Brandwatch Bulletin #70: The State of Public Transport

Are people getting back on board?

02 July 2021

We’ve made it to the end of another week. To cap things off we’re taking a look at public transport usage in Seoul, New York, London, and Paris.

Let’s get to it.

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All aboard

We’ve covered travel before using Apple data, which uses directions requests to gauge how much people are travelling. Today we’re doing something similar, but using Citymapper data instead.

“What’s the difference between Apple and Citymapper’s data?” we hear you ask. The difference is that Citymapper doesn’t offer driving directions, which means its data is far more aligned with the use of public transport, giving us a fascinating picture of train, bus, and subway use in various cities around the world.

Public transport has of course taken a huge hit during the pandemic. With many people working from home, tourism disappearing, and general wariness of catching Covid-19, we wanted to see just how big of a hit it was. But we also wanted to see what kind of recovery these numbers have seen.

For this we picked four cities to analyze: Seoul, New York, London, and Paris. Here’s what we found out.

Out of the four cities we’ve looked at, Seoul is experiencing the worst drop in public transport with numbers down to 26% of what they were pre-pandemic. This number has been gradually falling since March 2021, and doesn’t look like it’ll improve any time soon. Seoul is now delaying lifting restriction measures due to rising cases.

But that’s just one part of the picture. When the first pandemic hit, Seoul saw the lowest drop of our four cities. In fact, public transport use was relatively strong throughout 2020 in comparison. As we look at other cities, we’ll see just how different Seoul’s trend is.

In New York City, public transport use is now at 53% compared to pre-pandemic levels, and the number has been rising throughout 2021. This is a healthy looking picture if this growth can be maintained, which will likely depend on the number of Covid cases.

Having said that, the drop at the start of the pandemic was massive. Public transport use fell by 96% at its worst point, and recovery was slow. Only one other city we looked at dropped as low, and that was Paris. But as we’ll see, public transport use there trended very differently.

First though, we’re off to the UK.

London’s current numbers are looking good compared to Seoul and New York. They’re now at 61% compared to pre-pandemic levels, but are showing early signs of falling. The lifting of lockdown measures have been delayed in the UK as cases climb up again, which may be keeping people off the tube and buses.

Going back to the start of the pandemic, we see a similar drop to New York’s. The difference is Londoners were quicker to get back on public transport, with use reaching 60% of ‘normal’ capacity in November. But this preceded another lockdown, as case numbers jumped.

Now we move onto our final city.

The difference in this chart is stark compared to the others. To start, public transport usage is nearly back to normal in Paris, far outstripping our other cities. In fact, Paris tops the list for this metric compared to all of the cities in Citymapper’s index.

It’s not the first time numbers were so high either. Back in September 2020, levels briefly hit 96% of ‘normal’ use, an incredibly high level for that time in the pandemic. The speed of recovery from May 2021 onwards has been staggering too. With cases low in the city, it’s possible we may see numbers exceed pre-pandemic levels.

But why is Paris’ picture so different?

There are many factors at play here, but the efforts made by public transport companies in Paris seem to have reassured passengers. This June 2020 City Monitor piece gives a first-hand account of the speed and strength of measures enacted, comparing them to what’s taken place in London.

Looking at the numbers, it’s hard to deny something is doing the trick.

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team