policy brief

When is Public Transit Too Crowded, and How Has This Changed During the Pandemic?

Publication Date

October 1, 2020

Author(s)

Brian D. Taylor, Tianxing Dai

Areas of Expertise

Public Transit, Shared Mobility, & Active Transportation Safety, Public Health, & Mobility Justice

Abstract

One of the first measures that U.S. public health authorities recommended in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was social distancing; U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines recommended that people “stay at least 6 feet (about 2 arms’ length) from other people who are not from [their] household in both indoor and outdoor spaces.”1 Public transit agencies had to then figure out what social distancing meant for their vehicles and riders. To track and evaluate transit operator implementation of social distancing recommendations, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) researchers searched for and reviewed the websites of 200 transit agencies across the U.S. There is no industrywide standard for vehicle crowding before the pandemic, nor is there one now — as definitions of socially distanced transit vary widely. This policy brief summarizes what the researchers learned about agency definitions of crowding before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.