Public transit use in the United States in the era of COVID-19: Transit riders’ travel behavior in the COVID-19 impact and recovery period

COVID-19 has upended travel across the world, disrupting commute patterns, mode choices, and public transit systems. In the United States, changes to transit service and reductions in passenger volume due to COVID-19 are lasting longer than originally anticipated. In this paper we examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual travel behavior across the United States. We analyze mobility data from Janurary to December 2020 from a sample drawn from a nationwide smartphone-based panel curated by a private firm, Embee Mobile. We combine this with a survey that we administered to that sample in August 2020. Our analysis provides insight into travel patterns and the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on transit riders.

We investigate three questions. First, how do transit riders differ socio-demographically from non-riders? Second, how has the travel behavior of transit riders changed due to the pandemic in comparison to non-riders, controlling for other factors? And third, how has this travel behavior varied across different types of transit riders?