Travel Survey Recruitment Through Facebook and Transit app: Lessons from COVID-19

Abstract

We compare the results of a survey of transit riders during COVID-19 against a regional household travel survey. The Facebook sample over-represents women and car-less respondents compared to the household survey. We also compare the demographics of a subset of Facebook survey respondents, those still riding transit during COVID-19, against a similar survey conducted by Transit app of its users. The picture of post-COVID transit riders is older and of higher incomes in the Facebook sample compared to the Transit app sample. Finally, we replicate a model of vehicle ownership produced with the household travel survey using the Facebook survey.

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

“…This makes any effort on our part to generalize results to the broader population speculative, and so our analytical strategy consciously avoids such claims and instead relies on differences between groups within our sample to offer new insights. However, our data can reproduce known relationships between demographic, built form, and travel behaviour variables (8,9), lending confidence in the data to offer useful insights. Additionally, we note that our study does not consider uptake in active travel and telecommuting, although the unavailability of the latter for respondents is captured to some extent in our variable on essential workers.…”

“…Participation was restricted to adults who took transit more than once a week in Toronto or Vancouver pre-pandemic, to establish a sample of regular transit riders. Details on the limitations and implications of initial data collection are available in prior publications and their technical appendices (8,9).…”

“…We report on a follow up survey of over 1,900 people who rode transit regularly prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. The original survey took place in May 2020 (7)(8)(9), and the follow up occurred in March 2021. We asked these riders five main questions: 1) whether they returned to transit in the intervening period; 2) how often they ride transit now; 3) how the pandemic has changed their views on vehicle ownership; 4) whether they bought a car; 5) and whether they anticipate riding public transit less after the pandemic compared to before.…”

“…We add to a rapidly growing literature on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on public transportation (10)(11)(12). First, it allows us to follow up on a survey conducted in the early stage of the pandemic and observe how travel behaviors and attitudes have changed over a ten month period (7)(8)(9)13). Second, it allows us to compare differences between socio-demographic groups on how they have continued to adapt to the crisis, and how they envision traveling in a postpandemic future.…”

Covid-19 Pandemic Impacts on Essential Transit Riders: Findings from a U.S. Survey

“…Additional detail about the survey methods and respondent characteristics is included in the supplementary material. Because we are estimating statistical models and comparing results between groups in our sample rather than estimating population characteristics, the sampling strategy is appropriate (Zhang et al, 2020).…”