Who continued travelling by public transport during COVID-19? Socioeconomic factors explaining travel behaviour in Stockholm 2020 based on smart card data.
Erik Almlöf, Isak Rubensson, Matej Cebecauer, Erik Jenelius
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed travel behaviour and reduced the use of public transport throughout the world, but the reduction has not been uniform. In this study we analyse the propensity to stop travelling by public transport during COVID-19 for the holders of 1.8 million smart cards in Stockholm, Sweden, for the spring and autumn of 2020. We suggest two binomial logit models for explaining the change in travel pattern, linking socioeconomic data per area and travel data with the probability to stop travelling.
Modelled variables: The first model investigates the impact of the socioeconomic factors: age; income; education level; gender; housing type; population density; country of origin; and employment level. The results show that decreases in public transport use are linked to all these factors.The second model groups the investigated areas into five distinct clusters based on the socioeconomic data, showing the impacts for different socioeconomic groups. During the autumn the differences between the groups diminished, and especially Cluster 1 (with the lowest education levels, lowest income and highest share of immigrants) reduced their public transport use to a similar level as the more affluent clusters.
Results: The results show that socioeconomic status affect the change in behaviour during the pandemic and that exposure to the virus is determined by citizens' socioeconomic class. Furthermore, the results can guide policy into tailoring public transport supply to where the need is, instead of assuming that e.g. crowding is equally distributed within the public transport system in the event of a pandemic.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12544-021-00488-0.
期刊介绍:
European Transport Research Review (ETRR) is a peer-reviewed open access journal publishing original high-quality scholarly research and developments in areas related to transportation science, technologies, policy and practice. Established in 2008 by the European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI), the Journal provides researchers and practitioners around the world with an authoritative forum for the dissemination and critical discussion of new ideas and methodologies that originate in, or are of special interest to, the European transport research community. The journal is unique in its field, as it covers all modes of transport and addresses both the engineering and the social science perspective, offering a truly multidisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners, engineers and policymakers. ETRR is aimed at a readership including researchers, practitioners in the design and operation of transportation systems, and policymakers at the international, national, regional and local levels.