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Traveler Behavior and Public Transport in the Age of COVID-19
August 11, 2021 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted public life around the world. Public transport, which seems to be inherently incompatible with the social distancing defense against transmission, has been hit particularly hard. As a result of reduced travel demand and explicit advisories against public transport use, ridership has declined sharply, perceptions regarding this mode have become more negative, and there has been a significant shift to personal transport modes. In order to restore confidence in public transport, it is critical to understand how travelers have adapted their behavior under these exigent circumstances and assess which trip-related and contextual factors contribute to the perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 while traveling.
Sanmay Shelay and researchers at the Delft University of Technology conducted two stated choice experiments with train travelers in the Netherlands. In the first, they analyzed and segmented travelers according to behavior related to three criteria affecting the risk of COVID-19 transmission, namely distance to others, exposure duration, and prevalent infection rate. For the second study, a hierarchical information integration approach was used where they estimated the importance of various factors (e.g., face mask use, lockdown status, on-board crowding, etc.) on perceived COVID-19 risk in public transport and evaluated how perceived risk was traded-off with other travel attributes in a two-stage experiment.
Results from these studies will be useful for demand forecasting and understanding the impact of COVID-19 related fear on travel behavior in public transport. Insights from the study may be valuable for policy designs aimed at managing demand and designing marketing campaigns that target skeptical groups and showcase measures mitigating perceived risk.
Details
- Date:
- August 11, 2021
- Time:
-
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Website:
- https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nmf0BiC9Qoq6t-CiPbKD-Q
Venue
- Virtual
Organizer
- C2SMART
- Website:
- https://archive.c2smart.engineering.nyu.edu/