Evidence exists that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, travel behaviour was relatively stable, once one accounts for "conditioning factors" such as urban growth, labour force changes, etc. Expectations are that the pandemic disrupted this stable behaviour, creating a "new normal" going forward. This paper presents an investigation of this hypothesis by comparing travel behaviour as captured in two large-sample household travel surveys conducted in the GGH: the 2016 and 2022/23 Transportation Tomorrow Surveys (TTS). 2016 was the last pre-pandemic TTS. Approximately 70% of the post-pandemic survey was gathered in fall, 2022, while 30% was gathered in spring, 2023. While travel behaviour may not have fully stabilized, the 2022/23 TTS should provide clear indications of the general nature of regional post-pandemic travel behaviour. The analysis compares a range of metrics: out-of-home activity generation by purpose; activity start times and durations; trip mode choices; tour characteristics. Hypotheses tested include whether changes have occurred in: work-from-home (WfH) rates, transit and active (walk/bike) mode shares, off-peak travel patterns and household distributions in the region.
Working from home (WFH) has significantly impacted telecommuters' activity-travel behavior and urban transportation systems, with potential to reduce traffic congestion, peak-hour pressure, and emissions. Early studies in the 1990s, when WFH began emerging as a regular work setting, identified it as a sustainable strategy to alleviate congestion and emissions. However, as WFH became more common, later research suggested its benefits might diminish due to more dispersed home locations and increased non-work travel, both enabled by telecommuting flexibility. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted WFH from a choice to an obligation, profoundly altering its impacts on activity-travel patterns. While numerous studies examined WFH during the pandemic, research on the effects of the post-pandemic hybrid work environment remains limited. This study uses a week-long activity-travel survey to explore how the hybrid work model affects trip-making behavior. Preliminary findings reveal that the post-pandemic hybrid work environment influences activity-travel patterns differently than the conventional pre-pandemic WFH. Notably, regular hybrid workers, splitting work evenly between home and office, show higher trip rates than occasional telecommuters, who primarily work from home. However, in general, higher rates of WFH throughout the week are associated with fewer trips and reduced travel distances as expected.
By 2019, car sharing had become an important element of the urban transportation mobility ecosystem that enabled households to reduce their vehicle ownership levels. Car sharing companies had been well established in major cities for years, even decades, and by the late 2010s, car sharing had expanded to the suburbs. The COVID-19 pandemic brought an abrupt end to this expansion, and car sharing companies shrunk their sphere of operations, with several going out of business completely.
This study draws on three surveys of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) carried out in 2018, 2021 and 2023, representing near peak pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic conditions for car-sharing. Car-sharing fared quite differently in different parts of the region, with almost no drop in car share membership in Hamilton between 2018 and 2021, a modest decline in Toronto and a significant decrease in Peel and York. In addition to car-sharing, the surveys asked about teleworking and auto ownership, and we have estimated a joint model of car-sharing, telework and auto ownership, both a pooled model and one for each survey year, in order to tease out the different role car-sharing membership (and telework) played in reducing car ownership in each period.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the travel patterns within cities around the world and its long-lasting effects are still being studied. There has been research on some of COVID-19's long-term impacts on urban transportation systems, from public transportation ridership to commuting patterns, but the pandemic's long-term impact on on-street parking has not been investigated. This paper examines this through analyzing the spatial and temporal trends for parking in 938 paid on-street locations in Toronto. Two sets of parking transaction data were used for the analysis, one from May 2019 to July 2019 and another from May 2022 to June 2022. The results show that parking demand decreased by approximately 20 percent while parking duration increased by approximately 10 percent in the post-pandemic period. Furthermore, the daily patterns in parking demand and duration for weekdays and Saturdays are similar between the 2019 and 2022 scenarios. Finally, the spatial distribution of on-street parking duration within Toronto is similar between the pre- and post-pandemic scenarios. These findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has not significantly impacted on-street parking behaviour within Toronto in the long-term.
While most studies have descriptively analyzed the effects of COVID-19 on travel behavior, a deeper behavioral analysis using econometric modeling is necessary to identify the factors influencing these changes. This research examines how perceptions of COVID-19 and health concerns shape travel behaviors and explores the attitudinal variables that explain the use of different transportation modes. Additionally, it investigates the role of these attitudinal variables as antecedents of teleworking and online shopping intentions. This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it develops econometric micro-behavioral models to examine anticipated post-COVID travel behaviors. Second, it identifies behavioral differences across individuals based on their characteristics. Third, it incorporates attitudinal variables related to virtual activities into the modeling framework to assess their impact on mobility behaviors. Our approach categorizes individuals based on their anticipated post-pandemic mode usage and models the determinants influencing these categories. Using data from our COVID Survey 2022, including new attitudinal variables, we employ a Hybrid Choice Model to explore travel mode preferences. By uncovering key drivers of travel behavior, this research aims to inform policymakers in creating effective long-term strategies to address evolving mobility needs in response to significant events that can fundamentally alter travel behavior trends.
