How the way we get around has changed since the pandemic

Gavin Stone, The Virginian-Pilot on Dec 4, 2024

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The COVID-19 pandemic had a major disruptive effect on daily life that continues to shape our behavior in many ways. One way to measure that is to look at the changes to the way people travel.

The total miles traveled by all vehicles in the U.S. dropped 18% “overnight” when the pandemic hit, which resulted in a roughly 50% reduction in traffic delays, but by 2022 had risen to be only 5% below the 2019 total, according to David Schrank, who leads the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and presented the findings of the 2023 Urban Mobility Report to transportation industry leaders last month.

Schrank, who co-authored the report, said that traffic congestion on and off the highways has shifted to different times of day, making highway traffic during peak hours in the morning and afternoon lighter (a shift of about 1% of the total daily traffic) but non-peak traffic slightly heavier. On non-highway roads, peak morning traffic was still lighter in 2022 compared to 2019 and non-peak traffic was still slightly heavier, but peak afternoon traffic is virtually identical to the 2019 levels, the data shows.

The study breaks down the change in traffic delays in 101 urban areas broken down by population size.

“One of the interesting things that we saw coming out of COVID in the national congestion numbers is that a lot of the smaller urban areas — the 50,000, the 100,000 populations — all of a sudden were starting to have more congestion than ever before because a lot of those spots were near national state parks and people were getting out of their houses and all of a sudden they were going camping,” Schrank said. “We’re starting to be spend more of our dollars on experiences and international travel than we did necessarily going into COVID.”

There’s been more trucking traffic than ever, thanks to the increase in home deliveries, according to the study. The congestion cost, meaning the annual value of delay time and wasted fuel by all vehicles, increased by 3% from 2019 to 2022 but the truck congestion cost increased by 16%.

One of the most glaring impacts is the hit to use of public transit with an average reduction of use of about 27% across all modes since February 2019. Over that time, bus ridership in the U.S. has fallen by 23% and light rail has fallen by 30%, but between April 2023 and April 2024 bus ridership increased by about 13% and light rail increased by about 9%.

“Yes, it’s inching back up but we have a long way to go to get back to where we were pre-COVID,” Schrank said.

In a survey of behaviors before and after the pandemic, 38% of respondents said they use public transit less than before the pandemic, 57% said they use it about the same, and only 5% said they use it more. Schrank contrasted this with 36% of respondents who said they shop online more than they did pre-pandemic and only 5% who said they use it less than before the pandemic.

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