英文摘要 |
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has impacted global economic activities and travel behavior. Although Taiwan has fairly stable epidemic control, it experienced a significant decline in public transportation passenger volume during the epidemic. However, traffic statistics alone cannot explain the travel behavior change of specific groups under the epidemic or identify the groups that cannot adapt travel behavior to epidemic risk under an epidemic prevention policy promoting decreases in crowd gathering and non-essential travel. Therefore, this study aims to identify the “epidemic-adaptation disadvantaged” under the epidemic and its prevention policy, with Kaohsiung as the study area. The data of pre-epidemic, during-epidemic and post-policy-lifting travel behavior, and socioeconomic characteristics from citizens in the original Kaohsiung City are collected through sampling design and a face-to-face questionnaire survey. This investigation integrates travel behavior and socioeconomic characteristics to analyze the travel behavior changes and socioeconomic characteristic composition changes of metro users across the epidemic. Analytical results indicate that passengers who are minors, students, low-or-no-income or without access to private motor vehicles are the “epidemic-adaptation disadvantaged” groups in metro use. The proportion of the “epidemic-adaptation disadvantaged” groups among metro users increases while others tend to withdraw from metro use toward the during-epidemic phase. This rise represents difficulty for the disadvantaged in adapting travel behavior to epidemic risk and epidemic prevention policy. Finally, based on the concept of the “epidemic-adaptation disadvantaged”, this study proposes a fare discount policy for specific socioeconomic groups and service-level maintenance for the total metro users as public transportation development strategies in the post-COVID-19 era. |