Collaborative Research: RAPID: Maintain Mobility and Reduce Infection Through a Resilient Transit and Micromobility System

新冠肺炎疫情对城市的健康、经济和交通系统造成了前所未有的破坏。对抗感染率增长的关键战略是通过“社会距离”，保持与他人的身体隔离。这一战略与交通系统不相容，几乎每个公交市场的乘客量都大幅下降，导致机构降低服务水平，以保护乘客和员工。尽管如此，许多城市都需要机动性，而城市要想从大范围的经济停摆中迅速恢复，就需要改善城市地区的机动性系统。在过去的十年中，更多样化的共享移动系统激增，潜在地提高了城市交通系统的弹性和冗余性。最近，微型移动系统(即共享自行车和共享滑板车)已经进入城市，并补充了这些地区的交通系统。作为一种共享的个人交通工具，微型机动车辆在疫情爆发的头几周在一些市场得到了高度利用，尽管过境乘客量有所下降。这是一个重要的机会，让我们了解共享微动系统如何补充过境，并可支持社会距离，以限制疾病的传播，同时也促进城市交通的恢复。为此，本研究有两个主要目的。首先，研究小组将对两个拥有强劲微移动市场的中型运输市场(纳什维尔和波特兰)的过境和微移动用户大流行的持续时间进行一系列小组调查。这些调查将询问与社会距离要求、过境限制、工作状态、收入、活动限制等相关的模式选择行为并建立模型。研究小组试图了解乘客是否会自我监管交通工具的使用和暴露，并平衡他们的行为与感知到的风险。该团队将使用详细的机构和微移动运营商数据来跟踪恢复期间乘客数量的变化。第二个目标是将这些发现预测到更多关于不同规模和不同新冠肺炎感染率的城市之间的交通和微机动性的综合乘客数据上。这将提供关于两种主要共享模式--过境和微机动系统--的乘客如何应对大流行的详细了解。到目前为止，关于过境应对疾病暴发的工作很少。2002/2003年的SARS疫情提供了一些综合证据，表明过境乘客人数长期下降。这项工作将对非聚合骑手行为、疾病传播以及个人和社区风险容忍度提供重要的见解。此外，这项工作将探索像共享微移动这样的新兴模式如何在减少密切个人接触的同时提供保持流动性的机会。开发的模型可以帮助预测城市交通系统在公共卫生危机后将如何恢复。突发公共卫生事件将持续到未来，为如何应对此类突发事件做好准备将是重要的。例如，微型移动系统可以提供急需的运输服务，以补充有限的运输服务。了解微流动和转运的双重作用将有助于限制疾病传播和恢复运输系统。政策回应可以基于这项研究中为当前和未来的传染病大流行而产生的证据。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions to health, the economy, and transportation systems in cities. The key strategy to combat growth in the infection rate is through "social distancing," maintaining physical separation from others. This strategy is incompatible with transit systems and ridership in nearly every transit market has plunged, causing agencies to reduce service levels to protect riders and employees. Still, mobility is required in many cities and the ability of cities to rapidly recover from widespread economic shutdown will require improving mobility systems in urban areas. In the past decade, more diverse shared mobility systems have proliferated, potentially improving the resilience and redundancy of the urban transportation system. Most recently, micromobility systems (i.e., bike share and scooter share) have entered cities and supplemented transportation systems in those areas. As a shared personal mobility vehicle, micromobility vehicles have been highly utilized in some markets in the early weeks of the pandemic even as transit ridership has declined. This is an important opportunity to understand how shared micromobility systems complement transit and can support social distancing to limit spread of disease while also facilitating urban transportation recovery. To that end, this study has two main aims. First, the research team will conduct a series of panel surveys for the duration of the pandemic of transit and micromobility users in two medium-sized transportation markets (Nashville and Portland) that have robust micromobility markets. These surveys will query and model mode choice behavior in relation to social distancing requirements, transit captivity, job status, income, activity restrictions, and others. The research team seeks to understand if riders self-regulate transit use and exposure and balance their behavior with perceived risks. The team will use detailed agency and micromobility operator data to track changes in ridership during recovery. The second aim is to project those findings on more aggregate ridership data of transit and micromobility across cities of different sizes and with different COVID-19 infection rates. This will provide detailed understanding of how riders react to pandemic in regard to two main shared modes; transit and micromobility systems. To date there has been little work on the response of transit to disease outbreaks. The 2002/2003 SARS outbreak provides some aggregate evidence of long-duration drops in transit ridership. This work will provide important insight into disaggregate rider behavior, disease transmission, and personal- and community-risk tolerance. Moreover, this work will explore how emergent modes, like shared micromobility provide opportunities to maintain mobility while reducing close personal contact. Models developed can help predict how city transit systems will recover after a public health crisis. Public health emergencies will continue into the future and preparation on how to react to such emergencies will be important. For example, micromobility systems may provide much needed transportation services to supplement limited transit service. Understanding the dual roles of micromobility and transit will assist in limiting disease transmission and recovering the transportation system. Policy responses could be based on evidence generated in this study for the current and future infectious disease pandemics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.