{"title":"Three's a crowd? Examining evolving public transit crowding standards amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.","authors":"Tianxing Dai, Brian D Taylor","doi":"10.1007/s12469-022-00311-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected public transit systems around the globe. Because transit systems typically move many people closely together on buses and trains, public health guidance demanded that riders should keep a distance of about two meters to others changed the definition of \"crowding\" on transit in 2020. Accordingly, this research examines how U.S. public transit agencies responded to public health guidance that directly conflicted with their business model. To do this, we examined published crowding standards before the COVID-19 pandemic for a representative sample of 200 transit systems, including whether they started or changed their published standards during the pandemic, as well as the reasons whether agencies publicize such standards at all. We present both descriptive statistics and regression model results to shed light on the factors associated with agency crowding standards. We find that 56% of the agencies surveyed published crowding standards before the pandemic, while only 46% published COVID-19-specific crowding standards. Regression analyses suggest that larger agencies were more likely to publish crowding standards before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely because they are more apt to experience crowding. Pandemic-specific crowding standards, by contrast, were associated with a more complex set of factors. We conclude that the relative lack of pandemic standards reflects the uncertainty and fluidity of the public health crisis, inconsistent and at times conflicting with the guidance from public health officials, and, in the U.S., a lack national or transit industry consensus on appropriate crowding standards during the first year of the pandemic.</p>","PeriodicalId":46539,"journal":{"name":"Public Transport","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9762872/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Public Transport","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-022-00311-6","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/12/19 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"TRANSPORTATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected public transit systems around the globe. Because transit systems typically move many people closely together on buses and trains, public health guidance demanded that riders should keep a distance of about two meters to others changed the definition of "crowding" on transit in 2020. Accordingly, this research examines how U.S. public transit agencies responded to public health guidance that directly conflicted with their business model. To do this, we examined published crowding standards before the COVID-19 pandemic for a representative sample of 200 transit systems, including whether they started or changed their published standards during the pandemic, as well as the reasons whether agencies publicize such standards at all. We present both descriptive statistics and regression model results to shed light on the factors associated with agency crowding standards. We find that 56% of the agencies surveyed published crowding standards before the pandemic, while only 46% published COVID-19-specific crowding standards. Regression analyses suggest that larger agencies were more likely to publish crowding standards before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, likely because they are more apt to experience crowding. Pandemic-specific crowding standards, by contrast, were associated with a more complex set of factors. We conclude that the relative lack of pandemic standards reflects the uncertainty and fluidity of the public health crisis, inconsistent and at times conflicting with the guidance from public health officials, and, in the U.S., a lack national or transit industry consensus on appropriate crowding standards during the first year of the pandemic.
期刊介绍:
The scope and purpose of the journal includes, but is not limited to, any type of research in the area of Public Transport: Planning and Operations. As its core it serves the primary mission of advancing the state of the art and the state of the practice in computer-aided systems and scheduling in public transport. The journal considers any type of subjects in this area especially with a focus to planning and scheduling, the common ground is the use of computer-aided methods and operations research techniques to improve information management, network and route planning, vehicle and crew scheduling and rostering, vehicle monitoring and management, and practical experience with scheduling and public transport planning methods. Besides theoretical papers, the journal also publishes case studies and applications. Public Transport addresses transport operators, consulting firms and academic institutions involved in development, utilization or research of computer-aided planning and scheduling in public transport.Officially cited as: Public Transp