Shifting transit use in COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for transit’s recovery

Abstract

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and transit agency officials recommended that people drastically curtail their interactions with others to slow the spread of illness. On public transit, where strangers congregate on large vehicles and travel together, the decline in riders was especially dramatic. While walking, biking, and driving, which enable social distancing, substantially recovered in 2021 to pre-pandemic levels, transit use remained – and remains – depressed.

About the Project

By the fall of 2020, most transit systems had recovered to about half of their pre-pandemic ridership, but transit’s recovery largely stalled there, even as rates of driving, walking, and […]