COVID-19: Urban mobility’s routes to recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the world’s urban mobility sector. Ridership and revenues have plummeted since governments and health authorities acted to contain the outbreak, resulting in businesses laying off employees or pivoting to remote work. Transit and rail operators, ride-sharing firms, cities, regulators, and commuters alike are grappling with uncertainty as they respond to the immediate crisis and plan for an unknown future.

In our latest report, we look at where organizations in this sector will need to focus and invest as they recover in a changed world. We offer our perspective on the changes, challenges, and critical considerations for urban mobility organizations in three areas:

Customer expectations
Customer demand—the return of ridership—will drive urban mobility’s recovery, while their expectations for attention to their health and safety will drive significant change.

Operational realities
Companies will need to re-examine every aspect of their operations through a health-and-sanitation lens and, most likely, to adjust to reduced capacity and lower ridership for the foreseeable future.

Financial impacts
Public transit’s immediate and longer-term revenue shortfalls create a number of challenges for organizations, cities, regulators, and governments. This may lead rethinking transit funding models and even other orthodoxies, such as the role of the private sector and future capital investments.

Eventually, life will return to a new normal. Transit and other mobility providers will continue to play a vital role at the heart of cities. But urban mobility will look quite different, because it must.

Read COVID-19: Urban mobility’s routes to recovery to learn more.