Impact Of The COVID-19 Pandemic On Travel Mode Choice Behavior

With the long-term spread of the COVID-19 pandemic,people’s daily lives,especially the daily traveling,have been seriously influenced.Currently,the wide-spread of the COVID-19 in China has been stopped,but the impact of the COVID-19 on people has not ended.Focus on this point,this thesis investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel choice behavior with two cases from Wuhan China.Firstly,based on the smart card data of Wuhan public transit system before and after the outbreak of COVID-19,the travel features and preference of residents in the public system were analyzed.Secondly,a SP(stated preference)-experiment based survey was conducted in Wuhan to obtain the stated travel behavior and socio-economic characteristics of Wuhan residents during the COVID-19 pandemic period,based on which the deep impact of COVID-19 was analyzed.Analysis of residents’ preference and heterogeneity of travel mode choices including private and public transportation during the COVID-19.Finally,according to the results,some suggestions on the prevention policies during the COVID-19 were put forward.The main work of the thesis is presented as follows.On the one hand,the thesis based on the smart card data of public transportation in Wuhan before and after the outbreak(from December 2019 to April 2020)of the COVID-19 analyze changes in travel preferences and choice preferences.Firstly,the smart card data of Wuhan public transport system before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 were described,and the abnormal or missing data were cleaned or filled.Secondly,the changes of travel times,departure time and travel distance of public transport in Wuhan before and after the breakout of COVID-19 were analyzed.Finally,a mixed logit model was used to capture passengers’ travel preferences.Research results show that:(1)Affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19,the daily travel trips of public transport in Wuhan dropped significantly and gradually recovered after the lockdown of Wuhan City.(2)There was no significant difference in the morning and evening peak of the public transport system before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19.This may be because the enterprises did not change the timetable to avoid the morning and evening peak gathering.(3)In terms of travel distance,the average distance of a single trip carried by metro was increased after the COVID-19 outbreak.It may be because travelers who takes metro to complete shorter trips now prefer less accessible travel modes such as walking or cycling more.(4)Residents’ sensitivity to public transportation ticket fare decreased significantly and gradually was increasing,and gradually recover as COVID-19 is under control,but still not yet back to the level after the outbreak of the COVID-19.On the other hand,this thesis based on the survey data investigated the influence of the COVID-19 on residents’ travel behavior.In order to obtain residents’ travel preferences during the COVID-19,this study designed a questionnaire combined with the attributes of the COVID-19,using which collected the corresponding data for model estimation through.To capture the impact of residents’ heterogeneous preferences on travel choice behavior,this study established an MNL model and a latent class MNL model,respectively.The model estimation results show that: The attributes of travel cost,transfer time and waiting time that were normally believed can significantly affect residents’ travel choice behavior become insignificant during the COVID-19.During the COVID-19 period,metro became the most popular public travel mode.The outbreak of the COVID-19 leaded to a decline in residents’ preference toward public transport systems,but the promotion of vaccines can lead residents to return to the public transit system.The respondents were divided into three latent groups:most vulnerable,vulnerable and non-vulnerable groups.Among them,the most vulnerable group accounts for the highest proportion,reaching 78.2%.They usually have the following characteristics: most of them are female,over 30 years old,hold a driver’s license,have stable or increased income during the COVID-19 period,and prefer to use private car,have higher household income,etc.The vulnerable group accounted for the least,20.79%,with stable or increased income,and low household income.The non-vulnerable group reaching 78.2%,and Thier family income was medium,and among the attributes related to the COVID-19,they are only susceptible to vaccination.This study can provide a reference for the investigation of impact of the COVID-19 and subsequent major public health events on the transportation system,and offer supports for policy-making to effectively deal with such pandemics.Future work could focus on the change of residents’ attitudes toward public transit and private cars and the corresponding effects on urban transportation system.