Pandemic transit: examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic upended many aspects of life as we knew it, its effects on U.S. public transit were especially dramatic. Many former transit commuters began to work from home or switched to traveling via private vehicles. But for those who continued to work outside the home and could not drive-who were more likely low-income and Black or Hispanic-transit remained an important means of mobility. However, most transit agencies reduced service during the first year of the pandemic, reflecting reduced ridership demand, increasing costs, and uncertain budgets. To analyze the effects of the pandemic on transit systems and their users, we examine bus ridership changes by neighborhood in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles from 2019 to 2020. Combining aggregated stop-level boarding data, passenger surveys, and census data, we identify associations between shifting travel patterns and neighborhoods. We find that early in the pandemic, neighborhoods with more poor and non-white households lost proportionally fewer riders; however, this gap between high- and low-ridership-loss neighborhoods shrank as the pandemic wore on. We also model ridership change controlling for multiple factors. Ridership in Houston and LA generally outperformed Boston, with built environment and demographic factors accounting for some of the observed differences. Neighborhoods with high shares of Hispanic and African American residents retained more riders in the pandemic, while those with higher levels of auto access and with more workers able to work from home lost more riders, all else equal. We conclude that transit's social service role elevated during the pandemic, and that serving travelers in disadvantaged neighborhoods will likely remain paramount emerging from it.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11116-022-10345-1.

Keywords: Neighborhood demographics; Post-pandemic travel; Public transit; Transportation equity.

Fig. 1

Trends in COVID-19 cases, April 2020 to October 2020. Data source The New York Times

Fig. 2

Bus rider characteristics in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles circa 2015–2019. Data source: (Houston–Galveston Area Council ; LA Metro ; MBTA 2018)

Fig. 3

Year-over-year ridership by agency and mode, 2019–2020. Data source (Federal Transit Administration 2020)

Fig. 4

Monthly per capita bus ridership by region, 2020. Data source (Federal Transit Administration 2020)

Fig. 5

April 2019–2020 bus ridership change (left) and median household income (right), Boston metropolitan area. Data source (MBTA , ; U.S. Census Bureau 2018). Note Income data are in natural log form

Fig. 6

April 2019–2020 bus ridership change (left) and median household income (right), Houston metropolitan area. Data source (Houston Metro , ; U.S. Census Bureau 2018). Note Income data are in natural log form

Fig. 7

April 2019–2020 ridership change (left) and median household income (right), Los Angeles County. Data source (LA Metro , ; U.S. Census Bureau 2018). Note Income data are in natural log form

Fig. 8

Racial/ethnic composition of the neighborhoods that lost the most (bottom quintile) and least (top quintile) shares of bus riders in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles, April 2019 to 2020. Data source (Houston Metro , , , ; LA Metro , , , ; MBTA , , , ; U.S. Census Bureau 2018)

Fig. 9

SES composition of the neighborhoods that lost the most (bottom quintile) and least (top quintile) shares of bus riders in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles, April 2019 to2020. Data source (Houston Metro , , , ; LA Metro , , , ; MBTA , , , ; U.S. Census Bureau 2018)