While patronage on most public transit systems around the world remains modestly to significantly depressed post-pandemic, transit ridership had mostly been declining across the US since 2014. Advocates, practitioners, and scholars have offered a range of explanations for pre-pandemic patronage decline. This analysis examines the demand-side of this phenomenon by focusing on high-propensity transit riders, and, in particular, immigrants in the most populous US state: California. Drawing on the California add-on to the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Surveys, we evaluate changes in transit use among Hispanic and Asian immigrants. We find that during the study period, transit trip frequency of Hispanic immigrants declined, converging toward the ridership patterns of US-born Hispanics. While this trend was largely the result of rising incomes, increased vehicle ownership, and lower residential densities among non-US-born Hispanics, all else equal, Hispanic immigrants continued to use transit more than their US-born counterparts. By contrast, transit trip making by Asian immigrants diverged from that of US-born Asians. Notably, this divergence was not the result of declining per-person trip making by Asian immigrants, which was relatively stable during the study period. Instead, the growing gap was due to increases in transit trip frequency by US-born Asians.

中文翻译：

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移民是否正在远离交通？加州移民交通使用趋势


尽管全球大多数公共交通系统的乘客量在大流行后仍然略有下降，但自 2014 年以来，美国各地的公共交通乘客量大多呈下降趋势。倡导者、从业者和学者对大流行前乘客量下降提出了一系列解释。本分析通过关注高倾向公交乘客，特别是美国人口最多的州加利福尼亚州的移民，研究了这一现象的需求方。根据加州 2009 年和 2017 年全国家庭旅行调查的补充，我们评估了西班牙裔和亚洲移民的交通使用变化。我们发现，在研究期间，拉美裔移民的过境出行频率下降，向美国出生的拉美裔移民的乘客模式趋同。虽然这一趋势很大程度上是非美国出生的拉美裔人收入增加、车辆拥有量增加以及居住密度降低的结果，但在其他条件相同的情况下，拉美裔移民仍然比美国出生的移民更多地使用公共交通。相比之下，亚洲移民的过境旅行与美国出生的亚洲人的过境旅行有所不同。值得注意的是，这种差异并不是亚洲移民人均旅行次数下降的结果，在研究期间，人均旅行次数相对稳定。相反，差距的扩大是由于美国出生的亚洲人过境旅行频率的增加。