Public transport trends in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic: An investigation of the influence of bio-security concerns on trip behaviour

Abstract

This paper draws on findings from an Australia-wide survey with data collected in three waves throughout 2020 to explore the impact of COVID-19 on public transport trends in metropolitan areas of Australia. Following consideration of the public transport sector response to the pandemic and the emerging literature context, we explore three principal questions: (i) How has weekly travel composition changed across the waves? (ii) How has level of concern with using public transport changed over the course of the pandemic given new bio-security concerns? and (iii) How has attitudes to risk been associated with the changes in PT use? A key finding is that concerns over bio-security issues around public transport are enduring, that concern about hygiene is significantly negatively related to public transport use and that those with higher concern about the hygiene of public transport also held higher concern about COVID-19 at work. Even as COVID-19 restrictions are eased, both concern about crowds and hygiene have a significant and negative correlation with public transport use. Concluding remarks are offered on what might need to happen for public transport patronage to start returning.

Implications of COVID-19 for future travel behaviour in the rural periphery

“…It is relevant to note that much of the reported impact of COVID-19 on travel behaviour focuses on urban areas (see for example [ 11 – 13 ] and there is relatively little documented experience of how rural travel behaviour has been impacted. Several country-level studies have been conducted, including for Germany [ 14 ], Poland [ 15 ], Sweden [ 16 ] and Australia [ 17 , 18 ], although the focus is predominantly urban/metropolitan. This pattern was confirmed by the ITF Working Group survey on rural mobility (referred to in Sect.…”

Advanced modelling of commuter choice model and work from home during COVID-19 restrictions in Australia

“…( Beck et al, 2021 ) use data collected across three waves in Australia throughout 2020 to study the impacts of COVID-19 on the number of trips by public transport. They used a zero inflated Poisson regression model to explain the number of trips by public transport by different socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes towards the use of public transport.…”

What drives the changes in public transport use in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic? Highlights from Lyon metropolitan area

“…Users have implemented PT avoidance strategies owing to fear of infection (Basu & Ferreira, 2021 ; Beck, Hensher, & Nelson, 2021 ; Eisenmann, Nobis, Kolarova, Lenz, & Winkler, 2021 ; Schaefer, Tuitjer, & Levin‐Keitel, 2021 ). According to an online survey conducted in Hungary, Japan, Germany, Bulgaria and Austria, between 70% and 80% of the public transport users who have abandoned it say that this is due to PT avoidance (Shibayama, Sandholzer, Laa, & Brezina, 2021 ).…”