Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Transportation Research Part A

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tra

The impact of COVID-19 on route-level changes in transit demand

an analysis of five transit agencies in Florida, USA
Sagar Patni a, Sivaramakrishnan Srinivasan a, *, Juan Suarez b
a
Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States
b
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study examined the impacts of COVID-19 on changes in route-level transit demand across
COVID-19 five transit agencies in the state of Florida. Data for 120 routes from five transit agencies were
Transit ridership used to develop two-stage instrumental variable models. Data from January of 2019 to December
Travel demand
of 2020 were used in the analysis. Routes that served a greater mix of land-uses experienced a
Regression model
Land-use
smaller decline in ridership. The impacts of several other land-use variables were, however, not
consistent across the five transit agencies. Fare suspension was estimated to have a positive
impact on ridership. In contrast, occupancy reduction measures (to promote social distancing
within the transit vehicle) had a very strong negative impact on demand. The magnitude of the
negative impact of occupancy reduction was larger than the positive impacts of fare suspension.
Extending this analysis to a larger set of routes across more agencies would be useful in enhancing
the robustness of the findings from our models. Extending our analysis to include data from 2021
and later to capture the recovery phase is also an important direction for future work.

1. Background and objectives

During the last decade, the decline in public transit ridership was a concern across the United States. In the period following the
2008 recession, transit ridership had reached 10.8 billion trips annually; however, since 2014, ridership measured both in total counts
and on a per-capita basis has declined (Buchanan and Higashide, 2019; Watkins et al., 2019). Numerous factors such as increase in
teleworking, availability of competing alternatives for shared transportation, and policy/funding priorities have all been ascribed as
reasons for this decline. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this declining trend.
Most transit agencies were faced with operational and financial issues because of the pandemic. A survey of 174 transit agencies
conducted by the American Public Transportation Association (American Public Transportation Association, 2020) in March 2020
revealed that 76 % of the agencies witnessed a decline in ridership because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies like Google and
Apple have released data to help understand mobility trends (Google, 2020; Maps, 2020). An analysis of the mobility data from Google
reveals that workplaces and transit stations were the least accessed locations since the onset of the pandemic. For instance; in the
District of Columbia; mobility around transit stops went down to about 66 % below the baseline levels. Similar trends were found in
New York County, which encompasses all of Manhattan. Multnomah County, where Portland, Oregon is located, mobility around
transit stops reduced to 42 % below the baseline (Google, 2020). These data reflect how mobility patterns dropped drastically due to
the lockdowns and other measures brought into place to fight the pandemic. As lockdowns began to loosen; travel demand began to

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: sagar.patni@ufl.edu (S. Patni), siva@ce.ufl.edu (S. Srinivasan), juansuarez@ufl.edu (J. Suarez).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2022.11.014

Available online 28 November 2022

0965-8564/© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

recover. However, the Google dataset showed that the rate of recovery for the use of public transit was much less than the recovery
rates for other modes (Maps, 2020).
Teleworking or Telecommuting has been a slowly growing trend in the United States. Based on the American Community Survey,
Mokhtarian (Mokhtarian, 2020) reported a modest increase in telecommuting from 3.5 % in 1980 to 5.3 % in 2018. The negative
impact of telecommuting on transit ridership has also been studied in the literature. For example; Miller et al. (Miller, 2018) reported
that with every 10 % increase in the telecommuting population; there was a 1.27 % decline in transit ridership in Canada. During the
global pandemic, a vast number of jobs were at once propelled into teleworking. A Gallup poll conducted in between March and April
2020 indicated that 31 % to 62 % of US employees were working from home after the pandemic (Gallup, 2020). This represents a
massive change in the adoption trends of telecommuting when compared to the modest increases observed over the previous two-to-
three decades. Furthermore; the same poll asked workers what they would choose in terms of working arrangements after restrictions
were lifted. About 59 % of the teleworkers said that they would stay at home as much as possible (Gallup, 2020). This suggests that;
even beyond the pandemic period, the demand for transit will presumably remain low.
Papandreou (Papandreou, 2020) points to an increase in e-commerce and delivery services since the pandemic. This increase in
delivery services has resulted in shopping trips being taken off the public transportation system. It is possible that many of the
traditional shopping trips will be replaced by delivery services for the duration of the pandemic period and possibly beyond as many
essential purchases can be made online.
The impact of the pandemic on public transportation is not only related to ridership but also to finance. To protect bus drivers from
the possibility of infection, many transit agencies have required passengers to board from the rear door and have suspended fare
payments, since the fare box is usually located next to the driver. Thus, transit agencies are not only facing reductions in ridership but
also a practical elimination of revenues. As an example, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) was losing about $55 million a
day (Papandreou, 2020) in fare revenue. The loss of fare revenues adds to the negative financial impacts of reduced economic activity
and associated tax collections which fund transit systems via subsidies (Papandreou, 2020). The US CARES Act has already given $25
Billion, in relief for public transit agencies which are on the brink of bankruptcy (Welle and Safer, 2020 Apr 23).
Yet, it is essential that transit systems remain in service considering that many of the people who are currently using it amid the
pandemic are essential workers and/or those who are captive to this mode for their general travel. A survey of 25,000 people by the
Transit App presents statistics about 23 % of users from the normal period who continued using transit during the pandemic period
(Transit App, 2020). In general, 56 % of those continued transit users are females, up from 50 % in the pre-pandemic period. Further,
among the continued riders, only 9 % owned a car and 6 % had access to a car, implying that 85 % of the continued riders may have
little or no practical alternative to public transit for most of their transportation needs. Moreover, about 30 % of those who access work
using public transit were either in the food industry or in healthcare support.
A first step towards developing policies for restoring public transportation ridership is to understand systematic patterns in demand
changes. Thus motivated, the objective of this study is to examine the impacts of COVID-19 on route-level transit demand changes
across five transit agencies in the state of Florida. In particular, the study seeks to examine how these impacts vary based on the land-
use and socioeconomic configuration along the route, and in relationship to operational strategies such as suspension of fares and
occupancy limits on buses to promote social distancing. Data from over one hundred routes from five transit agencies in the state of
Florida are used to develop the models.
The rest of this manuscript is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a brief review of the relevant literature. Section 3 provides an
overview of the data. Section 4 describes the modeling methodology employed. Section 5 presents a detailed discussion of the
empirical model results. Section 6 presents an overall summary of the work and identifies the major conclusions.

2. Literature review

The review of relevant literature is organized into two sub-sections. Recent studies on the impacts of COVID-19 on the trans­
portation system are discussed in Section 2.1. Section 2.2 presents an overview of studies that have modelled route-level transit
ridership (for bus-based systems) but these were completed prior to the pandemic.

2.1. COVID-19 and public transportation

Most of the transportation-related research literature that has emerged since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has focused
on three major themes as indicated by Almlof et al. (Almlof et al., 2021). These areas are 1) Quantifying the size of the decline in travel,
2) Measuring or understanding the spread of the virus through transportation and 3) Effectiveness of restrictions on mobility against
virus spread.
While various cities around the world were evaluated for change in mobility patterns, the common factor has been a decrease in the
use of transportation across the board. Zhang et al. (Zhang et al., 2021) found that more than 80 % of students had reduced travel, and
close to 40 % of all adults had reduced travel on Hong Kong’s public transit system. Parr et al. (Parr et al., 2020) suggested that after
schools got closed, a significant drop in traffic was perceived in the state of Florida. Liao et al. (Liao et al., 2021) found that parents with
larger household were most likely to stay at home, presumably to take care of more children after schools were closed. Orro et al. (Orro
et al., 2020) mentioned that negative impact of pandemic has been more significant on public transportation than it has been for the
general vehicular traffic. In the so called ‘New Normal’, the recovery rate for public transit was found to be lower than that of general
traffic and shared bike system based on data from the city of A Coruña in Spain. Jenelius et al. (Jenelius and Cebecauer, 2020) assessed
the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on transit ridership for spring 2020 across three regions of Sweden namely: Stockholm, Västra

2
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

Götaland and Skåne. Their analysis was based on validation & sales of tickets and passenger count data. Even though supply remained
nearly unchanged, percentage decline in public transport usage was 40–60 % with respect to previous years across the regions and
these reductions were much higher than corresponding estimates for other modes. Reduction in ridership was primarily attributed to
the reduction in number of active riders and their changed priority from monthly pass to single trip tickets. Wang et al. (Wang et al.,
2021) asserted that transit ridership in New York decreased to nearly 73 % from what it used to be prior to pandemic whereas car trips
increased to 143 %. Their research also suggested that a large amount of new car trips is from essential workers who were now
switching from using public transit to using cars in a low traffic environment.
Social distancing was a significant strategy to fight against COVID-19 spread around the world. In this context, the usage of public
transit may be perceived negatively as travelling in a crowded space with low ventilation could represent favorable conditions for the
virus to spread. Jia et al. (Jia et al., 2021) addressed concerns related to this by using a model that identified stations with low risk of
infection spread in Beijing. Kavanagh et al. (Kavanagh et al., 2020) report that social distancing behavior was correlated with so­
cioeconomic status and political affiliation of people, and this indicates both the ability and the choice of people to practice social
distancing. A study by Wellenius et al. (Wellenius et al., 2021) tried to quantify effectiveness of mobility restrictions against the virus
spread in the United States. The research highlighted that with the state-level emergency declarations, there was 9.9 % reduction in the

Table 1
Literature on Route-Level Transit Ridership Models.
Author (s) Case Study Year (s) Dependent Explanatory Variables Modeling
Area covered by the Variable Approach
Internal External
ridership data

Currie & Delbosc ( Australia 2008 Boardings per Weekday frequency, Residential Density, employment Regression
Currie and route kilometers, stop spacing, vehicle density, car ownership analysis
Delbosc, Boardings per trips per annum,
2011) vehicle kilometer speed
Park (Park, 2011) Austin 2008 Weekday Revenue hours, Percentage of White residents, Regression
(Texas) boardings headway percentage households with analysis
annual income < $25 K, multi-
family acreage, park & ride
Peterson ( Fargo- 2010 Weekly number of Waiting time Median household income, no Regression
Peterson, Moorhead passengers vehicle households, percentage of analysis
2011) (North boardings females, percentage of non-whites,
Dakota) percent of population with age 17
& younger, percent of total
population age 65 & older,
number of housing units per
residential acre, proportion of
eight land-use types within route
area
Tang & Thakuriah Chicago 2002–2010 Monthly average Bus fare, Frequency Bus Tracker (real time bus Linear mixed
(Tang and (Illinois) weekday information system), gas price, effect model
Thakuriah, boardings unemployment rate, population,
2012) weather elements (snow,
precipitation etc.)

Stopher (Stopher, Dallas 1988 Boardings and Total Buses per hour, Number of people in the tract, Regression
1992) (Texas) alightings revenue miles of total retail employment, number analysis
services of households, low-income
households
Peng et al. (36) Portland 1990 Boardings Total seat supply Population, employment density, Regression
(Oregon) No. of households with income analysis
less than $25 K, number of parking
spaces
Pendyala and Volusia 1998 Daily ridership Frequency Population, employment density, Regression
Ubaka ( County No. of households with income Analysis
Pendyala and (Florida) less than $25 K, number of parking
Ubaka, 2000) spaces
Campbell & New York 2012–2014 Average daily bus Revenue Miles Miles of bike lanes within quarter Difference-in-
Brakewood ( City ridership mile of bus route, bike share area differences
Campbell and regression,
Brakewood, Placebo analysis
2017)
Kyte et al. (Kyte Portland 1971–1982 Quarterly Level of service, fare Gasoline price, employment Elasticity
et al., 1988) (Oregon) ridership analysis
Diab et al. (Diab Montreal 2012–2017 Annual ridership Daily weekday trips, Median household income, access Random-
et al., 2020) (Canada) weekend trips, route to jobs (45 min) coefficients
average speed, model
average weekday
travel time

3
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

time people spent away from their homes. An additional 24.5 % reduction in mobility was witnessed after one or more social distancing
policies became effective. Overall, 10 % reduction in mobility was correlated with a 17.5 % reduction in the number of new COVID-19
cases two weeks later in the United States. People’s ability to maintain social distancing varied by the socioeconomic attributes (Jay
et al., 2020). The risk of transmission of virus was high in low-income neighborhoods where people are more likely to work outside
home (by necessity).
Kar et al. (Kar et al., 2021) found that people from the lower economic strata of the society continued accessing public transit the
most during the pandemic. Other studies in the literature also asserted a similar idea. Liu et al. (Liu et al., 2020) used transit demand
data from transit navigation app to model the decline in daily transit demand for 113 public transit systems across the United States.
The study highlighted that African Americans, and the elderly are the ones who continued using transit. Brough et al. (Brough et al.,
2021) reported that while full lockdown restricted commute for all people, the partial lockdown allowed low-income workers to travel,
which created socioeconomic gaps in travel behavior (Brough et al., 2021). Wilbur et al. (Wilbur et al., 2020) found a 77 % decline in
transit ridership in high income areas while it was 58 % in low-income areas in Nashville. Ahangari et al. (Ahangari et al., 2020)
examined ten cities across the United States to analyze the effect of the pandemic on transit. Poverty rate and proportion of population
with no vehicle were found to be positively correlated with ridership.
To address a newfound car dependency trend among essential workers, Wang et al. (Wang et al., 2021) suggested that New York
City should focus on transportation for retail, trades and arts that have most employed working in-person who could stop using transit
even after the pandemic. Hu and Chen (Hu and Chen, 2020) further explained that adopting emerging modes of mobility such as
microtransit and paratransit may be alternatives to avoid overcrowding on public transit. However, the current challenges of transit in
relation to COVID-19 are also seen as temporary; a rebounding transit usage trends have been the case during multiple other disasters
and disruptions throughout the world at different times. In fact, the usage of transit is found to be particularly important in the
aftermath of the pandemic for health reasons. Gkiotsalitis and Cats (Gkiotsalitis and Cats, 2021) suggest learning to restore transit
operations to an adequate level. This restoration is cited as important for health reasons by De Vos (De Vos, 2020) as those with limited
transit access, but with high dependence, suffer most since they are unable to access social and recreational activities. This challenge
already existed before the pandemic but has been exacerbated by the current circumstances. Some of the restrictions enacted by
agencies to restrict mobility include a reduction in vehicle capacity, seating using the 6-foot social distancing rule and a reduction in
transit frequency. However, De Vos highly suggests that a reduction in frequency should not be the way out; although demand may be
lower, the reduction of frequency would only bunch essential trip makers together in lesser number of buses causing further mobility
issues (De Vos, 2020).
The above discussions suggest a strong interest in understanding the impacts of the pandemic on transit. Researchers have used
ridership data from a variety of sources such as ticket sales, apps, and surveys. Most of these analyses are focused on the demand for an
entire agency/city. To our knowledge there are no studies that have addressed ridership at the route-level to examine how the
characteristics of the route and operational policies affect transit demand during the pandemic.

2.2. Route-level transit ridership models

Table 1 summarizes ten route-level ridership modeling studies (Currie and Delbosc, 2011; Park, 2011; Peterson, 2011; Tang and
Thakuriah, 2012; Stopher, 1992; Peng et al., 1997; Pendyala and Ubaka, 2000; Campbell and Brakewood, 2017; Kyte et al., 1988; Diab
et al., 2020) by providing the dependent variables and commonly used explanatory variables in each one of them. It is also evident
from Table 1 that regression analysis has been the most common modeling approach adopted in the past studies. These studies were
conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the studies mentioned in Table 1 are not directly applicable in the current context
of examining the effects of COVID-19, inferences can be drawn from these past studies on the construction of route-level land-use and
socioeconomic explanatory variables. It is useful to acknowledge that there is even a larger body of work on stop-level transit ridership
models, but those are not discussed here.
Different measures of route-level transit demand have been analyzed in the past. The time frame for the data ranges from daily to
annual. Most of the studies have modeled boardings (Currie and Delbosc, 2011; Park, 2011; Peterson, 2011; Tang and Thakuriah,
2012; Peng et al., 1997). Currie and Delbosc (Currie and Delbosc, 2011) developed models by normalizing passenger boardings with
‘route kilometer’ and ‘vehicle kilometer’ as dependent variables. Stopher (Stopher, 1992) proposed separate models for route-level
boardings and alightings.
Researchers in the past have examined route-level transit ridership with a variety of explanatory variables. Amongst internal
variables (variables that are within the control of transit agencies), studies have explored marginal effect of frequency, revenue miles,
waiting time, ticket fare, stop spacing, vehicle speed, and other such variables, on ridership. Positive correlation of supply variables
like frequency (Currie and Delbosc, 2011; Tang and Thakuriah, 2012), seat supply (Peng et al., 1997), vehicle revenue hours (Park,
2011) and vehicle revenue miles (Campbell and Brakewood, 2017) is evident from most of the past studies. On the other hand, waiting
time and ticket fare have a negative correlation with ridership (Peterson, 2011; Kyte et al., 1988). Currie and Delbosc (Currie and
Delbosc, 2011) found that routes with shorter stop spacing have higher ridership. One of the reasons could be that locations with
higher population or employment density have shorter stop spacing. Park (Park, 2011) found headway to be negatively correlated in
the semi-log model. Currie & Delbosc (Currie and Delbosc, 2011) and Diab et al. (Diab et al., 2020) found positive correlation of route
speed on ridership.
The effect of several external variables (variables that cannot be controlled by transit agencies) such as of land-use (density and
diversity), socioeconomics, gas prices, weather, emerging modes, and technologies have been assessed in the past. For instance,
Peterson (Peterson, 2011) found positive correlation of residential density, walkability, and land-use mix with ridership. In other

4
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

studies, employment density was found to affect ridership positively (Currie and Delbosc, 2011; Peng et al., 1997; Pendyala and Ubaka,
2000). The age and income level of riders also bear significant effect on transit ridership. For instance, Peterson (Peterson, 2011) found
a negative correlation of youth and elderly populations on ridership. Park (Park, 2011) found a positive impact of low-income
households on ridership; low-income households were found to have similar impacts in Peng et al. (Peng et al., 1997) and Pen­
dyala & Ubaka (Pendyala and Ubaka, 2000).
Gasoline price affects transit ridership positively (Kyte et al., 1988); any increase in gas prices tends to shift people towards transit.
Tang and Thakuriah (Tang and Thakuriah, 2012) found that adverse weather conditions (temperature and precipitation) affected
transit ridership negatively in the city of Chicago. Emerging technologies and transportation modes have significant impacts on fixed-
route transit patronage. Campbell & Brakewood (Campbell and Brakewood, 2017) argued that with the deployment of the bike sharing
system in the city of New York, there was a significant decrease in bus ridership. Tang & Thakuriah (Tang and Thakuriah, 2012)
assessed the effect of real-time information on bus ridership in Chicago. Model results showed that bus ridership increased after bus
trackers were deployed.

3. Data

3.1. Overview of study areas and transit systems

This study examines the route-level performance (demand) of five transit agencies in the state of Florida amid the pandemic. These
agencies serve the City of Gainesville, City of Jacksonville, Palm Beach County, Manatee County and Lee County. Fig. 1 presents GIS
maps of these locations and the corresponding transit route networks. GIS shape files of the city and county limits were obtained from
the Florida Geo Database Library (FGDL) and the GIS layer of transit routes were obtained directly from the respective transit agencies.
Table 2 presents a quantitative comparison of the five transit agencies and the land-uses characteristics of the respective city/
county. The transit service characteristics of all the agencies for the year 2019 (pre-pandemic) were obtained from the National Transit
Database (Federal Transit administration, 2020). The statistics indicate large variance in the overall size of the five different systems
measured in terms of attributes such as area served, population served, number of annual trips, and vehicle revenue hours. While
Jacksonville and Palm Beach represent very large total demand in the context of highly urban settings, Lee County and Manatee County
represent systems with lower levels of demand. City of Gainesville, which is the home to the University of Florida, represents a location
with a very high transit demand as transit is the most popular mode of travel amongst university students.
The bottom portion of Table 2 describes the characteristics of the land-use of five case study areas. Parcel-level land-use databases
were obtained from the FGDL. Land-use can be classified into seven categories: industrial, institutional, entertainment, public/semi-
public, residential, office/retail, and other. The “other” category includes every land-use that is not included in first six categories such
as vacant land parcels, water bodies, agriculture etc. The percentages sum to 100 % (subject to rounding errors) across the seven land-
use categories for each location. As would be expected, Gainesville has the highest proportion of institutional land-use among all the

Fig. 1. Study Areas and Transit Routes Mapped on GIS Platform [A: Gainesville, B: Jacksonville, C: Palm Beach County, D: Lee County, E:
Manatee County].

5
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

Table 2
Transit Agency Profiles and Location Characteristics.
Case Study Area Gainesville Jacksonville Palm Beach Manatee County Lee County
County

Transit Agency Regional Transit System Jacksonville Transit Palm Tran Manatee County Area Lee Trans
(RTS) Authority (JTA) Transit (MCAT)
Transit Service Characteristics in 2019 (Source: National Transit Database)
Service Area (Sq. Miles) 76 1383 1970 743 814
Service Population 163,990 1,121,744 1,485,941 368,782 735,148
Annual Passenger Miles 26,951,562 66,540,982 66,739,729 7,505,768 20,081,108
Annual Unlinked Trips 9,255,107 11,614,452 10,102,791 1,574,296 3,180,902
Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 4,689,744 13,924,350 17,409,323 2,034,624 4,857,021
Annual Vehicle Revenue Hours 356,342 941,704 1,114,113 148,230 292,210
Vehicles operated in maximum 165 297 402 48 104
service
Vehicles available for 195 361 485 66 138
maximum service
Land-use Characteristics in 2018 (Source: Parcel Level Land-use, FGDL)
% Industrial Land-use 2.90 3.11 0.91 0.93 0.50
% Institutional Land-use 6.19 3.90 0.50 0.53 0.48
% Public/Semi-Public Land-use 22.70 23.23 47.82 14.51 16.87
% Entertainment Land-use 1.09 3.29 1.94 1.29 3.95
% Residential Land-use 28.93 26.24 11.83 17.29 14.29
% Office/Retail Land-use 9.72 3.60 1.18 1.50 1.84
% Other Land-use 28.46 36.65 35.83 63.94 62.07

five locations. Both Gainesville and Jacksonville have a comparable percentage distribution across industrial, public/semi-public,
entertainment, and residential land-uses. Palm Beach has a much higher proportion of entertainment land-use while “other land-
uses” dominate in both Manatee and Lee County.

3.2. Demand and supply patterns

Monthly data on route-level ridership (measure of transit demand) and route-level vehicle revenue hours (measure of transit
supply) were obtained from each of the five transit agencies. Monthly data from January through December for each of the years of
2019 and 2020 were obtained. Agencies maintain route-level ridership data either through Automated Passenger Count (APC)
installed in the transit buses or fare box counts. For example, the transit agencies of Gainesville and Palm Beach County have APC

Gainesville: Demand 2019 2020 Gainesville: Supply 2019 2020

800 300
Vehicle revenue Hour
Monthly Ridership
(in thousands)

600 225
(in hundreds)

400 150
200 75
0 0
January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December
Months Months
Jacksonville: Demand 2019 2020
Jacksonville: Supply 2019 2020
800 600
Vehicle Revenue Hour
Monthly Ridership

600
(in hundereds)
(in thousands)

450
400 300
200
150
0
January February March April May June July August September October November December 0
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Months Months
Palm Beach: Demand 2019 2020
Palm Beach: Supply 2019 2020
Vehicle Revenue Hour

2000
Monthly Ridership

600
(in thousands)

(in hundereds)

1500 450
1000 300
500
150
0
January February March April May June July August September October November December 0
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Months
Months
Manatee County: Demand 2019 2020 Manatee County: Supply 2019 2020
Vehicle Revenue Hour

200
100
(in hundereds)
Monthly Ridership

150
(in thousands)

75
100
50
50
25
0 0
January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December
Months
Months
2019 2020
Lee County: Demand Lee County: Supply 2019 2020
Vehicle Revenue Hour

200 200
Monthly Ridership

(in hundereds)

150
(in thousands)

100 100
50
0
0
January February March April May June July August September October November December
January February March April May June July August September October November December
Months
Months

Fig. 2. System-wide Demand and Supply Trends for the Transit Agencies.

6
 S. Patni et al.
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics of Variables.
Case Study N Statistics Response Explanatory Variables
Area \vskip5
Internal External
\hfill
\hbox
\rot90
{Variable

Demand Supply Length Log_ Log_ Log_ Log_ Log_ Log_ Log_ Entropy Total Black Age_18_29 Age_65_up Vehicle_
Industrial_ Institutional_ Public_ Entertainment_ Residential_ Office_ Other_ Population 0_HH
Acreage Acreage Acreage Acreage Acreage Acreage Acreage

Unit of measurement Ratio; Ratio; Miles Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Ratio, In thousands
Demand in VRH in value
2020/ 2020/ varies
Demand in VRH in from 0 to
2019 2019 1
All* 1440 Min. 0.01 0.15 2.85 − 0.64 1.12 1.93 − 0.78 2.32 1.09 1.84 0.53 2.18 0.01 0.12 0.20 0.05
Max. 2.97 1.96 56.99 2.91 3.10 3.48 2.71 3.70 3.31 3.82 0.94 1350.51 150.27 136.04 555.44 50.24
Average 0.65 0.91 15.77 1.87 2.23 2.58 1.44 3.00 2.62 2.62 0.80 29.95 6.33 5.34 7.81 1.16
Std. Dev. 0.28 0.19 10.39 0.68 0.34 0.25 0.83 0.29 0.36 0.36 0.07 121.77 13.90 12.39 50.31 4.53
7

Gainesville 324 Min. 0.01 0.33 2.85 − 0.30 1.82 1.93 − 0.55 2.32 1.09 1.84 0.66 4.12 0.52 1.10 0.20 0.14
Max. 1.49 1.38 14.37 2.24 2.82 3.02 1.97 3.13 2.86 2.89 0.90 20.01 5.27 14.81 1.89 0.71
Average 0.52 0.92 6.54 1.24 2.36 2.50 0.73 2.73 2.27 2.32 0.82 11.38 2.50 6.65 0.74 0.39
Std. Dev. 0.30 0.17 2.48 0.75 0.34 0.23 0.77 0.23 0.35 0.26 0.05 4.64 1.30 4.20 0.46 0.13
Jacksonville 396 Min. 0.27 0.51 6.47 1.46 1.54 2.14 0.00 2.46 1.84 2.01 0.71 2.65 1.21 0.55 0.23 0.06
Max. 2.97 1.37 56.99 2.90 3.10 3.16 2.34 3.52 3.26 3.12 0.89 41.32 17.01 9.48 4.61 1.85
Average 0.59 0.87 22.25 2.25 2.26 2.54 1.67 3.02 2.70 2.65 0.82 16.23 6.64 3.28 2.18 0.95
Std. Dev. 0.27 0.18 10.60 0.30 0.39 0.22 0.44 0.27 0.33 0.26 0.04 7.93 4.33 1.84 1.02 0.49
Palm Beach 384 Min. 0.13 0.31 3.09 − 0.06 1.45 2.22 1.19 2.55 2.19 2.22 0.62 10.40 0.61 2.10 1.48 0.16
County Max. 1.36 1.70 40.74 2.67 2.75 3.48 2.71 3.70 3.31 3.82 0.91 1350.51 150.27 136.04 555.44 50.24
Average 0.76 0.90 13.11 1.97 2.18 2.68 2.10 3.18 2.74 2.65 0.78 71.91 12.64 9.06 23.01 2.54

Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

Std. Dev. 0.21 0.18 7.70 0.57 0.29 0.28 0.37 0.24 0.28 0.37 0.07 230.59 25.23 23.00 95.83 8.60
Manatee 168 Min. 0.04 0.28 4.28 − 0.64 1.12 2.22 − 0.78 2.67 1.88 1.93 0.53 2.18 0.01 0.12 1.04 0.05
County Max. 1.34 1.96 38.84 2.91 2.50 2.90 2.11 3.29 2.99 3.25 0.88 30.08 6.62 5.06 7.26 1.44
Average 0.84 1.00 16.10 1.86 2.12 2.47 0.88 2.96 2.69 2.63 0.78 15.61 2.58 2.25 3.51 0.58
Std. Dev. 0.23 0.21 7.82 0.84 0.32 0.21 0.82 0.19 0.29 0.33 0.09 7.85 1.74 1.33 1.75 0.40
Lee County 168 Min. 0.08 0.15 9.23 1.35 1.38 2.41 0.00 2.60 2.11 2.41 0.70 8.93 0.35 1.09 1.26 0.20
Max. 1.29 1.18 41.71 2.33 2.56 3.25 2.57 3.37 3.29 3.33 0.94 25.54 6.12 3.69 7.15 1.15
Average 0.63 0.92 24.04 1.94 2.12 2.70 1.33 3.08 2.77 3.03 0.80 16.53 2.35 2.20 4.29 0.58
Std. Dev. 0.23 0.20 10.29 0.28 0.26 0.21 0.92 0.23 0.29 0.27 0.07 5.60 1.81 0.76 2.20 0.27

* All includes data from all the case studies taken together.
** Dummy variables used for models have not been included in this table.
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

devices installed in their buses. Jacksonville’s transit agency maintains ridership data through a mobile app and fare box counts. Lee
County uses fare box counts while Manatee County relies on both fare box counts and operator entry for ridership data. It is useful to
note that during the periods of fare suspension, the fare box counts practically vanished. To maintain the ridership data, drivers (bus
operators) were asked to manually record ridership numbers. Manually recorded numbers are subject to human errors but the agencies
that provided us with the data did not indicate any substantive negative impact of this procedure on the ridership numbers. Further our
models do not indicate any negative impact of fare suspension on ridership either.
From the data received, routes that became non-operational at any point of time from January to December 2020 were removed.
For example, some circulator routes serving the University of Florida campus were suspended after the University was closed in late
March 2020. Routes that remained operational despite the pandemic and seasonal demand variations have been selected for further
analysis.
The numbers of fully operational routes were: 27 for Gainesville, 33 for Jacksonville, 32 for Palm Beach County, 14 for Manatee
County and 14 for Lee County. System-level demand and supply measures for each month were obtained as the sum of monthly
ridership and monthly vehicle revenue hours for all the routes that were operational. Fig. 2 depicts monthly variations in the system-
wide demand and supply respectively for each of the 5 transit agencies during 2019 and 2020. It is useful to note that the scale of the y-
axis varies across the different agencies (case studies). The purpose of these graphs is to visually compare demand/supply profiles in
2020 with corresponding demand/supply profiles in 2019 for each agency independently. Visual comparisons across agencies must be
done with caution.
From the system-wide demand curves, a sharp decline can be observed from March 2020 with the lowest demand point attained in
the month of April for all the transit agencies. However, the percentage of ridership decline varies for each agency. From the month of
May, the demand profiles for 2020 appear to increase; however, the rate of increase differs for each agency.
From the supply curves, a systematic decline is observed from the month of March 2020 with the lowest supply point attained in
either the month of April or May. The aggregate supply generally increased after June. It is useful to note that these supply curves
measure only the vehicle revenue hours and do not consider reductions to vehicle occupancy rates imposed by agencies to facilitate
social distancing within the vehicle. This issue is discussed in section 3.4.

3.3. Route-Level Characteristics: Length, Land-use, and socioeconomics

Table 3 presents the descriptive statistics for the response and explanatory variables constructed at the route-level. The results are
presented for each of the five locations and in the overall (all 120 routes).
The dependent variable for the model is proportional demand, which is determined as the ratio of ridership for a route in a month in
2020 to the ridership for the same route in the same month in 2019. If this proportional demand was less than (more than) 1, then the
ridership for a route in a month in 2020 was the less than (more than) the ridership for the same route in the same month 2019. The
analysis used data from January to December, and therefore, it is possible that the ratio is greater than 1 for some routes (especially in
January / February). The supply variable is also measured in a similar way – the ratio of vehicle revenue hours for a route in a month in
2020 to the vehicle revenue hours for the same route in the same month in 2019.
The length variable represents the geographic stretch of the transit routes in miles. On average, routes in Gainesville are the shortest
while those in Jacksonville and Lee County are the longest.
The transit route networks were overlaid on the parcel-level land-use shape file (land-use corresponds to the year of 2018) for the
state of Florida obtained from FGDL and the land-use attributes were then extracted within a quarter-mile buffer of the routes. The
logarithmic transformations of the land-use acreage under each of the seven land-use types within a quarter-mile buffer of the routes
were used as explanatory variables. The logarithmic transformation helps normalize for the large variance in land-use across the routes
and cities while also capturing the diminishing marginal impact of these variables (for example, residential land-use increasing from
100 to 101 acres will have a lower impact on demand when compared to land-use increasing from 10 to 11 acres even though the
increase in acreage is equal in both cases). These land-uses are considered in the model (discussed in section 4.0) to examine whether
routes serving certain land-uses were more likely to see a major negative impact of the pandemic. It is however useful to acknowledge
that data on the number of establishments that were open and operational at different months are generally not available. For instance,
even if a route serves a significant amount of “entertainment” land-use acreage, if these establishments were not open or were
operating at limited capacity that will have a significant impact on travel demand.
In addition, the entropy along the transit routes was also calculated as follows (Spellerberg and Fedor, 2003):
∑N
Entropy = − [ n=1 Pn*ln(Pn)]/ln(N)

where,
N = No. of different land-use categories in the buffer of routes (=7 in this analysis).
Pn = the proportion of acreage of the nth land-use in the buffer of route.
Entropy is a measure of diversity in land-uses served by the transit route, and we calculated it to examine whether routes that serve
more diverse land-uses were less likely to see a major negative impact of the pandemic. It is interesting to note that the route-level
entropy values are comparable across the different locations.
The census data from FGDL were available at the census-tract level (2014–18 American Community Survey). To construct so­
cioeconomic variables within quarter-mile buffers of the transit routes, the proportional-split methodology was used. For instance, if
25 % area of census tract is falling within a quarter-mile buffer of the transit route, then all the socioeconomic variables were scaled

8
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

down to 25 % for the purpose of linking them to the route buffer area. All the socioeconomic variables were normalized by 1000 to
ensure comparable scales of all explanatory variables in the model.
Five socioeconomic variables are constructed: Number of people living within a quarter-mile buffer (‘Total Population’), number of
black residents (‘Black’), population 18 to 29 years of age (‘Age_18_29′ ), population of age 65 or above (‘Age_65_up’), and number of
occupied housing units with no vehicle available (‘Vehicle_0_HH’). These variables are considered in the model to check if there is
differential impact of the pandemic on the routes based on the socioeconomic composition of their catchment areas. For example, it is
expected that routes serving a greater number of zero-vehicle households would have a lower decline in the transit patronage.

3.4. Fare suspension and occupancy limitation policies

Transit agencies have modified their fare collection systems and have adjusted their allowable vehicle occupancy levels to take care
of social distancing norms and promote driver/passenger safety amid the pandemic. The five transit agencies provided detailed in­
formation about fare suspensions and occupancy limitation policies for each month in 2020.
Jacksonville never suspended fares; however, fares were suspended in Gainesville, Palm Beach County and Lee County from April
to August 2020. In Manatee County, fares were suspended from April to November 2020. A vehicle occupancy limitation policy was
implemented in March 2020 in Gainesville and was in effect until December 2020. Similarly, other agencies also imposed occupancy
limitation policies but with varying timelines: from April to December in Jacksonville, March to December in Palm Beach County, and
April to October in Lee County. Manatee County never implemented a vehicle occupancy limitation policy for its transit vehicles. The
exact nature of the occupancy limitations and the approaches for implementing/enforcing them are not considered in this study.

4. Modeling approach

In this study, we present models for proportional changes in demand (measured as ratio of 2020 to 2019 ridership). Transit demand
and supply are interdependent. While transit ridership cannot exceed the capacity (supply) provided, transit agencies also set the
supply in response to anticipated demand on the different routes (although the supply is generally not adjusted for every route and
every month). If this potential endogeneity of supply to demand is not addressed, the estimated model coefficients could be biased and
inconsistent (Diab et al., 2020). The two-stage instrumental-variables linear regression approach (also adopted in past transit demand
studies such as (Diab et al., 2020; Taylor et al., 2009) is adapted to addresses this issue. We develop a “first-stage” (linear regression)
model to relate supply change (ratio of 2020 supply to 2019 supply) to various exogenous factors and use the predicted supply change
from this model as the instrument variable (i.e., proxy for the real supply change) in the “second-stage” model for demand. It is this
second-stage model that is of fundamental interest.
The dependent variable (in the second stage model) is the ratio of route-level demand in year 2020 in a month to that of same route
and month in the year 2019. In contrast to conventional transit demand models that measure the ridership directly, we examine the
ridership in 2020 as a proportion of the corresponding 2019 ridership as the primary interest is to examine the impacts of land-use,
socioeconomics, and policies on demand changes.
Length of the routes, land-use (logarithm of individual land-use acreages and entropy) and socioeconomic composition along the

Table 4
Second Stage Model for Demand Change.
Master Model Gainesville Jacksonville Palm Beach Manatee County Lee County
Variables
Beta t-Stats Beta t-Stats Beta t-Stats Beta t-Stats Beta t-Stats Beta t-Stats
(Constant) -0.797 -4.702 -1.910 -3.060 -1.365 -2.554 -1.429 -3.938 -1.824 -2.325 -3.809 -1.721
Predicted Supply 1.396 15.991 1.000 4.738 0.770 5.206 1.218 18.018 1.462 11.877 0.985 6.094
Length 0.003 2.939 0.009 0.745 -0.002 -0.480 0.006 2.482 0.031 6.269 -0.001 -0.148
Log_Industrial_Acreage 0.008 0.622 0.035 1.393 -0.113 -2.166 -0.037 -1.700 -0.256 -2.460 -0.419 -1.594
Log_Institutional_Acreage 0.008 0.358 -0.135 -1.466 -0.128 -1.988 -0.099 -2.908 -0.410 -0.662 0.270 1.909
Log_Public_Acreage -0.098 -3.269 0.229 2.836 -0.232 -3.465 0.035 0.753 -1.448 -2.872 -0.204 -1.046
Log_Entertainment_Acreage -0.030 -3.115 -0.056 -2.289 0.074 1.649 -0.187 -4.083 0.038 0.801 -0.069 -1.000
Log_Residential_Acreage 0.088 2.267 0.802 4.358 0.625 5.200 0.393 3.615 0.483 1.528 0.369 1.161
Log_Office_Acreage -0.157 -5.455 0.034 0.736 -0.423 -3.789 -0.181 -3.628 -0.684 -2.823 -0.004 -0.018
Log_Other_Acreage 0.111 4.393 0.036 0.493 0.514 5.070 0.041 1.009 0.051 0.597 0.620 1.494
Entropy 0.475 4.067 -0.263 -0.970 0.706 2.261 1.176 4.335 7.834 2.470 2.093 1.456
Fare_suspension 0.101 6.971 0.018 0.798 • • 0.001 0.102 0.055 1.957 0.154 3.235
Occupancy_limitation -0.239 -15.475 -0.469 -14.741 -0.197 -6.035 -0.103 -4.743 • • -0.163 -3.825
Black -0.008 -3.321 -0.072 -3.138 -0.037 -3.729 0.000 0.128 -0.247 -1.668 -0.045 -0.632
AGE_18_29 -0.023 -7.749 -0.005 -0.547 -0.005 -0.318 -0.046 -7.227 0.405 1.385 -0.084 -0.654
AGE_65_up -0.002 -1.465 -0.334 -4.474 -0.089 -2.506 -0.001 -0.761 -0.326 -1.874 -0.057 -1.122
Vehicle_0_HH 0.109 5.003 -0.264 -1.138 0.261 3.110 0.137 7.191 0.997 1.886 0.579 2.033
Jacksonville 0.041 1.538 • • • • • • • • • •
Palm Beach 0.268 11.118 • • • • • • • • • •
Manatee County -0.123 -4.485 • • • • • • • • • •
Lee County -0.110 -4.154 • • • • • • • • • •
Adjusted R Square 0.551 0.747 0.459 0.730 0.602 0.407
No. of Observations 1440 324 396 384 168 168
*Highlighted in ‘Yellow’ are beta coefficients of statistically significant variables at 90% confidence or above.
*Highlighted in ‘Yellow’ are beta coefficients of statistically significant variables at 90 % confidence or above.

9
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

routes are the route-level explanatory variables used in the second-stage models. As the fare and occupancy policies apply to all routes
operated by an agency but varied across the months and agencies, these are captured in the second-stage models by using indicator
variables (i.e., 1 if the fare suspensions were in effect in that month in that agency and 0 otherwise, and 1 if occupancy limitations were
in effect in that month in that agency and 0 otherwise). Finally, as the data are pooled from multiple agencies and from multiple
months for each route, indicator variables (or dummy variables) for months and agencies are used as appropriate to capture “fixed”
effects associated with a month (for example April was the first full month under major lockdowns) or with a location (Gainesville’s
transit system mainly serves a massive student population unlike the other five systems).

5. Empirical results

The (second-stage) models for transit demand changes are shown in Table 4 and the corresponding first-stage model for transit
supply estimates is shown in Table 5. The coefficients that are statistically significant at 90 % confidence or higher are highlighted.
Models for Gainesville, Jacksonville and Palm Beach County are based on 324, 396 and 384 observations, respectively. Models for
Manatee County and Lee County are based on 168 observations each. Note that each observation represents the demand change for a
route for a specific month and the number of total observations equals number of routes multiplied by 12 months per route.
A total of six models are estimated. The “master model” (Equation 1) uses data from all five agencies and five agency-level models
are estimated using data from that agency alone. The master model is presented in the form of an equation:

Demand Ratiorm = β0 + β1*(Predicted Supply Ratiorm) + β2*(Lengthr) + β3*(Log_Industrial_Acreager) + β4*(Log_Institutional_Acreager) + β5*

(Log_Public_Acreager) + β6*(Log_Entertainment_Acreager) + β7*(Log_Residential_Acreager) + β8*(Log_Office_Acreager) + β9*(Log_­
Other_Acreager) + β10*(Entropyr) + β11*(Fare_suspensionrm) + β12*(Occupancy_limitationrm) + β13*(Blackr) + β14*(Age_18_29r) + β15*
(Age_65_upr) + β16*(Vehicle_0_HHr) + β17*(Jacksonviller) + β18*(Palm Beachr) + β19*(Manatee Countyr) + β20*(Lee Countyr) + εrm (1).

The dependent variable is the ratio of demand in year 2020 in a month (m) in a route (r) to the demand in the same route in the year
2019 in the same month. In this context, a negative coefficient on an explanatory variable indicates that the corresponding exogenous
factor decreases the ratio of the 2020 demand to the 2019 demand. As the 2020 demand would be a smaller fraction of the 2019
demand in this case, we can infer that routes that have a larger value for the corresponding explanatory variable will experience a
greater decline on ridership (relative to 2019 levels).
In the master model, the length of routes has a positive correlation with demand proportion suggesting that shorter routes had a
greater decline in demand. Similar effects were also found in the models for Palm Beach and Manatee.
In the master model, routes serving greater acreage of public, entertainment and office/retail land-uses were found to be correlated
with a greater decline in demand (negative coefficients). This seems reasonable as a vast majority of offices and shopping stores were
closed or had limited service-hours. Routes serving greater acreage of residential land-uses were found to be associated with a smaller
decline in demand. Industrial and institutional land-uses had no statistically significant impact on demand in the master model. It is

Table 5
First Stage Model for Determining Predicted Supply Change.

*Highlighted in ‘Yellow’ are beta coefficients of statistically significant variables at 90 % confidence or above.

10
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

however interesting to note that the impacts of land-use from the master model were not consistently observed in the agency level
models. For example, institutional land-use has negative impact on transit demand in Jacksonville, Palm Beach, and Lee County while
residential land-use has significant positive effects only in Jacksonville and Palm Beach. We are unable to articulate specific reasons for
the observed differential impacts of land-uses across the agencies.
Entropy is found to be positively correlated with proportional demand in the master model. This indicates that routes that serve a
greater mix of land-uses experienced a smaller decline in ridership. The greater land-use diversity along the route possibly means a
diversity of reasons (trip purposes) for passengers to use the transit route. Consequently, the ridership may not have suffered when trips
for certain purposes are removed from the system. This impact was also found to be positive and statistically significant in the models
for Jacksonville, Palm Beach and Manatee County (it was insignificant in the other models).
In the master model, fare suspension has a positive impact on ridership. Routes that had fares suspended had a higher level of
demand (compared to the corresponding 2019 levels) during those months indicating that reduced (zero) cost was an incentive for
more people to use the transit system. This positive effect was significant only in the agency level models for Manatee and Lee County.
The effect was insignificant in the case of Gainesville as most routine users are students/staff of the university who do not pay a fare
anyway. Jacksonville never suspended the fares and so this variable does not apply to the agency level model for Jacksonville. In
contrast, occupancy reduction measures (to promote social distancing within the vehicle) had a very strong negative impact on de­
mand in the master model and in every agency-level model (Manatee County did not implement such measures and so this variable
does not apply). This effect is reasonable and expected as the reduction in the capacity of vehicles directly impacts the number of riders
who can be transported. It is important to note that the magnitude of the negative impact of occupancy reduction is larger than the
positive impacts of fare suspension (as both fare-suspension and occupancy-reduction are “dummy variables” a direct comparison of
coefficients is not unreasonable).
Routes that served more residential units that have zero vehicles witnessed lesser decline during pandemic (positive coefficient).
This effect is consistent across all the agency level models except for Gainesville where the vehicle_0_HH variable is insignificant. This
result could be reflective of people without cars being more captive to transit. On the other hand, in the master model, the number of
black residents along the route was found to be negatively correlated with the proportional demand (this effect was insignificant for
Palm Beach and Lee County models but significant in other models). While the black population is more likely to use public transit in
many places, the models suggest that routes that served areas with larger black population had a greater reduction in demand.
The master model indicates that as the number of younger adults (age 18–29) increases in the areas surrounding the bus routes, the
greater the reduction in demand (negative coefficient). This negative impact was significant only in the model for Palm Beach.
Likewise, a larger number of older adults (age 65 and above) in the areas surrounding the bus routes resulted in a greater demand
reduction in the agency-level models for Gainesville, Jacksonville, and Manatee County. This effect was insignificant in the master
model. Broadly, these results could suggest that the riders lost by transit are more likely to be younger adults or the older population (if
the composition of the people living along a route is also reflective of the composition of the riders). The population of older adults may
be more inclined to curtail their transit trips because of their greater vulnerability to COVID. Further, unlike younger adults who might
be using transit for commuting, older adults may be using transit for discretionary purposes and such trips are easier to forego
compared to commuting trips.
The master models also have fixed-effect controls for the different agencies (assuming Gainesville as the reference or base cate­
gory). The results indicate that Palm Beach County experienced smaller declines in proportional ridership when compared to Gain­
esville. On the other hand, Manatee County and Lee County experienced greater declines. Jacksonville was not statistically different
from Gainesville after controlling for the other factors. Fixed-effect controls for months were also explored in the second stage model,
but some of the monthly dummies were found to be statistically insignificant after controlling for other factors such as supply-change,
fare suspension, and occupancy reduction (all these factors vary across months). Overall month-specific dummy variables did not add
significantly to the goodness of fit of the models.
Predicted supply change (ratio of 2020 vehicle revenue hours to the 2019 vehicle revenue hours) is positively correlated to the
demand change as would be expected. This means that route-months that had large supply reductions in 2020 relative to 2019 also
experienced larger demand reductions. This effect is consistent and statistically significant across all the agency level models and
master model. The predicted supply change was estimated using the (first-stage) model for supply change as shown in Table 5. These
first stage models are not discussed in detail as their primary purpose is to generate the instruments (proxy) for the change in supply.
However, it is useful to note that the effects of land-use variables on supply change are not consistent across the different agencies. On
the other hand, the indicator variables representing the months generally reflect the declines.

6. Summary and conclusions

During the last decade, the decline in public transit ridership was a concern across the United States. Numerous factors such as
increase in teleworking, availability of competing alternatives for shared transportation, and shifting policy/funding priorities have all
been ascribed as reasons for this decline. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the declining trend. However, it is essential that
transit systems remain in service considering that many of the people who are currently using it amid the pandemic are essential
workers and/or those who are captive to this mode for their general travel.
The first step towards developing policies for restoring public transportation ridership is to understand systematic patterns in
current demand and supply changes. Thus motivated, this study examined the impacts of COVID-19 on route-level transit demand and
supply changes across five transit agencies in the State of Florida. In particular, the study examined how these impacts varied based on
the land-use, socioeconomic configurations along the route, and in relationship to operational strategies such as suspension of fares

11
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

and occupancy limits on buses. Data from 120 routes from five transit agencies were used to develop the models. The two-stage
instrumental-variables linear regression approach was adopted to addresses the issue of simultaneity between demand and supply.
The models also recognize the panel nature of data using the fixed-effects approach.
Models for demand change were estimated. A master model combining the routes from all agencies was estimated in addition to
agency-specific models. While the master model is useful in understanding general trends based on the full pooled dataset, the agency-
specific models provide insights about the variability in the impacts of predictor variables from one location to another. In the master
model, the length of routes has a positive correlation with demand change suggesting that shorter routes had a greater decline in
demand. Routes serving a greater acreage of public, entertainment and office/retail land-uses were found to be correlated with a
greater decline in demand. Routes serving a greater acreage of residential land, a greater land-use mix and larger amounts of zero-
vehicle households witnessed lesser decline. The impacts of the several land-use and socioeconomic variables were found to vary
across the cities. Extending this analysis to routes from more cities will be useful to further examine the differential impacts of land-
uses on ridership changes. With a larger sample and additional contextual information about the locations, one can explore the reasons
why the impacts of land-use patterns are different from one city to another.
Fare suspension is found to have a positive impact on ridership indicating that reduced (zero) cost possibly encouraged people to
use the transit system. In contrast, occupancy-reduction measures had a very strong negative impact on demand in the master model
and in some agency-level models. At a given level of supply (vehicle revenue hours) if the occupancy of each bus is reduced, it is
reasonable that the number of riders who are transported is reduced. Predicted supply (vehicle revenue hours) change is positively
correlated to the demand change. Vehicle revenue hours can be changed by modifying one or both of service frequency and service
hours. Each of these could have a different impact on ridership. Examining the relative impacts of each (i.e., frequency changes versus
service hours changes) is identified as a future area of study.
While there are a lot of cross-sectional models for transit demand which have captured the effects of land-use, socioeconomics, and
service characteristics, none of them have directly examined the impacts of exogenous factors on ridership changes (ratio of demands)
because of major shock to the system such as the pandemic. Past models have compared ridership across routes with various levels of
supply, fares, etc. to determine the impacts of supply and fares. However, this study examines the changes in ridership to the same
routes with different fare structures and occupancy limitations. As such, this study contributes to the literature by modeling the
systematic impacts of route-level land-use, socioeconomic composition, and operational characteristics such as fare suspensions and
occupancy restrictions on demand changes during the pandemic. Extending this analysis to a larger set of routes across more agencies
would be useful in enhancing the robustness of the findings from our models. Extending our analysis to include data from 2021 and
later to capture the recovery phase is also an important direction for future work.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sagar Patni: Conceptualization, Methodology. Sivaramakrishnan Siva Srinivasan: Conceptualization, Methodology. Juan
Suarez: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

We express our heartfelt thanks to all the transit agencies officials namely Ricky Walker (City of Gainesville), Michael Epstein (City
of Jacksonville), Yash Nagal (Palm Beach County), Susan Montgomery (Manatee County) and Valdez Arnold & J. Levi McCollum (Lee
County) for providing us ridership data required for the research. We also want to extend our thanks to Soowoong Noh, Liang Zhai and
Ranbir Roshan for sharing their views and knowledge regarding GIS and data automation needed for this research.

References

Ahangari, S., Chavis, C. and Jeihani, M., 2020. Public Transit Ridership Analysis During the COVID-19 Pandemic. medRxiv.
Almlof, Erik, Rubensson, I., Cebecauer, M., Jenelius, E., 2021. Who is still travelling by public transport during COVID -19? Socioeconomic factors explaining travel
behaviour in Stockholm based on smart card data. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3689091 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3689091.
American Public Transportation Association, March 2020. Policy Brief: Impact of COVID-19 on Public Transit Agencies. Retrieved from: https://www.apta.com/wp-
content/uploads/APTA-2020-Survey-Impact-COVID-19-Agencies.pdf. (Accessed Date: 31 July 2020) Mar. 2020.
Brough, R., Freedman, M., Phillips, D., 2021. Understanding Socioeconomic Disparities in Travel Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J. Reg. Sci. 1–22. https://
doi.org/10.1111/jors.12527. Retrieved from:
Buchanan, M., Higashide, S., 2019. Who’s on Board 2019. Transit Center. Retrieved from:
Campbell, K.B., Brakewood, C., 2017 Jun. Sharing riders: How bike sharing impacts bus ridership in New York City. Transp. Res. A Policy Pract. 1 (100), 264–282.
Currie, G., Delbosc, A., 2011 Sep 1. Understanding bus rapid transit route ridership drivers: An empirical study of Australian BRT systems. Transp. Policy 18 (5),
755–764.
De Vos, Jonas, 2020. The effect of COVID-19 and subsequent social distancing on travel behavior. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Volume 5.
Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198220300324?via%3Dihub.
Diab, E., Kasraian, D., Miller, E.J., Shalaby, A., 2020 Sep. The rise and fall of transit ridership across Canada: Understanding the determinants. Transp. Policy 1 (96),
101–112.

12
S. Patni et al. Transportation Research Part A 167 (2023) 103554

Diab, E., DeWeese, J., Chaloux, N., El-Geneidy, A., 2020 Oct. Adjusting the service? Understanding the factors affecting bus ridership over time at the route level in
Montréal. Canada. Transportation. 30, 1–22.
Federal Transit administration. NTD Transit Agency Profiles. Retrieved From: https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/transit-agency-profiles (Accessed Date: 31 July 2020).
Gallup. U.S. Workers Discovering Affinity for Remote Work. Retrieved from: https://news.gallup.com/poll/306695/workers-discovering-affinity-remote-work.aspx.
2020 Apr 3.
Gkiotsalitis, K., Cats, O., 2021. Public transport planning adaption under the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: literature review of research needs and directions. Transp.
Rev. Volume 41(3), 374–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2020.1857886. Retrieved from:
Google. COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports. Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/. 2020 Jul 29.
Hu, S., Chen, P., 2020. Who left riding transit? Examining socioeconomic disparities in the impact of COVID-19 on ridership. Retrieved from: Transp. Res. D 90
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920920308397?via%3Dihub.
Jay, J., Bor, J., Nsoesie, E.O., Lipson, S.K., Jones, D.K., Galea, S., Raifman, J., 2020 Dec. Neighbourhood income and physical distancing during the COVID-19
pandemic in the United States. Nat. Hum. Behav. 4 (12), 1294–1302.
Jenelius, E., Cebecauer, M., 2020. Impacts of COVID-19 on public transport ridership in Sweden: Analysis of ticket validations, sales, and passenger counts. Transport.
Res. Int. Perspect. 8, 100242.
Jia, J., Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Li, T., Li, Y., 2021. A new global method for identifying urban rail transit key station during COVID-19: A case study of Beijing, China.
Physica A 565.
Kar, A., Le, H., Miller, H., 2021. What is essential travel? Socio-Economic Differences in Travel Demand During the COVID-19 Lockdown. The Ohio State University,
Department of Geography https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/qtkhb.
Kavanagh, Nolan, Goel, R., Venkataramani, A., 2020. Association of County-Level Socioeconomic and Political Characteristics with Engagement in Social Distancing
for COVID-19. medRxiv 2020.04.06.20055632; Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.20055632.
Kyte, M., Stoner, J., Cryer, J., 1988 Sep 1. A time-series analysis of public transit ridership in Portland, Oregon, 1971–1982. Transport. Res. Part A: General. 22 (5),
345–359.
Liao, H., Swoboda-Colberg, S., Huang, L., 2021. Analyzing the Effects of COVID-19 on Human Mobility and Transit Ridership in the Pacific Northwest. US Department
of Transportation Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium University of Idaho, Retrieved from https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/
handle/1773/46941/Liao_UI_COVID19_PacTrans-Final-Report.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Liu, L., Miller, H.J., Scheff, J., 2020. The Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on public transit demand in the United States. PLoS One 15 (11), e0242476.
Apple Maps. Mobility Trends Reports. https://www.apple.com/covid19/mobility. 2020.
Miller, E., et al., 2018 Oct 14. Canadian Transit Ridership Trends Study. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Mokhtarian, P., 2020 May 14. The Adoption and Travel Impacts of Teleworking: Will it be Different This Time? Eno Center for Transportation Webinar.
Orro, A., Novales, M., Monteagudo, Á., Pérez-López, J.B., Bugarín, M.R., 2020. Impact on city bus transit services of the COVID–19 lockdown and return to the new
Normal: The case of A Coruña (Spain). Sustainability 12 (17), 7206.
Papandreou, T. Is the Coronavirus The Transportation Industry’s Opportunity? Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothypapandreou/2020/03/
27/is-the-coronavirus-the-transportation-industrys-opportunity/#14e69ec2752b. 2020 Mar 27.
Park H. Ridership analysis at the stop level: case study of Austin, TX (Doctoral dissertation). 2011.
Parr, S., Wolshon, B., Renne, J., Murray-Tuite, P., Kim, K., 2020. Traffic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Statewide Analysis of Social Separation and Activity
Restriction. nat. Hazard. Rev. Volume 21(3).
Pendyala, R.M., Ubaka, I., 2000. Development of short-term operational planning model for transit service analysis. Transp. Res. Rec. 1735 (1), 43–50.
Peng, Z.R., Dueker, K.J., Strathman, J., Hopper, J., 1997 May. A simultaneous route-level transit patronage model: demand, supply, and inter-route relationship.
Transportation 24 (2), 159–181.
Peterson, D.A., 2011 Aug. Transit ridership and the built environment. Mountain-Plains Consortium, Fargo, ND, USA.
Spellerberg, I.F., Fedor, P.J., 2003. A tribute to Claude Shannon (1916–2001) and a plea for more rigorous use of species richness, species diversity and the
‘Shannon–Wiener’Index. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 12 (3), 177–179.
Stopher, P.R., 1992 Sep 1. Development of a route level patronage forecasting method. Transportation 19 (3), 201–220.
Tang, L., Thakuriah, P.V., 2012 Jun. Ridership effects of real-time bus information system: A case study in the City of Chicago. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol.
1 (22), 146–161.
Taylor, B.D., Miller, D., Iseki, H., Fink, C., 2009. Nature and/or nurture? Analyzing the determinants of transit ridership across US urbanized areas. Transp. Res. A
Policy Pract. 43 (1), 60–77.
Transit App. Who’s Left Riding Public Transit. Medium. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/transit-app/whos-left-riding-public-transit-hint-it-s-not-white-people-
d43695b3974a. 2020 Apr 27.
Wang, D., Yueshuai, B., Jingqin, G., Chow, J., Ozbay, K., Iyer, S., 2021. Impact of COVID-19 behavioral inertia on reopening strategies for New York City transit 2021.
Int. J. Transp. Sci. Technol. 10 (2), 197–211.
Watkins, K., Berrebi, S., Diffee, C., Kiriazes, B., Ederer, D., 2019. Analysis of recent public transit ridership trends. Transit Coop. Res. Program Report 209.
Welle, B., Safer, A.S., 2020 Apr 23. More Sustainable Transport in a Post-COVID-19 World. Retrieved from: TheCityFix. https://thecityfix.com/blog/coronavirus-
public-transport-stimulus-packages-ben-welle-sergio-avelleda/.
Wellenius, G.A., Vispute, S., Espinosa, V., Fabrikant, A., Tsai, T.C., Hennessy, J., Dai, A., Williams, B., Gadepalli, K., Boulanger, A., Pearce, A., 2021 May 25. Impacts of
social distancing policies on mobility and COVID-19 case growth in the US. Nat. Commun. 12 (1), 1–7.
Wilbur, M., Ayman, A., Ouyang, A., Poon, V., Kabir, R., Vadali, A., Pugliese, P., Freudberg, D., Laszka, A. and Dubey, A., 2020. Impact of COVID-19 on Public Transit
Accessibility and Ridership. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.02413.
Zhang, N., Jia, W., Wang, P., Dung, C., Zhao, P., Leung, K., Su, B., Cheng, R., Yuguo, L., 2021. Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19
pandemic in Hong Kong. Cities 112. Retrieved from doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2021.103139.

13