UC Irvine

Public transportation in the U.S., including in California, was declining before COVID-19, and the pandemic made a bad situation much worse. In this dissertation, I analyze data from the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys and from a California survey administered in May 2021 by IPSOS using both discrete choice (cross-nested logit and generalized ordered logit) and quasi-experimental (propensity score matching) tools first to investigate how Transportation Network Companies (TNCs, e.g., Uber and Lyft) impacted transit ridership before COVID-19, before analyzing how COVID-19 affected transit and other modes.In Chapter 2, my results for the U.S. show that individuals/households who use either public transit or TNCs share socio-economic characteristics, reside in similar areas, and differ from individuals/households who use neither public transit nor TNCs. In addition, individuals/households who use both public transit and TNCs tend to be Millennials or belong to Generation Z, with a higher income, more education, no children, and fewer vehicles than drivers. In Chapter 3, I quantify the impact of TNCs on household transit use by comparing travel for households from the 2017 NHTS (who had access to both transit and TNCs) matched with households from the 2009 NHTS (who only had access to transit) using propensity score matching. Overall, I find a 22% drop for weekdays (1.6 fewer daily transit trips by each household) and a 15% decrease for weekends (1.4 fewer daily transit trips by each household). In Chapter 4, I analyze how Californians changed transportation modes due to COVID-19 and explore their intentions to use different modes after COVID-19. I find that driving but especially transit and TNCs could see substantial drops in popularity after the pandemic. Many Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, lower-income people, and people who would like to telecommute more intend to use transit less. Key obstacles to a resurgence of transit after COVID-19 are insufficient reach and frequency, shortcomings that are especially important to younger adults, people with more education, and affluent households ("choice riders"). My findings highlight the danger of public transit entering into outsourcing agreements with TNCs, neglecting captive riders, and exposing choice riders to TNCs.