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

Matthew Palm, Jeff Allen, Yixue Zhang, Ignacio Tiznado Aitken, Brice Batomen, Steven Farber and Michael Widener
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Jeff Allen: University of Toronto

No xrk2p, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

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.

Date: 2022-01-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre
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DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/xrk2p

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