Resilience and Adaptability: The Evolving Roles of Bikeshare to Public Transport Amid Pandemic Disruptions

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted urban transportation, revealing the necessity for resilient and adaptable mobility solutions. Previous research primarily focused on the short-term impacts of the pandemic on individual transportation modes, often neglecting the intricate and multifaceted interactive effects on the relationships between bikeshare systems (BSS) and public transit (PT). This study addresses these gaps by employing a multilevel analytical framework that incorporates advanced statistical and machine learning methods to analyze the evolving roles of BSS to PT at micro, meso, and macro levels across four major U.S. cities during pandemic phases. The analysis uncovers short-term synergistic effects, long-term seasonal fluctuations, and dynamic variations in user behaviors influencing the casual relationships between these modes. Results indicate that BSS exhibited remarkable resilience and adaptability, surpassing pre-pandemic usage levels following the lifting of restrictions, whereas PT experienced notable declines and a slow recovery. Additionally, the findings emphasize the importance of weather conditions, government policies, transit infrastructures, and pandemic severity in shaping BSS-PT relationships. Although several factors do not independently show correlations, their interactive terms with other variables significantly impact BSS-PT dynamics. These findings provide valuable insights into the adaptation of transit systems to future disruptions, fostering more resilient and integrated mobility networks.

Keywords: Resilience and adaptability, Multilevel interaction, Bikeshare systems, public transportation, COVID-19 pandemic