Mode shifts from public transport to bike-sharing in the era of COVID-19: Riding back to normality

Abstract

The pandemic led to the decrease of public transport use, which many passengers believed to have shifted from public transport to bike-sharing. We propose a novel methodology to quantify this shift and shed light on the causal factors of new preferences as well as the likelihood of their continuation. A first short-term intramodal analysis reveals important correlations between trip volumes and durations on the one hand, and COVID-19 policy measures on the other hand. COVID-19 significantly reduced all trips but public transport was hit harder and has not recovered so far. Shared-bike trip durations were extended during pandemic peaks. Then, we perform a second medium-term, disaggregate, and intermodal analysis to identify potential reasons explaining the shift from public transport to cycling. Logit models are specified on empirical ridership data from London and Washington DC. Results indicate that certain pre-covid factors (such as weather and type of day, travel purpose) remain influential under COVID-19. Also, we find facial covering obligation to be a key element in restoring public confidence towards public transport. Simple face covering recommendations seem, instead, to discourage public transport usage and play in favor of cycling.