Impact of Covid-19 on Taxi Industry and Travel Behavior: A Case Study on Chicago, IL

TL;DR

This study analyzes how COVID-19 drastically reduced taxi trips in Chicago, altered travel patterns, and shifted popular locations, highlighting the pandemic's significant impact on urban transportation and travel behavior.

Contribution

It provides a spatial analysis of COVID-19's effects on Chicago's taxi industry and travel behavior, revealing changes in trip patterns and location popularity during the pandemic.

Findings

Drastic decline in trips in central city and airport areas

Travel distances increased while travel times decreased

Distribution of popular locations expanded beyond downtown and airport

Abstract

As the debate over the future of transportation continues in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as a deepening global crisis, taxi industry seems to be not spared by the quick and disrupting changes that may arise from the pandemic. The impact is relatively higher in major cities because of the high-density population and transportation congestion. In this study, we used spatial analysis and visualization to investigate the impact of the pandemic on the economics of the taxi industry and travel behavior using trip-by-trip data from the year of 2014 to 2020 in Chicago, IL. Results show that there is a drastic decline in the trips in the central city and airport areas. During the pandemic, people tended to travel longer distances, but travel times were considerably less because of the significant reduction in traffic volumes. Results also showed that the top twenty most popular pick-up and drop-off locations only included Chicago Downtown and OHare International Airport before the pandemic. However, during the pandemic, the top twenty most popular pick-up and drop-off locations is distributed between the Airport, the Downtown, as well as many other areas along Chicago Eastside.