A longitudinal survey on the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on long-term rail commuting

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic led to fundamental changes in working and commuting patterns for a segment of the workforce, with significant impacts on the level of patronage of public transport systems that are focused on catering to commuters. This aim of this work was to quantify this impact in the long term, using a longitudinal sample of 3826 commuters with a focus on those using rail in Great Britain. Using a panel built in 2020, commuting habits pre-pandemic were compared with those in February 2023. Survey data can now shed light on long-term behavioural adjustments. Building on previous waves, the current wave addresses topics such as commuting frequency, frequency of working from home (WFH) and individual perceptions of WFH and/or in the workplace plus long-term individual decisions such as changes in home location. The results revealed that the pandemic led to a reduction of 1.18 in the number of days commuting to work per week and an increase of 0.85 in the number of days WFH. In addition, if employers had not put restrictions on workplace attendance, the return to commuting would have been 12 percentage points lower. Nonetheless, there is evidence employees are internalising their employer's restrictions to some extent.