Oct 11th, 12:30-1:20pm, Lamis Ashour, PhD Candidate Research Talk
Title “A FOCUS GROUP STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ESSENTIAL WORKERS’ COMMUTE”
Topic summary:
The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted public transit services, which provided, and will continue to provide, a critical lifeline for many essential workers (Abu Ashour et al., 2021; McCahill, 2022; Wang, Shen, Abu Ashour, and Dannenberg, 2022;). As more and more institutions start to resume their in-person operations, it is necessary to understand how the pandemic affected essential workers’ commute and what it will take to ensure effective and equitable recovery of transportation services. Such knowledge will also be essential for achieving the long-term resilience of urban transportation systems. Because survey-based studies often failed to capture the nuances in essential workers’ changing commuting challenges and perceptions and the complicated mechanisms for travel behavioral adaptations, in the summer of 2021, we conducted semi-structured focus group discussions with 21 essential workers who are employees of the University of Washington. The discussion questions were designed to examine the reasons for and effects of essential workers’ commute mode shifts during the pandemic and explore promising approaches for the post-pandemic recovery of public transportation. We used NVivo 12 Pro to conduct a thematic analysis of the transcripted data and examined patterns of commute mode change with respect to participants’ attributes, including job type, home location, and gender. The thematic analysis identified 16 themes structured into three main periods: pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic. The themes helped gain important insights into the challenges, benefits, and contributing factors associated with different commute mode choices before and during the pandemic and revealed characteristics of post-pandemic commute expectations and desirable travel demand management policies. 
The results showed that most participants commuted by transit before the pandemic because of its accessibility, affordability, and enhanced value of travel time. At the beginning of the pandemic, however, most participants switched away from transit, and the majority drove alone to work, mainly because public transportation made them feel unsafe from pandemic infections and transit services became less frequent and unreliable. In the meantime, most participants found driving more advantageous, especially with subsidized parking which made this faster and safer alternative affordable. Most participants indicated that price would be the main determining factor in their post-pandemic commute mode choice. They believed that providing frequent transit service, complemented by reliable transit information through smartphone apps and a free or heavily subsidized transit pass, would recover transit demand in the post-pandemic period. Future research should look into actual changes in post-pandemic commute and transit ridership and develop innovative transit services and TDM policies to safeguard transportation equity for essential workers during both normal times and major crises.
Zoom Meeting