Wheels on the Bus: Impact of Vaccine Rollouts on Demand for Public Transportation

Abstract

Public transit ridership tumbled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to enormous budget deficits and prompting slashed or eliminated service offerings across the United States. These service cuts may cause a vicious cycle and end up hurting the most vulnerable riders who cannot afford to switch to other options. In this paper, we estimate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination progress on the demand for public transportation. To overcome well-documented challenges associated with empirically estimating the impact of vaccinations, we leverage unique features of the COVID-19 vaccination process to identify an instrumental variable. By merging the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination data with several sources of mobility and transportation data, we construct a sample connecting vaccination rates with the demand for public transportation. Using the instrumental variable approach, we estimate a one-percentage-point increase in the vaccination rate led to a 0.676% increase in the mobility in public transit centers. In addition, the extended vaccination leads to a significant increase in the number of trips across all distance ranges. We also examine trip modality and show extended vaccination contributed to increased mobility in bus stations, railway stations, and airport terminals. Our findings demonstrate the significant impact of vaccine rollouts on the demand for public transportation and provide strong support for restoring and revitalizing public transit infrastructure in anticipation of vaccine-buoyed demand recovery.