in commuting mobility correlate with geographic differences in SARS-CoV-2 prevalence in New York City," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-6, December.
    8. Michael Batty, 2020. "The Coronavirus crisis: What will the post-pandemic city look like?," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(4), pages 547-552, June.
    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. Ali Bokhari & Farahnaz Sharifi, 2024. "Public Transport Inequality and Utilization: Exploring the Perspective of the Inequality Impact on Travel Choices," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-14, June.

    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. 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.
    2. Liang, Zhiyuan & Tang, Yili & Yu, Jianing & Wang, Yacan, 2024. "A collective incentive strategy to manage ridership rebound and consumer surplus in mass transit systems," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    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. Mirko Guaralda & Greg Hearn & Marcus Foth & Tan Yigitcanlar & Severine Mayere & Lisa Law, 2020. "Towards Australian Regional Turnaround: Insights into Sustainably Accommodating Post-Pandemic Urban Growth in Regional Towns and Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-13, December.
    5. Beck, Matthew J. & Hensher, David A. & Nelson, John D., 2021. "Public transport trends in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic: An investigation of the influence of bio-security concerns on trip behaviour," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    6. Emma Strömblad & Lena Winslott Hiselius & Lena Smidfelt Rosqvist & Helena Svensson, 2021. "Adaptive Travel Behaviors to Cope with COVID-19: A Swedish Qualitative Study Focusing on Everyday Leisure Trips," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-17, November.
    7. Anwar, Muhammad Azfar & Dhir, Amandeep & Jabeen, Fauzia & Zhang, Qingyu & Siddiquei, Ahmad Nabeel, 2023. "Unconventional green transport innovations in the post-COVID-19 era. A trade-off between green actions and personal health protection," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(PA).
    8. 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.
    9. Shirgaokar, Manish & Reynard, Darcy & Collins, Damian, 2021. "Using twitter to investigate responses to street reallocation during COVID-19: Findings from the U.S. and Canada," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 300-312.
    10. Riccardo Ceccato & Riccardo Rossi & Massimiliano Gastaldi, 2021. "Travel Demand Prediction during COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational and Working Trips at the University of Padova," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-20, June.
    11. Li, Tao & Wang, Jiaoe & Huang, Jie & Yang, Wenyue & Chen, Zhuo, 2021. "Exploring the dynamic impacts of COVID-19 on intercity travel in China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    12. Chen, Chao & Feng, Tao & Gu, Xiaoning & Yao, Baozhen, 2022. "Investigating the effectiveness of COVID-19 pandemic countermeasures on the use of public transport: A case study of The Netherlands," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 98-107.
    13. Cheng Sun & Yaxuan Xiong & Zhiqin Wu & Jie Li, 2021. "Enclave-Reinforced Inequality during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from University Campus Lockdowns in Wuhan, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-21, November.
    14. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Serra, Bernardo & Oliveira, Gabriel T. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2020. "Accessibility measurements in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Recife, Brazil," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    15. Tscharaktschiew, Stefan & Reimann, Felix, 2021. "On employer-paid parking and parking (cash-out) policy: A formal synthesis of different perspectives," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 499-516.
    16. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum & Amit Khandelwal & Wookun Kim & Cristiano Mantovani & Edouard Schaal, 2021. "Optimal Lockdown in a Commuting Network," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 503-522, December.
    17. Molloy, Joseph & Schatzmann, Thomas & Schoeman, Beaumont & Tchervenkov, Christopher & Hintermann, Beat & Axhausen, Kay W., 2021. "Observed impacts of the Covid-19 first wave on travel behaviour in Switzerland based on a large GPS panel," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 43-51.
    18. Kim, Suji & Lee, Sujin & Ko, Eunjeong & Jang, Kitae & Yeo, Jiho, 2021. "Changes in car and bus usage amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Relationship with land use and land price," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    19. Rui Xiao & Guofeng Wang & Meng Wang, 2018. "Transportation Disadvantage and Neighborhood Sociodemographics: A Composite Indicator Approach to Examining Social Inequalities," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 29-43, May.
    20. Manout, Ouassim & Bonnel, Patrick & Bouzouina, Louafi, 2018. "Transit accessibility: A new definition of transit connectors," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 88-100.

    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:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:8821-:d:1159656. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.