IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/xrk2p.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Facing the future of transit ridership: which riders bought a car; who is planning on riding less?

Author

Listed:
  • Palm, Matthew
  • Allen, Jeff

    (University of Toronto)

  • Zhang, Yixue
  • Aitken, Ignacio Tiznado
  • BATOMEN, BRICE
  • Farber, Steven
  • Widener, Michael

Abstract

Public transit agencies face a transformed landscape of rider demand and political support as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. We explore people’s motivations for returning to or avoiding public transit a year into the pandemic. We draw on a March 2021 follow up survey of over 1,900 people who rode transit regularly prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and who took part in a prior survey on the topic in May, 2020. We model how transit demand has changed due to the pandemic, and investigate how this relates to changes in automobile ownership and its desirability. We find that pre-COVID frequent transit users between the ages of 18-29, a part of the so-called “Gen Z,” and recent immigrants are more attracted to driving due to the pandemic, with the latter group more likely to have actually purchased a vehicle. Getting COVID-19 or living with someone who did is also a strong and positive predictor of buying a car and anticipating less transit use after the pandemic. Our results suggest that COVID-19 heightened the attractiveness of auto ownership among transit riders likely to eventually purchase cars anyways (immigrants, twentysomethings), at least in the North American context. We also conclude that getting COVID-19 or living with someone who did is a significant and positive predictor of having bought a car. Future research should consider how the experiencing of having COVID-19 has transformed some travelers’ views, values, and behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Palm, Matthew & Allen, Jeff & Zhang, Yixue & Aitken, Ignacio Tiznado & BATOMEN, BRICE & Farber, Steven & Widener, Michael, 2022. "Facing the future of transit ridership: which riders bought a car; who is planning on riding less?," OSF Preprints xrk2p, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:xrk2p
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/xrk2p
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/61d5b8c4da63201066fe6152/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/xrk2p?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deborah Salon & Matthew Wigginton Conway & Denise Capasso da Silva & Rishabh Singh Chauhan & Sybil Derrible & Abolfazl (Kouros) Mohammadian & Sara Khoeini & Nathan Parker & Laura Mirtich & Ali Shamshi, 2021. "The potential stickiness of pandemic-induced behavior changes in the United States," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(27), pages 2106499118-, July.
    2. Loa, Patrick & Hossain, Sanjana & Mashrur, Sk. Md. & Liu, Yicong & Wang, Kaili & Ong, Felita & Habib, Khandker Nurul, 2021. "Exploring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on modality profiles for non-mandatory trips in the Greater Toronto Area," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 71-85.
    3. Brian Taylor & Eric Morris, 2015. "Public transportation objectives and rider demographics: are transit’s priorities poor public policy?," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 347-367, March.
    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. Klein, Nicholas J. & Basu, Rounaq & Smart, Michael J., 2022. "In the driver’s seat: Pathways to automobile ownership for lower-income households in the United States," SocArXiv 7ex6z, Center for Open Science.

    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. Matthew Palm & Jeff Allen & Yixue Zhang & Ignacio Tiznado-Aitken & Brice Batomen & Steven Farber & Michael Widener, 2024. "Facing the future of transit ridership: shifting attitudes towards public transit and auto ownership among transit riders during COVID-19," Transportation, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 645-671, April.
    2. de Palma, André & Vosough, Shaghayegh & Liao, Feixiong, 2022. "An overview of effects of COVID-19 on mobility and lifestyle: 18 months since the outbreak," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 372-397.
    3. Prettyman, Alexa, 2024. "Underreporting child maltreatment during the pandemic: Evidence from Colorado," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    4. Holz-Rau, Christian & Scheiner, Joachim, 2020. "Raum und Verkehr - ein Feld komplexer Wirkungsbeziehungen: Können Interventionen in die gebaute Umwelt klimawirksame Verkehrsemissionen wirklich senken?," Forschungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Reutter, Ulrike & Holz-Rau, Christian & Albrecht, Janna & Hülz, Martina (ed.), Wechselwirkungen von Mobilität und Raumentwicklung im Kontext gesellschaftlichen Wandels, volume 14, pages 76-101, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    5. Michael J. Smart & Nicholas J. Klein, 2020. "Disentangling the role of cars and transit in employment and labor earnings," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 1275-1309, June.
    6. Tan, Ronghui & He, Qingsong & Zhou, Kehao & Xie, Peng, 2019. "The effect of new metro stations on local land use and housing prices: The case of Wuhan, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Manville, Michael & Levine, Adam Seth, 2018. "What motivates public support for public transit?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 567-580.
    8. Pan, Alexandra & Shaheen, Susan PhD, 2022. "Future of Work: Scenario Planning for COVID-19 Recovery," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt23x277qd, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    9. Zhang, Junyi & Hayashi, Yoshitsugu, 2022. "Research frontier of COVID-19 and passenger transport: A focus on policymaking," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 78-88.
    10. Park, Chung & Lee, Jungpyo & Sohn, So Young, 2019. "Recommendation of feeder bus routes using neural network embedding-based optimization," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 329-341.
    11. Linovski, Orly & Baker, Dwayne Marshall & Manaugh, Kevin, 2018. "Equity in practice? Evaluations of equity in planning for bus rapid transit," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 75-87.
    12. Verbich, David & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2017. "Public transit fare structure and social vulnerability in Montreal, Canada," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 43-53.
    13. 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.
    14. Zhao, Pengjun & Zhang, Yixue, 2019. "The effects of metro fare increase on transport equity: New evidence from Beijing," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 73-83.
    15. Kroesen, Maarten & De Vos, Jonas & Le, Huyen T.K. & Ton, Danique, 2023. "Exploring attitude-behaviour dynamics during COVID-19: How fear of infection and working from home influence train use and the attitude toward this mode," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    16. Loa, Patrick & Hossain, Sanjana & Liu, Yicong & Nurul Habib, Khandker, 2022. "How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the use of ride-sourcing services? An empirical evidence-based investigation for the Greater Toronto Area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 46-62.
    17. Karner, Alex, 2018. "Assessing public transit service equity using route-level accessibility measures and public data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 24-32.
    18. Jiang, Shixiong & Cai, Canhuang, 2022. "Unraveling the dynamic impacts of COVID-19 on metro ridership: An empirical analysis of Beijing and Shanghai, China," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 158-170.
    19. Michael Manville & Brian D. Taylor & Evelyn Blumenberg & Andrew Schouten, 2023. "Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 303-329, February.
    20. Jan Bruha & Hana Bruhova Foltynova, 2023. "Long-Term Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Working from Home and Online Shopping: Evidence from a Czech Panel Survey," Working Papers 2023/9, Czech National Bank.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:osf:osfxxx:xrk2p. 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: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    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.