Examining the Effects of COVID-19 on the Usage of Public Transportation (Case Study: Tehran)

Abstract

With the spread of COVID-19 in the world, various measures were applied to reduce the number of fatalities. Reducing daily travel and avoiding crowded places were two important advices to limit the spread which decreased transit use. By shifting some work trips from transit and encouraging residents to use other modes, it is feared that the process of returning passengers to the transit will be slow. In the long term, this backwardness reduces investment in public transportation and share of this system from urban mobility. Ticket transaction information shows that a significant share of the former demand for transit has not returned to it even with decrease in number of infections. This study explores the shift in people's work travel habits following the epidemy of COVID-19 using an online questionnaire. Examining the results of a sample size of 1050 reveals that the proportion of business trips made by public transportation has been reduced to less than half. This decrease is almost the same between men and women and among different categories of education, but it is various in different age groups.

Keywords

• covid-19
• work trips
• mode change
• public transportation