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Commute during COVID-19 in Urban, Rural, and Suburban United States

This study compares changes in commute behavior during COVID-19 across urban, rural, and suburban populations in the United States. The data used in this study was collected from an online, nationwide survey conducted during April - October 2020. The zip codes collected from the survey responses were categorized into urban, rural, and suburban areas based on their housing densities. The results suggest a substantial decrease in the proportion of respondents commuting 5 days a week during COVID-19 as compared to pre-pandemic across all place types. About 55 percent of respondents in each place type commuted 5 days a week pre-pandemic which drastically dropped to roughly 35 percent in rural areas and around 25 percent in urban and suburban areas. A greater proportion of urban and suburban respondents were not commuting (~40 percent) during the pandemic as compared to rural respondents (~30 percent). This is a sharp increase from about 10 percent respondents in each place type that did not used to commute before the pandemic. As compared to pre-COVID-19, there is a decrease proportion of respondents commuting from transit during COVID-19 across all place types. Before the beginning of the pandemic, a lower proportion of urban respondents (~70 percent) commuted by car compared to suburban or rural respondents (~90 percent). However, the proportion of urban respondents commuting from car has increased considerably from ~70 percent to ~84 percent, which is the biggest shift in car commuting proportions across all place types.

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