Work

Changes in the determinants of travel demand for the Washington DC Metrorail system after COVID-19: Evidence from a replication study

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic influenced many changes to daily lifestyles, including public transportation ridership. To accommodate changes in ridership patterns, it is important to consistently update knowledge of the factors that most influence a rider’s decision to use public transportation. Origin-Destination Direct Ridership Models are one of the methods used to accomplish this, as they examine the sensitivity of transit demand to changes across a series of explanatory variables. This study replicated a time-of-day, multi-level Origin-Destination Land Use Ridership Model (OD-LURM), previously developed using 2014 ridership data and published in this journal, with 2022 SmarTrip card data from the Washington, D.C. Metrorail System. Comparing model results from 2014 and 2022, the magnitudes of the effects of various determinants on Metrorail ridership were examined, taking into account three different groups of variables at the level of origin stations, destination stations, and OD-station pairs. The effects of job-related variables, parking users, parking capacity, bus line counts, and median household income in AM peak, PM peak, and off-peak time periods were reduced compared to the previous study, sometimes drastically. The results also indicated a weaker model fit using the updated data. Overall, this replication study provides new context behind changes in post-pandemic ridership, and the results suggest persistent changes in travel behavior since the pre-pandemic period. The findings of this study could be used to inform transit oriented development, fare structures, and service levels in the D.C. metropolitan area post-pandemic.

Source: Case Studies on Transport Policy

DOI: 10.1016/j.cstp.2025.101394