covid pic
 

As part of the project, we are resampling thousands of respondents from our previous 2018 California mobility survey (~3,400 respondents from California) and 2019 "8 cities" travel survey (~3,300 respondents from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Kansas City and Washington DC). This is giving us a unique opportunity to build a longitudinal study to investigate the impacts of the pandemic.  Our research team is also coordinating with other colleagues in the US and Europe, and plans to develop comparative analyses with them.

The research team collected information on several dimensions of interest, including regular travel patterns, vehicle ownership, household organization, telecommuting patterns, e-shopping behaviors, emerging delivery services, environmental attitudes, land use preferences, use of shared mobility - including ridehailing (e.g. Uber/Lyft), shared ridehailing (i.e. UberPOOL/Lyft Share), car sharing, bike sharing and e-scooter sharing, use of public transit, active modes of transportation, propensity towards AVs, among other variables, for all respondents from the baseline data collections in 2018 / 2019 (when everybody was having their regular lifestyles). The longitudinal study gives our research team a great opportunity to analyze the changes in individuals’ attitudes and behaviors now as well as through a third round of data collection after people go back to the “new” normality (fall 2020 or Spring 2021). We are also recruiting additional respondents from the same regions already included in the study, as well as through adding other cities in the US and Canada. 

The UC Davis COVID-19 mobility research led by Prof. Giovanni Circella includes
  • A quantitative component centered on online surveys-based data collected before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic associated with the adoption and use of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions, including telecommuting and e-shopping, and their impacts on transportation, logistics, and lifestyle
  • A qualitative component featuring in-depth phone interviews to deepen the investigation of the same topics
  • A complementary set of information based on real-time data provided by Streetlight Data for the trips made by motorized transportation means, active modes, and online-shopping delivery before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
 
Our research also provides a unique opportunity to build a robust longitudinal study to investigate the impacts of the pandemic through the availability of information for the same US-based respondents at three points in times: i.e. before, with data collected in 2018 and 2019, and during the pandemic in Spring 2020 (our future data collection is planned for Spring 2021).
 
This research is being conducted by the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies of UC Davis. For questions about this study, please contact the Director of the 3RFM Program Dr. Giovanni Circella. For inquiries about the 3RFM Program, please contact Program Manager Rosa Dominguez-Faus. For media inquiries, please contact Director of Communications Sam Chiu.