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

2019冠状病毒病大流行对城市的卫生、经济和交通系统造成了前所未有的破坏。遏制感染率上升的关键策略是保持“社交距离”，即与他人保持身体隔离。这种策略与公交系统不相容，几乎每个公交市场的客流量都大幅下降，导致各机构降低服务水平，以保护乘客和员工。尽管如此，许多城市仍然需要交通，而城市要想从广泛的经济停摆中迅速恢复，就需要改善城市地区的交通系统。在过去的十年里，更多样化的共享交通系统激增，有可能提高城市交通系统的弹性和冗余性。最近，微型交通系统（即自行车共享和滑板车共享）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流动交通工具，在大流行的最初几周，尽管过境客流量有所下降，但微型交通工具在一些市场得到了高度利用。这是一个重要的机会，可以了解共享微交通系统如何补充公共交通，如何支持社会距离，以限制疾病传播，同时促进城市交通恢复。为此，本研究有两个主要目的。首先，研究小组将在两个中型交通市场（纳什维尔和波特兰）进行一系列小组调查，以确定交通和微型交通工具用户大流行期间的情况，这两个市场拥有强大的微型交通工具市场。这些调查将查询和模拟与社会距离要求、交通限制、工作状态、收入、活动限制等相关的模式选择行为。研究小组试图了解乘客是否会自我调节交通工具的使用和暴露，并在他们的行为与感知到的风险之间取得平衡。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客流量的变化。第二个目标是将这些发现应用于不同规模和不同COVID-19感染率的城市的公交和微交通的更综合客流量数据。这将详细了解骑手如何应对两种主要共享模式的大流行；交通和微型交通系统。迄今为止，关于过境应对疾病暴发的工作很少。2002/2003年的SARS疫情提供了公交客流量长期下降的一些综合证据。这项工作将为分解骑手行为、疾病传播以及个人和社区风险承受能力提供重要的见解。此外，本研究将探讨共享微流动性等紧急模式如何在减少亲密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公共卫生危机后城市交通系统将如何恢复。公共卫生突发事件将持续到未来，如何应对此类突发事件的准备工作将是重要的。例如，微型交通系统可以提供急需的运输服务，以补充有限的过境服务。了解微流动性和交通的双重作用将有助于限制疾病传播和恢复交通系统。政策反应可以基于本研究为当前和未来传染病大流行产生的证据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.