Attitudes toward public transport post Delta COVID-19 lockdowns: Identifying user segments and policies to restore confidence

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the propensity to use public transport, with many countries seeing a decline in patronage to as low as 20% of the pre-pandemic levels. Although public transport use is recovering with 60% of pre-COVID-19 levels being a common statistic, there is a view that it could take many years to fully recover, if at all. This paper presents evidence on societal perceptions and attitudes about the use and return to public transport that was obtained from surveys undertaken during COVID-19 at a period in early 2021 in which there were no lockdowns, and during a subsequent period of varying durations of lockdowns in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area and South East Queensland. Together with views on future plans, this paper offers policy useful evidence on the challenges that the public transport sector currently faces, and is likely to continue to face, in developing a plan to support a return to using the more sustainable mode of public transport, rather than increased use of the private car. The focus of the paper is on an analysis of attitudinal and open-ended qualitative responses using a mixture of descriptive interpretation and analytical methods of factor and cluster analysis to identify the spectrum of attitudes and concerns about using public transport as a way of guiding future messaging.

Keywords:

• Attitudes during lockdown
• case study
• cluster analysis
• factor analysis
• public transport

Acknowledgments

This research is part of iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) research projects 1-031 and 1-034 with Transport and Main Roads, Queensland (TMR), Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW), and WA Department of Transport (WADoT) on Working for Home and Implications for Revision of Metropolitan Strategic Transport Models. The findings reported are those of the authors and are not the positions of TfNSW or TMR; but approval to present these findings is appreciated. We also thank the Editor and two anonymous referees, whose time and comments have helped improve the paper.

Notes

1 Age was broken into three categories (18–34 yrs, 35–54 yrs, and 55+ yrs).

2 Personal annual income was broken into three categories ($80k or less, $80k–150k, and more than $155k).

3 Each statement set was constructed using a combination of questions borrowed from the literature, workshopped in focus groups using university students, and developed from analysis of open-ended responses to similar questions in previous waves of data collection.

4 The comfort in activities scales is split into activities that are either necessary day-to-day tasks, activities that involve limited to no social contact with strangers, and activities that are done among strangers and/or in large groups. It is not surprising that only one dimension for “comfort” emerged in the middle of a lockdown.

5 A “typical” commuter is defined as someone who regularly travelled between home and an office or single work location (e.g., a warehouse, hospital). Given the sample focus, 70% of workers in the SEQ and 74% in the GSMA meet this definition.