Planning for the future of public transportation

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts — including a sustained decline in transit ridership.

How then do transit agencies anticipate ridership demand and plan future services?

That’s the question Illinois Department of Transportation and Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority seek to answer in the joint Illinois Center for Transportation and IDOT project, “R27-SP53: Quantifying Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Ridership of CTA Rail and Bus Systems in Chicago.”

Yanfeng Ouyang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s George Krambles Endowed Professor in Rail and Public Transit, led the project with Cemal Ayvalik, RTA’s principal analyst (strategic planning), and Chuck Abraham, IDOT’s manager of program support (planning).

“This is the second of a continuing line of studies that IDOT is undertaking with partner agencies to further mitigate transit ridership losses because of the pandemic and to try to attract lapsed riders back, further assuring their comfort and safety,” Abraham said.

“IDOT shall work with the research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the near future to study the pandemic’s effects on Metra and Pace,” he added.

Building off a pilot ICT-IDOT project R27-SP45, the researchers sought to examine temporal and spatial factors affecting transit ridership loss to help inform transit agencies’ policy decisions.

Ouyang, with doctoral students Jesus Osorio and Yining Liu, performed a series of statistical analyses of Chicago Transit Authority’s rail and bus systems using ridership data from 2001 through May 2022 — including a 14-month analysis period with the latest COVID-19 developments.

“This extended analysis period was really valuable, because that time period also coincided with vaccines becoming available and changes in the pandemic or changes in the severity of the virus,” Ayvalik said.

They developed hundreds of time-series models for CTA rail stations and bus lines to understand how factors such as vaccines, work-from-home flexibility, and Centers for Disease Control policies affect the ridership evolution over time.

They also related temporal features with sociodemographic characteristics and land use patterns to address spatial disparity near a particular station or route.

The research team introduced new variables to the statistical models, such as workplace occupancy rates, vaccination rates, discount fare programs, unemployment, gas prices and crime rates.

They found that workplace occupancy rates, vaccination rates, discount fare programs and crime rates significantly affected over 80 to 90 percent of all CTA rail stations and bus lines.

“The most interesting finding was the effects of workplace occupancy on transit ridership,” Ayvalik said. “The project was able to quantify and find a very strong link between these two.”

Ouyang’s team also discovered that vaccination rates and fare discount programs are effective in increasing transit ridership, particularly for younger adults, minority groups and essential workers.

RTA aims to use the findings of the ICT-IDOT project to implement action items in its 2023 regional transit plan, Transit Is the Answer, which has been in development since early 2022.

The plan will focus on implementing 14 advocacy and action agenda items, including building regional coalition, improving rider experiences, rebuilding transit ridership and exploring robust resources for funding.

“This study is helpful for us to prioritize some of these items and add more information to this discussion or to these action items,” Ayvalik said.

“Our transit ridership is still at around the 60% level, so there is a significant loss of ridership, which will result in a loss of revenue to support operations once the COVID-19 relief funds are spent,” he added. “So, the plan is to look for new, more robust funding sources.”