Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how Californians travel, work, and shop. While overall travel levels have largely recovered, the rise of remote work, online shopping, and more flexible schedules have reshaped when, why, and how people travel. Yet many transportation policies and planning tools still rely on outdated assumptions about travel behavior, creating a growing mismatch between policy and reality, with implications for infrastructure planning, congestion, air pollutant emissions, and more. To better understand these changes, the research team analyzed travel data from 2019 and 2023 across four primary travel modes–driving, public transit, walking, and bicycling. To examine changes in driving and transit, the research team used data from sites around the state for driving and transit use, in addition to data from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) region to analyze walking and biking.
