Public Transport and the Pandemic: Do People Still Want to Get on the Bus?

This article was originally published here by the C40 Knowledge Hub. It is part of a new report Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery set out by leading mayors and a complementary set of policy briefs written by C40 for cities beginning their recovery phases which can be found here.

Countless cities around the world have made changes to public transport services to restrict the spread of Covid-19 and ensure the safe mobility of essential workers in the initial emergency response period. Ridership is down significantly, and continued physical distancing means there will be reduced capacity on individual services until the risk from Covid-19 is eliminated, threatening the financial viability of public transport networks.

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As cities reopen and look to live safely and sustainably with the virus, there is an urgent need to act quickly to ensure they don’t go from lockdown to gridlock. Past pandemics and early experience of Covid-19 clearly indicate that, without investment, cities can expect a significant shift from public transit to private cars as lockdown restrictions ease. Some Chinese cities have reported a 30-40% shift as they reopened.

More private vehicles on the roads would bring many cities to a standstill, with significant economic consequences, ramp up greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbate air and noise pollution, discourage walking and cycling, make cities less equitable and hamper access to job opportunities for lower-income people who cannot afford to drive.

Until the virus is gone, there remains a risk that large numbers of people using public transport could lead to a rise in Covid-19 transmission. To reduce this risk, cities can introduce or maintain a raft of measures already implemented in cities that have seen outbreaks

More cars would also undermine cities’ efforts to attract people back to the high street by making it harder to reallocate street space for shoppers and other pedestrians, restaurants and cafes, and other more productive uses. Read more about how cities are expanding space to help businesses operate while meeting physical-distancing requirements in Prioritising cyclists and pedestrians for a safer, stronger recovery.

Cities that include investment in public transport as a core pillar of economic stimulus packages can avoid a surge in car purchases and position themselves to reap significant rewards in the near and longer term.

Public transport investments generate significant economic rewards – greater than roadbuilding programmes or any other transport investment – including direct job creation and increased access to jobs and recreational opportunities, particularly for lower-income groups. Low-interest borrowing, reduced traffic and public appetite for positive change also present a window of opportunity for investment in electric buses and public transport to help to keep air pollution low and roads safe, among other benefits.

This article outlines some of the approaches that cities are taking to adapt mass transit to Covid-19 circumstances, as well as strategies and ideas emerging from cities for the longer-term sustainability and success of public transport services.

Minimising transmission of Covid-19 on public transport

Until the virus is gone, there remains a risk that large numbers of people using public transport could lead to a rise in Covid-19 transmission. To reduce this risk, cities can introduce or maintain a raft of measures already implemented in cities that have seen outbreaks. This will make public transport safer for staff and the individuals using it, reduce community transmission and help to restore trust in public transport for the longer term.

Measures to facilitate physical distancing on public transport include:

Invest in walking and cycling

Cities can also reduce crowding and transmission on public transport by investing in walking and cycling facilities. These approaches are complementary: by expanding walking and cycling infrastructure and making the roads safer for people on bikes or on foot, cities can reduce crowding on public transport. Read Prioritising cyclists and pedestrians for a safer, stronger recovery for more.

• Reducing capacity on individual services, to reduce crowding and facilitate physical distancing. As cities emerge from full or partial lockdowns and look for ways to live sustainably with the virus, measures to reduce capacity on individual services must be coupled with efforts to increase overall service capacity help ridership recover. The next section of this article explains the approaches that cities are taking to achieve this.

  • Rio de Janeiro has prohibited standing passengers on all of its bus rapid transit (BRT) services, with fines incurred for BRT operators that do not observe the rule.
  • In Spain, train companies are operating at just 30% of total seat capacity.
  • In Lagos, the government is working with the National Union of Road Transport Workers to ensure that buses only carry sitting passengers to minimise contact and crowding.
  • In Lima, where 75% of residents travel by public transport, the government now requires buses to run at half capacity to help contain the spread of Covid-19. To offset these capacity restrictions, the city is installing emergency bike lanes and working with partners to develop an inexpensive bicycle model to be manufactured locally as part of the city’s economic recovery plan. Read more about these plans here.

• Increasing the frequency of services during busier periods to reduce rider density. This is linked to the public transport improvements outlined below. An alternative approach is to extend ticket duration to allow passengers to wait for less crowded services, as cities including Montevideo have done.

• Encouraging continued home working and staggered working hours. This will help to reduce crowding on public transport services by cutting the overall number of people travelling each day, especially at busy times. City governments can lead by example by encouraging these practices among their own staff and promoting them among businesses in their jurisdictions. Attitudes to working from home and daily commutes are already changing due to lockdown measures, making this shift more achievable than ever before. In the United States, for example, a survey indicates that close to 20% of chief financial officers plan to permanently retain remote work for at least 20% of their workforce.

• Enabling physical distancing at bus stops and in stations, by marking 2m spots for passengers to wait. In London, bus stops have been enlarged to enable physical distancing.

• Reducing contact between transport staff and passengers, which is vital for the safety of staff and for keeping services running. To this end, cities are allowing passengers to board and embark from all doors, installing plexiglass shields, requiring cash-free transactions or making services free to reduce the transmission risk from fare payment. Cities can also establish Covid-19 monitoring systems, such as that in Bogotá, which allows transport staff and passengers to report potential Covid-19 symptoms in bus drivers and other personnel.

Other key measures to minimise transmission on public transport during the pandemic include:

• Frequently cleaning vehicles and stations. The frequency of disinfection services may need to be increased as more people return to public transport.

  • Bogotá has removed elements of buses that are more susceptible to virus contamination, such as carpets and seat covers, to make disinfection easier.

• Providing handwashing facilities and hand sanitiser. This will reduce the risk of transmission and improve passenger confidence in their safety.

  • Passengers at the Kigali Bus Park are required to wash their hands in dedicated basins before getting on buses.
  • Paris has placed hand sanitiser at all bus stops, while Cape Town has hand sanitisers on all buses.
  • Bogotá has installed handwashing facilities at the entrance to all TransMilenio BRT stations.

• Promoting or requiring the use of face masks. Masks should be worn by both staff and passengers on public transport. Cities should communicate that these do not need to be medical-grade masks, so as not to exacerbate shortages of personal protective equipment for key workers. All states in Germany have made it mandatory for face masks to be worn on public transport, with significant fines for those not complying.

Cities can also consider installing technology to support contact-tracing on public transport to help manage the virus. Shanghai and Nanjing, for example, have put QR codes on buses and metro trains, which riders scan with their mobile phones to help identify and inform people who have been exposed to Covid-19. Read more about contact tracing here and about Nanjing here. The Nanjing case study includes a video showing how this works in practice.

Using technology to manage demand and crowding

Mobile-phone technology can enable cities and transit providers to collect data on passengers and service demand, to help manage that demand and keep passengers safe.

In Auckland, the transport operator has issued an app (shown below) to inform passengers whether an approaching bus or train has space for the recommended 2m of physical distancing. Once a bus is at capacity for safe physical distancing, the app will show that the bus is no longer taking passengers, and the driver will only drop off passengers until it is safe to resume pickups.

Auckland Transport

Work with local partners to find innovative solutions

Bogotá’s mobility hackathon, #MOVID19, brought together data scientists, transport and public health experts to design ways to improve mobility across the city while reducing the transmission of Covid-19, focusing services on those who rely most on public transport. Solutions included a digital tool to reroute buses to better serve users while usual travel patterns are disrupted during the pandemic. Read more about Bogotá’s Covid-19 response in the case study.

Protecting and improving mass transit through the Covid-19 recovery

As full or partial lockdown restrictions ease, cities’ public transport networks will need to adapt to accommodate increased demand while keeping passengers safe. Investment will be needed to help ridership recover, to avoid an uptick in car ownership as people travel once again across their city for work and leisure. Operating transit with physical distancing requires increased service capacity, meaning greater road-space allocation and priority for surface transit.

During the coronavirus pandemic, some cities have also temporarily stopped on-board fare collection by making services fare-free, to help prevent transmission between passengers and staff

As ridership recovers, additional buses may also be required to accommodate more passengers while capacity on individual services is reduced. Critically, strategic investments in mass transit can help to kickstart cities’ economies during the next phase of the pandemic – living safely and sustainably with the virus – as well as for the longer term. To continue to provide accessible, high-quality and frequent public transport, some operators may need to be brought into public ownership, perhaps for a temporary period, while revenues remain low. Again, all investment in mass transit should be accompanied by increased walking and cycling provision.

Cities can:

• Rapidly install temporary bus lanes, add additional buses to busy routes and rephase traffic signals to favour public transit to improve efficiency and overall capacity. Many cities have installed temporary transit priority lanes by repurposing road space or kerbside parking spaces and altered signalling to improve service efficiency, frequency and reliability. In the United States, the National Association of City Transport Officials’ (NACTO) Streets for Pandemic Response & Recovery provides more guidance on how to plan and implement this. Strategies include monitoring ridership, crowding and travel time data, and adjusting capacity to optimise operational performance, meet public health guidance and prioritise transit-dependent communities. Barcelona is among the cities to have installed temporary lanes during the initial emergency response period (see photograph). In addition, as air pollution is making the impacts of Covid-19 worse, cities should ensure that any buses purchased to meet additional demand are electric.

• Turn temporary transit priority lanes into permanent dedicated bus and BRT lanes and continue to deliver on any prior plans for public transport expansion. While traffic on the streets is relatively low, cities have an opportunity to invest in permanent street reallocations for buses – as well as for walking and cycling – with minimal disruption.

  • London is closing many major city-centre roads to cars to provide more space for pedestrians, cyclists and buses to support the recovery process. It is working with borough councils to implement similar restrictions on the minor roads they manage, in addition to reinstating road-user charging schemes.
  • Seattle is among the cities making temporary measures permanent in this next phase, by permanently closing nearly 20 miles of streets to traffic.

• Maintain all-door bus boarding and invest in off-board fare collection. As well as helping to reduce Covid-19 transmission between passengers and staff, all-door boarding on buses can reduce waiting time at stops by more than 30%. During the coronavirus pandemic, some cities have also temporarily stopped on-board fare collection by making services fare-free, to help prevent transmission between passengers and staff. Ending on-board fare collection also helps to speed up services and can go hand-in-hand with a shift to all-door boarding. Cities can consider using off-board fare-collection technology as an inexpensive way of maintaining the efficiency gains and Covid-19 transmission benefits while re-instating transit fares. This will also help to ensure that transport services are resilient to future health crises.

• Maintain frequent cleaning of services. In many cities, there is a perception that public transport is unclean. This perception is likely to increase due to the pandemic, given the confined nature of most transit services. Cities can maintain clean and well-kept services beyond the pandemic to encourage higher ridership.

• Continue to enact or advocate for transit-oriented development (TOD) policies to support a larger-scale, longer-term shift away from private vehicles, even if transit ridership is reduced or variable in the shorter term. Read more about the benefits and practicalities of introducing TOD in How to implement transit-oriented development.

• Ensure or advocate for the inclusion of conditions requiring cleaner transit technologies in public transport operators’ recovery packages or financial aid, when fleet renewal is restarted. Cities can also advocate for incentives and investments in zero-emission vehicles and charging infrastructure as part of any national or regional stimulus for the bus auto industry.

• Working with industry and other partners, ensure that public transit subsidies within the city’s control are maintained or increased to provide stability to transit operations in the short and medium term.

• Develop institutional, policy and financial packages to help informal transport-service providers. In Global South cities, where informal transport plays a vital role in urban mobility, drivers’ incomes have dropped significantly. In Jakarta, for example, drivers’ incomes are estimated to have plummeted by 80%. This comes at a time when most city governments are also struggling to stay afloat amid competing financial demands. Informal transport providers are even more vulnerable to this decline in ridership and income than formal transit agencies, as they have less capacity to access emergency funding, or to organise. Developing packages to support informal transit workers could also help to catalyse formalisation programmes.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)