On October 23, 2020, the UT-ITE seminar featured two University of Toronto PhD students working on “Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Travel Behaviour and Demand in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA)” under the supervision of Professor Khandker Nurul Habib.
For the first presentation Sk. Md. Mashrur delivered “Assessment and Measurements of the Factors Influencing the Choice of Using Transit during the COVID-19 Recovery Period and Post COVID-19 Era.”
Toronto has the highest rapid transit ridership per capita among the major Canada cities, but the TTC had a 85% drop in ridership under the pandemic. Investigating whether COVID-19 could end public transit, Mashrur conducted a State Preference Experiment on Travel mode and Transit choice behaviour (SPETT) survey on July 2020, reporting the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) residents’ transit usage, with the goals of understanding the impact of COVID-19 on transit mode choices, and reviewing the effectiveness of transit policies for attracting users to use transit again.
From this study, Mashrur reports that most people with access to a private vehicle switched to a private vehicle, while people with no access switched to active transport (walking/cycling), with some ride-hailing. It appeared that those with access to a car reduced their use of public transit, while those with no access to a car reduced their use of transit for other trips and used more active transport. Mashrur also saw that as age, household income, and access to mobility tools like private vehicles increased, public transit usage decreased. From the survey, the major reasons for the shift from public transport were travelling less overall, avoiding crowded public areas, and concern for health; the least likely reason was that public transit had become unreliable. For willingness to return to public transit, survey participants strongly preferred mandatory face covering and most strongly agreed that they would feel safe riding public transit after COVID-19 is no longer a public health threat.
Through Stated Preference experiments in which participants choose decisions in hypothetical scenarios, Mashrur aimed to identify key attributes of transit rider’s travel decisions. His preliminary analysis used Binary Logit Models to find how likely and soon someone would choose to use public transit during different stages of pandemic recovery. The model showed that the number of daily new cases and vaccine availability are major factors in determining if someone would return to public transit.
Mashrur ended with several key statistics for policy makers and is hopeful for public transit:
- 82% have positive attitude towards transit safety policies in response to COVID-19 pandemic;
- 56% are willing to use public transit as long as there is no public health threat;
- 18% of respondents are planning to purchase own private vehicle;
- 81% agreed to return to public transit in future.
Sk. Md. Mashrur is a PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto. He earned his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. His research interest is transit demand modelling, and he is currently working on integrated activity-based demand and dynamic transit assignment framework for his PhD under the supervision of Professor Khandker Nurul Habib.
Patrick Loa next presented “A Survey-based Study into the Impacts of COVID-19 on the Use of Ride-sourcing Sources in the GTA.”
Ride-sourcing has transformed urban mobility, affecting demand for existing modes, increasing travel volume from people making previously impossible trips, and influencing activity schedules. COVID-19 further impacted travel behaviour as people preferred private vehicles and active modes of transport like biking and walking over public transit and ride-sourcing.
To understand the impact, both short-term and long-term, and examine the influence of attitudes on use of ride-sourcing, Loa conducted the Study into the use of Shared Travel Modes (SiSTM) survey in the GTA in July 2020. The data collected included information about socio-economic, household, pandemic-related, travel behaviour, ride-sourcing use, attitudes and perceptions, and Stated choice experiments before and after the pandemic. This study clarified levels of ride-share use services, with exclusive ride-sourcing meaning that customers were not matched with other users, and shared ride-sourcing meaning that customers were offered a discount for sharing their ride with other strangers.
In looking at exclusive ride-sourcing, many people just did not use ride-sourcing, but about half did not change their frequency use. The people who increased usage cited that they were unable or unwilling to use public transit, believed public transit was unreliable, or wanted to avoid crowded areas. In contrast, the people who decreased usage said that they traveled less overall, were concerned for health reasons, were concerned about the cleanliness of vehicles, or had used another mode of transit.
However, 37% of people were more willing to use ride-sourcing during the economy reopening and recovery period, with 79.5% wanting health and safety measures to be continued after COVID-19. This raised questions about the long-term impacts on standards of safety and cleanliness, such as drivers and passengers needing masks, hand sanitizer availability, and vehicle disinfection. When survey-takers were asked if they would use ride-sourcing after the pandemic, most said yes, but not for shared ride-sourcing.
To quantify people’s willingness to use ride-sourcing sooner or later in stages of recovery, Loa used Ordered Logit Models: one for exclusive and the other for shared ride-sourcing. From this, Loa uncovered latent attitudinal factors such as perception of increased risk associated with traveling, willingness to travel during pandemic, and impact of the pandemic on travel preferences. People who would sooner use ride-sourcing had factors, such as full-time employment and lower income, which may affect mobility options or perception of risk, while people reluctant to use ride-sourcing showed higher education, which could indicate jobs that work from home.
Attitude and perceptions of risk influence ride-sourcing use, and ride-sourcing demand is unlikely to rebound until post-COVID-19. The pandemic may also have long-term impact on viewers towards shared surfaces and spaces, drawing concerns about public transit service.
Patrick Loa is a PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor Khandker Nurul Habib. His research primarily focuses on travel demand modelling and the study of the impacts of emerging modes of mobility. Patrick obtained both his MASc and BASc at the University of Toronto.