Travel trends, transit ridership and transit funding six months into a pandemic

By Nick Lovett, Planning Associate at Access

For many of us, it felt like 2020 has had life on pause for several months. As summer draws to a close, plenty of activity has begun to resume, although it is at much lower levels that we would normally expect. 

As we have written previously, many transit agencies are grappling with a decline in ridership numbers and subsequent revenues to fund operations. Operating funds are the lifeblood of any transit service, delivering people to destinations around a city. In Metro Vancouver, Transit revenues make up the largest source of TransLink’s funding, covering nearly 60% of the organisations operating costs. The decline in transport activity, and subsequent revenue, mean an uncertain future for budgetary purposes. Even with help from the federal and provincial government, there will be multi-year planning and operating implications.

There are many questions about what cities will look like when we emerge from this pandemic. For several months, our travel patterns have been more altered than they have been in our lifetimes. Many people are beginning to wonder what this means for the future of travel within cites, and if we equipped to serve travel demand when infections can be contained.  There are a handful of travel trends we can compare to help piece together how people are altering their behaviour and provide insight into what we might expect in the coming months and years. 

What does the data tell us?

Recently released TransLink data for the first half of 2020 [1] shows that monthly transit boardings were 82% lower in April 2020 than they were in 2019. In July, ridership was reported as being down 60% of 2019 levels and a recent interview TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond revealed that ridership remained about 56% lower than pre-Covid levels. Google [2], Apple [3], Transitapp and Citymapper have also been publishing daily data that approximates ridership impacts for cities around the world. TransLink ridership data is not as frequently or readily available as Google or Apple, but we can see that Apple and Transitapp data for Vancouver appears to somewhat mirror what is occurring at the regional level, so it may be a helpful fast-moving indicator to watch in the coming weeks and months. 

However, understanding vehicle traffic volumes is a little less straightforward. Based on how Apple are defining a baseline, their mobility data would suggest that vehicle traffic has grown considerably in recent months.  But the latest counts from the BC Ministry of transport show that volumes on the Lions Gate Bridge[4] in Vancouver are still 27% lower than they were last year, indicating that Apple mobility data isn’t as accurate in predicting vehicle volumes as it is for transit. Google’s data on workplace visits seems to better match traffic volumes recorded close to downtown Vancouver.  

TransLink’s Q2 Financial report is another source of data that help tell a story about regional travel demand. Because the agency is funded through a number of consumption charges (such as fuel and parking taxes, and transit fares), we can infer COVID’s impact on regional travel demand from the financial impacts recorded to the year ending June 30, 2020.  

Curiously, the report highlights how a decline in parking revenue is proportionally the same as the decline in transit revenue, but fuel consumption has only declined by 15%. 

What does this mean?

The reason for the disparity between traffic and transit may be because only a small portion of trips we’re used to seeing in rush hour are high-value, time-sensitive trips. These are the trips where demand is inelastic, and people end up waiting in traffic or paying a premium for parking close to their destination.  Most urban trips have moderate to low time values, meaning people will avoid busy roadway and crowded transit conditions [5]. The likely reason fuel consumption has not dropped to the same levels transit has is because many of the vehicle trips still taking place are low-value (or highly discretionary) trips. In these cases, people tend to avoid added marginal costs associated with travel that come in the form of queues or parking charges [6]. Growing discretionary trips may also explain why Apple’s mobility data is seeing higher than usual queries for driving directions. For most high value trips (travelling to work or a doctor’s appointment), people know where they are going, whereas discretionary trips tend to be to new or unfamiliar destinations. 

Why hasn’t transit bounced back?

Some have speculated that people are afraid to return to transit, out of fear of contracting the virus and being in close proximity to others. But if the data is anything to go by, the spread of infections among the community is a poor predictor of ridership. As daily and active cases continue to rise across BC, people continue to ride transit in the lower mainland (albeit at a slower rate) with boarding’s growing 0.2% each day. 

Despite restrictions lifting, it is understandable that many people have not returned to transit: University classes are online for the fall semester, stadiums are closed, and many white-collar workers remain at home. Demand is being exogenously suppressed and there are simply less need to travel.  Consequently, the number of cars on the road has decreased, but not to the same degree as transit.  This is largely because roadways are free flowing, and free parking is widely available. The TomTom COVID traffic index illustrates how fewer people driving (particularly in the peaks) have meant that traffic conditions are substantially below the levels network equilibrium. This means it is less costly to drive due to the time savings relative to journey times one would normally experience in a car. 

The fundamentals of supply and demand mean that lower generalised costs are inducing more demand for driving. Transit’s costs remain fixed and at the margin, people than can make the choice, will be choosing to drive. 

As I’ve written previously, health concerns are not likely to be the primary reason ridership remains low. If people were genuinely concerned about contracting the virus on transit, we would expect to see ridership decrease when the number of active cases increases. Instead, it is more likely that the lower travel demand is a product of the restrictions and polices that see classes, stadiums and offices shuttered across the region. 

Three reasons why this is unlikely to be a ‘new normal’: 

1.     We are inherently social creatures

There has been a lot of speculation about what the nature of work, and in turn, the daily commute will look like going forward. Zoom, Hangouts and Microsoft Teams seem to have replaced the need for physical meeting rooms and whiteboards. Some are predicting this will replace the need for traditional offices altogether. However, much like fixing something with duct tape, telecom technology may hold things together for a while but is not an enduring solution. Humans have evolved to be highly adept physical communicators and video calls are a poor substitute for real world interactions. A computer screen can't match the physical office when it comes to opportunities for building social rapport, understanding non-verbal cues, mentorship, and water-cooler conversations that lead to new ideas. 

There is still plenty of latent demand for these interactions even as we enjoy the personal productivity and flexibility of working from home. Paradoxically, as telecommunication technologies have proliferated within our work and social lives in recent years, they have induced more demand for face-to-face contact. Economist and urbanist Edward Glaeser describes this phenomenon as Jevon's Complementarity Corollary, where electronic communication complements, not competes with, in person interactions. 

The benefits of physical proximity extend beyond the walls of the office into downtowns and business districts. Many of the casual interactions, idea sharing, learning and matching opportunities occur between firms and customers in dense urban areas. The productivity gains that arise from these opportunities are known as agglomerations benefits or premiums. This is why places like Wall Street still persist as hubs for industry specialisation. For decades people have claimed that telecommunications will be the death of distance, and eliminate the need for physical proximity, yet downtowns are busier and stronger than ever. In the wake of COVID the OECD predicts that these urban premiums will continue to prevail and not turn into an urban penalty because the public health is not related to urban density but rather to structural inequalities in our towns and cities. 

2.     The nature of cities means there will be continued growth and pressure on the transportation system

Transit is arguably the underlying formula which enables cities to grow into attractive and productive places. At the metropolitan level, integrated transport and land use planning is critical to sharing provision infrastructure, matching jobs with labour, and providing amenity to attract and grow the population. Without this, cities experience congestion, not only from traffic, but from housing shortages, and public services. When used in concert, spatial planning and Transit combat many dimensions of congestion externalities creating a positive feedback loop for urban growth. 

In the absence of transit and spatial planning, places tend to become sprawling and car-dependant. This approach does not scale in large cities because automobile travel only attractive and convenient so long as very few others are driving at the same time and the same location. The attractors within cities will endure and It is unlikely we will see decades worth of trends towards urbanisation reversing. This means a new transport and land use paradigm is unlikely to emerge post-pandemic. The geometric constrains and fundamentals of urbanisation mean that transit will remain an effective and convenient mode precisely because many people often need to travel at the same time in urban areas. In economic parlance, transit has increasing returns to scale in cities and auto travel has decreasing returns to scale. 

3.     The climate crisis demands we stay the course 

As the United States again experiences a record-breaking wildfire season, Metro Vancouver has spent a week choked by the smoke that has traveled over the border.  On-road transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the region and we have less than ten years to achieve 2030 targets and become carbon neutral by 2050. While climate policies and actions may feel like local issues, the wildfires show us that the externalities of a warming climate are not. 

It is not feasible to regress into a space where distancing and isolation place a greater burden on the transportation system, and in turn do nothing to curb emissions. Walking, cycling and transit must be core components of a COVID recovery strategy and that means many regional targets and goals remain relevant going forward. 

The conditions that make transit a compelling travel choice have temporarily dissipated. But we can’t despair and let the declining costs of car travel become a normalised side-effect of the recovery. If we truly value transit and want to ensure it remains a core pillar of life in our cities, we need to have a conversation and ask, how, and if, we are collectively prepared fund it. If we don’t, there is a risk we could fall into a vicious cycle that will disproportionately affect low-income and marginalized groups at a time when equitable access to opportunity has never been more important. While some are predicting that masses will turn their back on transit and in turn flee the urban areas, at Access Planning we believe in building a better city.  To do this we need to make long term investments for residents and that means investing in transit.

Figure 1 – Metro Vancouver Greenhouse gas emission inventory [Source]

Notes:

[1] TransLink’s baseline is comparing monthly boardings against the same month in the previous year.

[2] Google's Mobility report compares phone location data at various places against the median day-value from the 5-week period Jan 3 – Feb 6, 2020. ‘Transit Stations’ include Subway station, seaports, car rental agencies, taxi stands and highway stops. 

[3] Apple’s data is the number of daily direction queries in apple maps for each mode compared to baseline volume on January 13th, 2020. 

[4] The BC MoT has a number of traffic counters on highways across the province. The Lions Gate counter is the closest counter to downtown Vancouver and Monthly Average Weekday Traffic volumes were used for this analysis.  

[5] Transportation Cost and Benefit Analysis II – Travel Time Costs, Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

[6] We see this when people search for free parking rather than pay for convenient parking outside their destination.