TRANSAS Webinar Q and A
The TRANSAS project held a webinar on December 4th, 2023, which focused on presenting an overview of the COVID-19 TRANSAS study, which sought to find out how society responded to the shock of COVID-19 and what has been learned. There were three detailed presentations on the topics of working from home, changes in car ownership, and holiday behaviours. Discussions were led by Prof. Jillian Anable, Dr. Chris Bretter, Prof. Greg Marsden, Dr. Nadia Naqvi and Phoebe Pitcher, and Prof. Nick Eyre chaired the event. Over 100 people attended the webinar, and Phoebe Pitcher's blog published on CREDS discusses the key trends in home working, car ownership and staycations presented at the webinar.
We've focused on some of the questions we received from the webinar and answers from the TRANSAS Researchers, separated by theme these include:
General Q&A
- Has concern about COVID now largely disappeared in the latest wave's data, e.g. as a deterrent to public transport usage?
The TRANSAS project can pull out the exact figures on this... so, keep an eye out! It was always quite interesting because we asked people whether they used a mode or not and then analysed it differently. It was always the case and remains the case that those who used a mode before COVID or during COVID had far less concern about COVID than those who didn't use the mode, so they perceived there to be a greater risk. That's another distinction that needs to be made rather than global figures about concern.
The transport focus ran many surveys weekly surveys looking at this. You could track the change in people's perceptions of the danger of travelling on public transport during the pandemic, and it was primarily nonusers who were responding in spikes to it. The users were much less sensitive to it.
- For the next pandemic study (!), would you recommend a panel method that includes a greater emphasis on travel diary records, if feasible?
As thorough as we have been in terms of the coverage, it can still be challenging to get a holistic view of causality… the travel diary would help a little bit with that and doing travel diaries would be the gold standard. With the panel study, you have lots of trade-offs; the great benefit is when people stick with it and return to the survey time after time so that you can track them. And, of course, if you offer them something even more burdensome (e.g., a travel diary), there's a danger that you're going to reduce that sticking power.
- Have you seen evidence to support the slightly cliche hypothesis that home-working has allowed many people to live further from their workplace and consequently travel further overall?
This is one of the absolute top priorities of investigation for the TRANSAS project. We are going to specifically investigate people who have moved in relation to their working from home, alongside other behaviours that we've measured as well. Please stay tuned!
Working from Home
Dr Christian Bretter explored the association between working from home (WFH) and transport mode usage over time, working habits on shopping behaviours, and other factors linked to current WFH patterns. For more details on Dr. Bretter’s presentation, please see the CREDS blog and/or email [email protected] for the slides.
- In the WfH changes context, is there evidence or otherwise of constant travel time budgets?
Unfortunately, we cannot calculate that. We only have the travel time for the commute. This is important in itself, but our research sought to look at the total effects on all travel. We wanted to look at the effect of working from home, not compounded by if people change jobs or changed home location. We do, however, have the ability, and we will look at those people who specifically moved house.
- Was there a shift for WFH parent-guardians in how they took children to school during or after the pandemic? Were there any measurements in your survey about this?
The survey measured how often parents walk their children to school, but we still need to look into how this differs by WFH segments. So, we do intend to look at this, but there were changes up and down with respect to car use for this purpose. This is on our to-do list, so please stay tuned.
- Were there any clues in the data about whether the significant changes in public transport or cycling are short-lived effects… or likely to be sustained when we emerge from a post-COVID flux?
So far, the data show that some changes (particularly those for walking and cycling) seem to endure until nowadays. Of course, we cannot say whether this will still be the case a few years from now, but it remains an exciting area for future research.
- Do you have evidence that a decrease in cycling is linked to an increase in walking?
We will look into this over the next few months, so please stay tuned.
- Any evidence that the move of train operators from season tickets to more flexible smartcard ticketing had on WFH?
Unfortunately, we do not have data on smartcard ticketing, so we will not be able to test this, but this is definitely something worth looking into.
Changes in Car Ownership
Dr Nadia Naqvi focused on factors affecting changes in car ownership before (February 2020) and after Covid-19 (December 2022). For more details on Dr. Naqvi’s presentation, please see the CREDS blog and/or email [email protected] for the slides.
- Is the increase in public transport use a cause or an effect of the reduction in car ownership?
We have used logistical regression models, which are only capable of establishing association through providing odds ratio or likelihood of increase and decrease. To find out the causal relationship, we need to adopt a different methodology like a quasi-experimental design e.g., interrupted time series design, etc.
- Is increasing car use associated with car-adding? Is increasing bus or rail travel associated with car-shedding?
This analysis does provide evidence of an association between public transport use and any changes in car ownership. An increase in public transport (bus/rail) increases the odds of car shedding. The causal inference could not be established through this type of analysis (logit regression models for categorial car ownership data).
- So, some people started to walk more and then decided they needed a car - rather than seeing the health benefits or mixing with public transport/cycling?
Our analysis reveals that walking has increased since Feb. 2020 level. Our study does not show that increasing walking mitigates against the idea of getting a car.
- Has there been any links to increased bicycle thefts that may be impacting reduced cycling?
Data on bicycle theft is not included in the TRANSAS data set.
- Was there any element to changes in (dis)ability occurring during COVID-19 that saw a shift in active travel or public transport usage vs. private car ownership?
The variable on the disability has some inconsistencies in different waves of data, and we are trying to resolve this issue. However, in one of the questions in wave 5 explaining reasons for reducing cars in the household, around 4.3 percent of households reported leaving a car due to being too ill to drive, a reason to abandon the car.
Staycations
Phoebe Pitcher focused on whether or not individuals continued to opt for staycations as an alternative to international travel after pandemic restrictions were eased and the use of staycations as a substitute for international travel. For more details on Phoebe’s presentation, please see the CREDS blog and/or email [email protected] for the slides.
- Was there any indication of the mode used for the international holidays?
We have yet to investigate this, but we could do so with our data set. We have a set of questions about the mode used to go on domestic/international holidays.
- An often-cited statistic on inequality is that 15% of people take 70% of flights. Can you draw a similar analysis by looking at this holiday data?
We could investigate this to an extent. However, the findings from Milena Buchs and Zia Wadud’s work on the long-distance travel project via CREDS might have some of the core statistics on this.
- Did you look at what is a sustainable holiday behaviour for UK households? To reduce carbon from international travel, do some (probably wealthy) families have to holiday a lot less, or is it a case that they switch to destinations reachable by rail/car?
These have yet to be analysed, but we could do so with the TRANSAS survey data. Phoebe wrote about this in her MSc dissertation, but she did not look at the mode of travel or quantity. Phoebe’s research is a fantastic starting point, as there is a need for research on whether staycations are even used as an alternative to international holidays.