A third wave longitudinal survey on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on long-term commuting habits: evidence from rail in Great Britain

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to fundamental changes in working and commuting patterns for a segment of the workforce with significant impact on the level of patronage of public transport systems which focused on catering to commuters. This paper aims to quantify this impact in the long-term, using a longitudinal sample of 3,826 commuters with a focus on those using rail in Great Britain. Using a panel built in 2020, this paper compares the commuting habits pre-pandemic with those in February 2023. Survey data can now shed light on long-term behavioural adjustments. Building on previous waves, the current wave addresses topics such as commuting frequency, frequency of working from home and individual perceptions of working at home and/or in the workplace plus long-term individual decisions like changes in home location. It concluded that the pandemic led to a reduction of 1.18 in the number of days commuting to work per week and an increase of 0.85 in the number of days working from home. In addition, if employers had not put restrictions on workplace attendance, the return to commuting would have been 12 percentage points lower. Nonetheless, there is evidence employees are internalising their employer's restrictions to some extent.