Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Dec 1;17(12):e0278207. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278207. eCollection 2022.
The shared and micro-mobility industry (ride sharing and hailing, carpooling, bike and e-scooter shares) saw direct and almost immediate impacts from COVID-19 restrictions, orders and recommendations from local governments and authorities. However, the severity of that impact differed greatly depending on variables such as different government guidelines, operating policies, system resiliency, geography and user profiles. This study investigated the impacts of the pandemic regarding bike-share travel behavior in Montgomery County, VA. We used bike-usage dataset covering two small towns in Montgomery county, namely: Blacksburg and Christiansburg, including Virginia Tech campus. The dataset used covers the period of Jan 2019-Dec 2021 with more than 14,555 trips and 5,154 active users. Findings indicated that a bikeshare user's average trip distance and duration increased in 2020 (compared to 2019) from 2+ miles to 4+ and from half an hour to about an hour. While there was a slight drop in 2021, bikeshare users continued to travel farther distances and spend more time on the bikes than pre-COVID trips. When those averages were unpacked to compare weekday trips to weekend trips, a few interesting trip patterns were observed. Unsurprisingly, more trips still took place on the weekends (increasing from 2x as many trips to 4x as many trips than the weekday). These findings could help to better understand traveler's choices and behavior when encountering future pandemics.
共享和微移动出行行业（出行共享和叫车、拼车、自行车和电动滑板车共享）受到地方政府和当局的 COVID-19 限制、命令和建议的直接和几乎立即的影响。然而，这种影响的严重程度因政府指导方针、运营政策、系统弹性、地理位置和用户特征等变量而异。本研究调查了大流行对弗吉尼亚州蒙哥马利县自行车共享出行行为的影响。我们使用了涵盖该县两个小镇（布莱克斯堡和克里斯琴斯堡）的自行车使用数据集，包括弗吉尼亚理工大学校园。该数据集涵盖了 2019 年 1 月至 2021 年 12 月的期间，有超过 14555 次行程和 5154 名活跃用户。研究结果表明，与 2019 年相比，2020 年（与 2019 年相比）自行车共享用户的平均行程距离和时长从 2 英里以上增加到 4 英里以上，从半小时增加到约 1 小时。虽然 2021 年略有下降，但自行车共享用户的行程距离仍然更远，在自行车上花费的时间也比 COVID 前的行程更长。当将这些平均值分解为比较工作日行程和周末行程时，观察到了一些有趣的行程模式。毫不奇怪，周末的行程仍然更多（从周末的行程是工作日的两倍增加到四倍）。这些发现有助于更好地理解旅行者在遇到未来的大流行时的选择和行为。
