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

COVID-19大流行对城市的健康、经济和交通系统造成了前所未有的破坏。遏制感染率增长的关键战略是通过“社交距离”，保持与他人的身体隔离。这种策略与交通系统不兼容，几乎每个交通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，许多城市仍然需要流动性，城市从广泛的经济停滞中迅速恢复的能力将需要改善城市地区的流动系统。在过去的十年中，更多样化的共享交通系统已经激增，可能会提高城市交通系统的弹性和冗余度。最近，微移动系统（即，自行车共享和踏板车共享）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移动车辆，尽管过境乘客量有所下降，但在疫情爆发的最初几周，微型移动车辆在一些市场的使用率很高。这是一个重要的机会，可以了解共享微交通系统如何补充交通，并支持社交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运输市场（纳什维尔和波特兰）的运输和微型移动用户大流行期间进行一系列小组调查，这些市场具有强大的微型移动市场。这些调查将查询和模型模式选择行为的关系，社会距离的要求，过境圈养，工作状况，收入，活动限制，和其他。研究小组试图了解乘客是否会自我调节交通使用和暴露，并平衡他们的行为与感知风险。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量的变化。第二个目标是将这些发现投射到不同规模和不同COVID-19感染率的城市之间的交通和微流动性的更综合乘客量数据上。这将详细了解乘客如何对两种主要共享模式的流行病作出反应;公共交通和微型交通系统。迄今为止，在应对疾病爆发的过境方面几乎没有开展工作。2002/2003年SARS爆发提供了一些综合证据，证明过境乘客量长期下降。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见解。此外，这项工作将探讨紧急模式，如共享微移动性，如何提供保持移动性的机会，同时减少密切的个人接触。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非常重要。例如，微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。了解微移动和运输的双重作用将有助于限制疾病传播和恢复运输系统。政策反应可以基于本研究中产生的证据，为当前和未来的传染病pandemics.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.