scholarly journals Facing the future of transit ridership: which riders bought a car; who is planning on riding less?

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Palm ◽  
Jeff Allen ◽  
Yixue Zhang ◽  
Ignacio Tiznado Aitken ◽  
BRICE BATOMEN ◽  
...  

Public transit agencies face a transformed landscape of rider demand and political support as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. We explore people’s motivations for returning to or avoiding public transit a year into the pandemic. We draw on a March 2021 follow up survey of over 1,900 people who rode transit regularly prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and who took part in a prior survey on the topic in May, 2020. We model how transit demand has changed due to the pandemic, and investigate how this relates to changes in automobile ownership and its desirability. We find that pre-COVID frequent transit users between the ages of 18-29, a part of the so-called “Gen Z,” and recent immigrants are more attracted to driving due to the pandemic, with the latter group more likely to have actually purchased a vehicle. Getting COVID-19 or living with someone who did is also a strong and positive predictor of buying a car and anticipating less transit use after the pandemic. Our results suggest that COVID-19 heightened the attractiveness of auto ownership among transit riders likely to eventually purchase cars anyways (immigrants, twentysomethings), at least in the North American context. We also conclude that getting COVID-19 or living with someone who did is a significant and positive predictor of having bought a car. Future research should consider how the experiencing of having COVID-19 has transformed some travelers’ views, values, and behaviour.

Author(s):  
Keji Wei ◽  
Vikrant Vaze ◽  
Alexandre Jacquillat

With the soaring popularity of ride-hailing, the interdependence between transit ridership, ride-hailing ridership, and urban congestion motivates the following question: can public transit and ride-hailing coexist and thrive in a way that enhances the urban transportation ecosystem as a whole? To answer this question, we develop a mathematical and computational framework that optimizes transit schedules while explicitly accounting for their impacts on road congestion and passengers’ mode choice between transit and ride-hailing. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program and solved using a bilevel decomposition algorithm. Based on computational case study experiments in New York City, our optimized transit schedules consistently lead to 0.4%–3% system-wide cost reduction. This amounts to rush-hour savings of millions of dollars per day while simultaneously reducing the costs to passengers and transportation service providers. These benefits are driven by a better alignment of available transportation options with passengers’ preferences—by redistributing public transit resources to where they provide the strongest societal benefits. These results are robust to underlying assumptions about passenger demand, transit level of service, the dynamics of ride-hailing operations, and transit fare structures. Ultimately, by explicitly accounting for ride-hailing competition, passenger preferences, and traffic congestion, transit agencies can develop schedules that lower costs for passengers, operators, and the system as a whole: a rare win–win–win outcome.


2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changshan Wu ◽  
Alan T Murray

Public transit service is a promising travel mode because of its potential to address urban sustainability. However, current ridership of public transit is very low in most urban regions—particularly those in the United States. Low transit ridership can be attributed to many factors, among which poor service quality is key. Transit service quality may potentially be improved by decreasing the number of service stops, but this would be likely to reduce access coverage. Improving transit service quality while maintaining adequate access coverage is a challenge facing public transit agencies. In this paper we propose a multiple-route, maximal covering/shortest-path model to address the trade-off between public transit service quality and access coverage in an established bus-based transit system. The model is applied to routes in Columbus, Ohio. Results show that it is possible to improve transit service quality by eliminating redundant or underutilized service stops.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Tremblay

Uber is a disruptive transportation network company (TNC) that is affecting the way people move in cities. While its effects on the taxi industry are increasingly clear, little research has been conducted to study its effect on public transit ridership. This study uses descriptive statistics to establish demographic and socio-economic profiles of cities that Uber has targeted, and a quasi difference-in-difference analysis to explore Uber's effect on transit ridership levels in order to determine whether the service is acting as a complement or substitute to public transit. The results from this high-level study suggest that Uber my be more of a complement to transit over time, and in large dense regions with highly-educated, affluent, productive labour markets that already have very high transit ridership. Finally, recommendations informed by these findings are offered for transit agencies, policy makers, and municipal governments as they continue to determine how to regulate Uber and similar ride sourcing services


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Erhardt ◽  
Richard Alexander Mucci ◽  
Drew Cooper ◽  
Bhargava Sana ◽  
Mei Chen ◽  
...  

AbstractTransportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have been hypothesized to both complement and compete with public transit. Existing research on the topic is limited by a lack of detailed data on the timing and location of TNC trips. This study overcomes that limitation by using data scraped from the Application Programming Interfaces of two TNCs, combined with Automated Passenger Count data on transit use and other supporting data. Using a panel data model of the change in bus ridership in San Francisco between 2010 and 2015, and confirming the result with a separate time-series model, we find that TNCs are responsible for a net ridership decline of about 10%, offsetting net gains from other factors such as service increases and population growth. We do not find a statistically significant effect on light rail ridership. Cities and transit agencies should recognize the transit-competitive nature of TNCs as they plan, regulate and operate their transportation systems.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Tremblay

Uber is a disruptive transportation network company (TNC) that is affecting the way people move in cities. While its effects on the taxi industry are increasingly clear, little research has been conducted to study its effect on public transit ridership. This study uses descriptive statistics to establish demographic and socio-economic profiles of cities that Uber has targeted, and a quasi difference-in-difference analysis to explore Uber's effect on transit ridership levels in order to determine whether the service is acting as a complement or substitute to public transit. The results from this high-level study suggest that Uber my be more of a complement to transit over time, and in large dense regions with highly-educated, affluent, productive labour markets that already have very high transit ridership. Finally, recommendations informed by these findings are offered for transit agencies, policy makers, and municipal governments as they continue to determine how to regulate Uber and similar ride sourcing services


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Allen ◽  
Steven Farber ◽  
Stephen Greaves ◽  
Geoffrey Clifton ◽  
Hao Wu ◽  
...  

Public transit is immensely important among recent immigrants for enabling daily travel and activity participation. The objectives of this study are to examine whether immigrants settle in areas of high or low transit accessibility and how this affects transit mode share. This is analyzed via a novel comparison of two gateway cities: Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada. We find that in both cities, recent immigrants have greater levels of public transit accessibility to jobs, on average, than the overall population, but the geography of immigrant settlement is more suburbanized and less clustered around commuter rail in Toronto than in Sydney. Using logistic regression models with spatial filters, we find significant positive relationships between immigrant settlement patterns and transit mode share for commuting trips, after controlling for transit accessibility and other socio-economic factors, indicating an increased reliance on public transit by recent immigrants. Importantly, via a sensitivity analysis, we find that these effects are greatest in peripheral suburbs and rural areas, indicating that recent immigrants in these areas have more risks of transport-related social exclusion due to reliance on insufficient transit service.


Author(s):  
Phillip Carleton ◽  
Sylvan Hoover ◽  
Ben Fields ◽  
Matthew Barnes ◽  
J. David Porter

The rapid growth in the availability and utility of vast amounts of digital data is arguably one of the most significant technological developments in recent years. In public transit, many agencies utilize modern technologies to collect large amounts of data, whereas smaller agencies with fewer resources and less expertise still use more traditional, manual data collection methods. Regardless of their technological capabilities, transit agencies recognize that some amount of transit data is useful and required. To the best of our knowledge, no standard data description of detailed fixed-route ridership exists today in the United States, forcing transit agencies to develop their own system of collecting, storing, and analyzing ridership and related data. In response to this need, this research aimed at developing one of the first public transit ridership data standards for fixed-route services and to support and promote its adoption and use. The resulting standard, an extension to the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data standard, is referred to as GTFS-ride. GTFS-ride is easy to understand, able to accommodate the complexities of larger transit agencies, and capable of establishing a strong connection to the state of a transit network as it existed when the ridership data was collected. The first complete draft of GTFS-ride was released on September 6, 2017. This paper explains the structure of the five files that compose GTFS-ride, introduces additional support elements developed to facilitate its promotion and adoption, and documents the lessons learned from pilot implementations of GTFS-ride at three Oregon public transit agencies.


2006 ◽  
Vol 175 (4S) ◽  
pp. 511-512
Author(s):  
David G. McLeod ◽  
Ira Klimberg ◽  
Donald Gleason ◽  
Gerald Chodak ◽  
Thomas Morris ◽  
...  

Crisis ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Chen ◽  
Brian L. Mishara ◽  
Xiao Xian Liu

Background: In China, where follow-up with hospitalized attempters is generally lacking, there is a great need for inexpensive and effective means of maintaining contact and decreasing recidivism. Aims: Our objective was to test whether mobile telephone message contacts after discharge would be feasible and acceptable to suicide attempters in China. Methods: Fifteen participants were recruited from suicide attempters seen in the Emergency Department in Wuhan, China, to participate in a pilot study to receive mobile telephone messages after discharge. All participants have access to a mobile telephone, and there is no charge for the user to receive text messages. Results: Most participants (12) considered the text message contacts an acceptable and useful form of help and would like to continue to receive them for a longer period of time. Conclusions: This suggests that, as a low-cost and quick method of intervention in areas where more intensive follow-up is not practical or available, telephone messages contacts are accessible, feasible, and acceptable to suicide attempters. We hope that this will inspire future research on regular and long-term message interventions to prevent recidivism in suicide attempters.


1996 ◽  
Vol 76 (06) ◽  
pp. 0887-0892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Ricotta ◽  
Alfonso lorio ◽  
Pasquale Parise ◽  
Giuseppe G Nenci ◽  
Giancarlo Agnelli

SummaryA high incidence of post-discharge venous thromboembolism in orthopaedic surgery patients has been recently reported drawing further attention to the unresolved issue of the optimal duration of the pharmacological prophylaxis. We performed an overview analysis in order to evaluate the incidence of late occurring clinically overt venous thromboembolism in major orthopaedic surgery patients discharged from the hospital with a negative venography and without further pharmacological prophylaxis. We selected the studies published from January 1974 to December 1995 on the prophylaxis of venous thromboembolism after major orthopaedic surgery fulfilling the following criteria: 1) adoption of pharmacological prophylaxis, 2) performing of a bilateral venography before discharge, 3) interruption of pharmacological prophylaxis at discharge in patients with negative venography, and 4) post-discharge follow-up of the patients for at least four weeks. Out of 31 identified studies, 13 fulfilled the overview criteria. The total number of evaluated patients was 4120. An adequate venography was obtained in 3469 patients (84.1%). In the 2361 patients with negative venography (68.1%), 30 episodes of symptomatic venous thromboembolism after hospital discharge were reported with a resulting cumulative incidence of 1.27% (95% C.I. 0.82-1.72) and a weighted mean incidence of 1.52% (95% C.I. 1.05-1.95). Six cases of pulmonary embolism were reported. Our overview showed a low incidence of clinically overt venous thromboembolism at follow-up in major orthopaedic surgery patients discharged with negative venography. Extending pharmacological prophylaxis in these patients does not appear to be justified. Venous thrombi leading to hospital re-admission are likely to be present but asymptomatic at the time of discharge. Future research should be directed toward improving the accuracy of non invasive diagnostic methods in order to replace venography in the screening of asymptomatic post-operative deep vein thrombosis.


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