The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on bus transit demand: A 30-month Naturalistic Observation in Jiading, Shanghai, China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government responses have had unprecedented effects on public transit (PT) demand. This paper presents a naturalistic observation of the Jiading bus transit system in Shanghai, China, spanning from April 2021 to October 2023 and covering different stages under various extreme policy response combinations. We use the Prais-Winsten regression to quantitatively assess the pandemic’s impact on bus demand and explore demand recovery patterns at both aggregated and individual levels in the post-pandemic era. Our findings reveal a strong negative correlation between bus demand and the stringency of containment policies, consistent across both levels of analysis. In the post-pandemic period, ridership has only rebounded to 77% of the pre-Omicron near-normal level, with notable spatial and temporal disparities across different regions. While the temporal distribution of ridership has largely normalized, the recovery of travel demand between zones outpaces that of travel within zones. Moreover, a persistent decline in individual travel frequency has been observed, which has not reverted in the post-pandemic period. The insights from this study can help policymakers better respond to potential future crises and improve PT services in the post-pandemic era.