University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

Transit ridership plummeted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what constituted passenger crowding contracted dramatically as well. We examine trends in average passenger loads and their correlates in a national sample of U.S. transit operators during the first year of the pandemic and find that passenger loads in high-transit-ridership areas and on the largest systems fell the most early on. Passenger loads were actually somewhat more likely to increase in places where COVID-19 rates were higher during the first year of the pandemic, which suggests that pandemic transit riders had fewer options to travel by other means.