Changes in Bike and Scooter Travel Behavior During COVID-19
Over the last few months, COVID-19 has profoundly impacted many aspects of daily life, including transportation. When shelter-in-place orders went into effect around the country, people largely stayed home and avoided non-essential travel. However, critical workers still needed to commute to work, and people-at-home still needed to perform limited, essential trips and get outside for exercise.
During this time, cities have taken rapid and creative steps to support public health and safety especially as it relates to transportation. As Lyft continues to work with city partners to help keep people moving, we want to share what we’re seeing and what we think this means for urban transportation as our country begins to recover. More so than ever, micromobility is proving itself to be a vital way for people to get around.
Summary of Insights from Lyft’s Bike + Scooter Services (March 2020— June 2020):
- The share of rides to and from bikeshare stations near hospitals has increased, highlighting the role bikeshare is playing in supporting critical healthcare workers.
- Through free memberships, Lyft has provided over 350,000 free trips to critical workers across the country.
- 80% of riders in these critical workforce programs are brand new members to Lyft’s micromobility services.
- Lyft’s critical workforce programs have also created a record high in female bikeshare membership. In New York City, 61.7% of the members of the critical worker program were female. As a result, the share of female membership in the Citi Bike system (currently at 37.8% of active members) has increased by 3.4 percentage points since May 2020, and by 5.1 percentage points compared to June 2019.
- Ride activity during traditional morning commute hours has decreased, consistent with work-from-home policies, increased recreational riding, and new riders who work non-traditional schedules.
- Bikeshare and scooter trip distances are increasing, likely due to increased recreational riding and potential mode shift from other transportation modes.
- Micromobility (in particular, bikeshare) may be playing a role in providing an alternative transportation option in places where public transit service has been discontinued.
Micromobility is Supporting Essential Trips
One thing we wanted to understand was if trip origins and destinations were changing as a result of COVID-19. For our analysis, we looked at three different time periods:
- Pre-COVID-19 (the week of March 2, 2020)
- During COVID-19: after the WHO declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic (week of March 16, 2020)
- On-going COVID-19: during Shelter-in-Place orders (week of April 13, 2020)
Most notably, we observed a gain in the relative share of trips to and from hospitals. This finding is most pronounced in bikeshare, where compared to last year (2019), trips to and from stations near hospitals are up as a proportion of all trips in multiple markets.
This finding suggests a new wave of riders who are increasingly depending on bikeshare and scooters to get around: critical workers.
Part of this finding may be due to the role that micromobility plays as a redundancy or backstop to public transit. According to a recent report from TransitCenter, about 36% of all transit commuters work in essential industries. These workers comprise a disproportionate share of transit ridership compared to the general public, making affordable, safe, and physically distanced transportation choices essential to maintaining the operation of critical services.
During COVID-19, many transit agencies have seen significant drops in ridership and have been forced to make cuts in service, such as suspending routes or reducing frequency. To help support the first-responder, healthcare, and transit workforce as they serve the public, we launched programs like the LyftUp Critical Workforce Program with local partners to offer free bikeshare memberships and scooter rides.
Across the country, we’ve been enrolling critical workers in this program. Since launch, LyftUp has provided over 350,000 trips to the Critical Workforce Program members across the country. Many of these trips include rides to and from stations that start or end near hospitals. The chart below offers a breakdown of where we’re seeing the majority of trips.
Because of the increased demand for critical healthcare workers using bikeshare, we’re even beginning to create new stations near hospitals. For example, in New York City, Citi Bike added a new station near Columbia University Medical Center in Washington Heights, marking the first station north of Harlem, and also added our first station in the Bronx outside Lincoln Hospital.
The Critical Workforce Programs have been effective at getting new riders to try out bikes and scooters, and may have longer term impacts on people choosing to commute differently. For example, we found that 80% of riders in our programs for critical workers are brand new members to Lyft’s micromobility services.
Similarly, these programs heavily recruited women, which has created a record high for female ridership. In New York City, 61.7% of the Critical Workforce Program members were female. As a result, the share of female membership in the Citi Bike system (currently 37.8% of active members) has increased by 3.4 percentage points since May 2020, and by 5.1 percentage points compared to June 2019.
Understanding Changes in Trip Activity
We’ve also seen early signs that people may be changing how they use bikes and scooters.
Time of Day Changes
There have been shifts in micromobility usage when looking at ridership by hour of day. Previously, demand for micromobility was highest during the morning (7 AM-10 AM) and evening (4 PM-7 PM) commutes. However, the morning commute demand has decreased during COVID-19 and trips are far more likely to occur between 12 PM-7 PM.
The decrease in morning commute demand is expected given many riders are no longer commuting to offices. The fact that the evening commute demand has been less affected likely reflects a few possible factors at play:
- Critical workers may be using micromobility for their commute trips, which don’t conform to traditional commute hours.
- Riders are still/increasingly relying on micromobility, but trip purposes may be expanding beyond commuting to include more errands or leisure trips, which take place during the 12 PM-7 PM time period.
Trip Distance Changes
In addition to time of day changes, we’ve observed a noticeable shift towards longer micromobility trips greater than 2 km (1.24 mi) in length.
We see a few reasons (non-mutually exclusive) for why this could be happening:
- Riders may be substituting away from micromobility to walking for short trips under 1km.
- Riders may be turning to more “socially distant” transportation options, including micromobility, for longer trips.
- Riders may be using micromobility for leisure. This is evident from our bikeshare systems, where we’ve also begun to notice an increase in rides starting and ending at the same station, suggesting recreational or exercise trip loops. The warmer weather helps, too.
Backstop for Suspended Transit Service
The increase in trip length raised a natural follow-up question of whether micromobility may be filling gaps in transit service.
To look at this question we first focused our analysis on San Francisco, where the SFMTA made significant reductions to its transit service and Bay Wheels expanded bikeshare service citywide. Understanding true mode shift would require surveying riders and asking them if they were in fact substituting a transit trip with a bikeshare trip. Since we did not have that information readily available, we could only see evidence of potential trip substitution.
We looked at trip data as the next best indicator. We analyzed trips where bikeshare and public transit are most substitutable: bike rides that both started and ended within 100m of a transit stop on the same route. If we found an increase in rides that both started and ended near a transit stop, it would suggest a possibility that the trip was replacing what could have been a public transit trip.
The graph below shows this metric before and after the SFMTA suspended various Muni routes across the city.
The data shows an increase in bike trips along routes where the SFMTA suspended Muni service for major routes compared to ridership levels pre-COVID-19.
We also looked at this phenomenon in Los Angeles, and whether scooter trips were playing a similar role. We selected bus routes that were impacted by service suspension or modified schedules in Los Angeles. Namely, we saw an increase in the percentage of scooter rides that started and ended within 100m of a bus stop along the 442 (Inglewood/South L.A. to Downtown L.A.), 456 (Long Beach to Downtown L.A.), 704 (Downtown L.A. to Santa Monica), and 720 West L.A. to Commerce via Downtown L.A.) bus routes.
In both of these case studies, if micromobility was not an option, it’s possible that riders would not have been able to make these essential trips.
Building a Resilient Transportation Network
Public transit always has and must continue to be the backbone of urban mobility. But given the overall uncertainty about transit’s ability to return to normal in the aftermath of this pandemic, cities need to think about increasing the resiliency of their transportation networks.
Resilient and equitable cities depend on transportation networks that provide a variety of choices, including micromobility. As our country’s economies are reopening and people are resuming daily travel, we see an increased role for public-private partnerships in ensuring transportation choices. The changing demographics of who is riding requires cities to reassess how and where to make investments in active transportation infrastructure. But at the same time, we must consider who is not riding, and the intersection of race, equity, social justice, and bicycling. As we reckon with our cities’ collective histories of racist urban planning and policy decisions, we must ensure that we do better to extend these transportation options in a more equitable way as we meet the needs of this moment.
We are at a unique inflection point and now, more than ever, have the opportunity to improve the ways we design and move around our cities.
Special thanks to Tom Buckley, Yuan Fei, Ksenia Saenko, and Mike Frumin for their analysis.
