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Bus Operations of Three San Francisco Bay Area Transit Agencies during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

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  • Kurzhanskiy, Alex PhD
  • Lapardhaja, Servet

Abstract

From March 2020 through March 2021, researchers monitored three San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies: two large – Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit), Valley Transportation Authority (VTA); and one small – Tri Delta Transit. As the lockdown was imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, white-collar commuters, students, and the elderly stopped using public transit. Initially, ridership fell 90 percent, and then over the year slowly climbed to less than 50 percent for AC Transit and VTA, and to around 60 percent for Tri Delta Transit. The pace of recovery was not steady as ridership declined during protests in June 2020, during fare reinstatements in autumn 2020 and during the second COVID-19 wave in winter 2020-21. Agencies’ responses to the pandemic consisted of three parts: 1) maintaining health and safety of their employees; 2) minimizing COVID risk for their riders by keeping buses clean and enabling social distancing through capping the number of passengers on buses; and 3) changing their service. There was a direct relationship between the socioeconomic status of the population and transit ridership during the year studied. Higher ridership was observed in low-income areas with a high percentage of Latino, Black and Asian populations. These are generally renters, who do not have a car, but have to go to work either because they are essential workers and/ or are undocumented immigrants who cannot afford staying jobless. On the other hand, in wealthy areas of the Bay Area transit activity all but disappeared.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurzhanskiy, Alex PhD & Lapardhaja, Servet, 2021. "Bus Operations of Three San Francisco Bay Area Transit Agencies during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt5cf8s117, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt5cf8s117
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luyu Liu & Harvey J Miller & Jonathan Scheff, 2020. "The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on public transit demand in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    2. Rebecca Brough & Matthew Freedman & David C. Phillips, 2021. "Understanding socioeconomic disparities in travel behavior during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 753-774, September.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Engineering; COVID-19; public transit; bus transit operations; ridership; public health; demographics; social equity;
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