Tracking transit’s recovery: Exploring ridership shifts in Chicago during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

When COVID-19 caused transit ridership to drop sharply across the Chicago region, agencies faced urgent questions: How would COVID-19 affect transit services? Should agencies continue operating buses and trains with far fewer riders, or reduce service and risk cutting off people who depended on transit most? And how long would it take for transit ridership to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic, if at all?

A research project led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Yanfeng Ouyang looks beyond the initial drop to examine causes, how long different factors lasted and what agencies can learn from the experience.

The Illinois Center for Transportation project, conducted with the Illinois Department of Transportation Office of Intermodal Project Implementation, examined pandemic-era ridership across key Chicago-area transportation systems, including Chicago Transit Authority bus and rail, Metra, taxis and transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft. OIPI’s Manager of Program Support (Planning) Charles Abraham guided this project.

At the center of the study was a challenge: separating the effect of COVID-19 from other factors that influence travel behavior. Researchers analyzed spatiotemporal data on COVID-19 death and infection cases, government stay-home orders, workplace occupancy, gas prices, crime rates, unemployment, fare policies, vaccination trends, socioeconomic characteristics and neighborhood-level demographics.

They used statistical models to estimate what ridership likely would have looked like had the pandemic not occurred. By comparing that business-as-usual estimate with actual ridership, the team could identify the factors most closely associated with ridership losses.

“Essentially, we used a series of data-driven methods to reveal complex interactions among many factors,” Ouyang said. “We analyze the data to try to understand the ridership change over the past 3-4 years of time and use that knowledge to help predict the future.”

One of the study’s findings was that the forces behind ridership loss changed over the phases of the pandemic. Fear of infection played a major role early in the pandemic, but it was not the most lasting factor.

“The first year was about fear, for sure. But we also found, as expected to us, the fear factor actually dies out rather quickly,” Ouyang said.

Over time, longer-term changes in work and commuting patterns became more dominant. Working from home significantly drove down ridership across all transit systems studied. For CTA rail stations and bus lines, workplace occupancy reduction was the most influential factor in explaining ridership loss.

The pandemic’s effects were not evenly distributed across communities. Ridership changes varied by neighborhood, income level, race and type of work, as some riders had access to other options, including driving or working remotely.

That finding has important implications for service planning. Even when overall ridership falls, transit may remain essential for workers and communities that rely on buses and trains for access to jobs, services and daily needs. It also identified successful strategies.

For example, Ouyang’s team found that CTA fare discount programs helped recover about 5-7% of transit ridership, on average, with health and retail workers benefiting most.

For IDOT, RTA and transit operators, the project provides a more detailed picture of how major disruptions affect travel behavior across systems and communities. It also offers lessons for future planning, whether agencies are responding to another public health emergency, adapting to remote work or evaluating the social value of transit service.

“With this knowledge that we have gained, we will be much better informed if something similar happens in the future,” Ouyang said. “We always learn from the past and then use it to help the future, so I hope that’s why our work is useful.”