Transportation Disadvantage and its Influence on Mode Choice and Travel Behavior Post-COVID-19

Abstract: Transportation disadvantage has been studied extensively across the world but not much attention has been put on understanding the mobility challenges faced by the transportation disadvantaged in light of the pandemic. The current study aims to understand the factors that influence transportation disadvantage, and how it impacts grocery mode choice. By assessing the persistence of changed travel behaviors post pandemic through a nationwide web-based survey, we developed a theoretical framework that helps to identify transportation disadvantage and employ multinomial logit models to understand the influence of personal and household characteristics, travel conditions, as well as attitudinal constructs and other transportation disadvantage-related factors on grocery mode choice. We find that residential location, household income, travel conditions, and the attitudinal constructs significantly influence transportation disadvantage. The constructs extracted from exploratory factor analysis provide nuanced insights into the attitudes, behaviors, and choices of the transportation disadvantaged and these play a key role in determining mode choice. We conclude that the pandemic has deeply affected mode choice decisions for the transportation disadvantaged who continue to use their less-than-ideal modes to accomplish their mobility needs, wants, and desires. We find how long-term investments in transportation infrastructure and adoption of ICT may greatly help alleviate some of the existing inequities.