Mobility patterns and transport systems have been heavily impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Public transport is impacted heavily, as governments worldwide advised against using it. This paper presents the data collection effort initiated by NS (Dutch Railways) and Delft University of Technology to capture changes in travel behavior, attitudes and intentions related to the COVID-19 pandemic among Dutch train travelers. The survey set-up, data collection process, data validation and potential of the dataset are discussed. The data collection effort proves to be a valuable longitudinal data set that is ground for many research opportunities and policy insights.

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Het verduurzamen van de mobiliteitssector is een essentieel onderdeel van de transitie naar een klimaat- en CO2-neutrale samenleving. Voor verplaatsingen die te lang zijn voor actieve vervoerwijzen (lopen, fietsen, …), is het openbaar vervoer over het algemeen het meest duurzame alternatief voor reizigers. Met een hoge capaciteit en efficiënt gebruik van middelen is het ideaal voor het vervoeren van grote aantallen mensen over langere afstanden. Een zwakte echter bij het gebruik van het openbaar vervoer is het bekende first/last mile-probleem: voor- en natransport naar en van de halte of station. Gedeelde micromobiliteit kan hier een oplossing bieden.@en

Studies all over the world have been performed during Covid-19 to investigate the characteristics of anxious public transport travellers and the reduction in public transport usage. This indicates that reduction in public transport usage related to anxiety from Covid-19 is a problem everywhere and important to investigate this group further.
For this project, longitudinal surveys are used to gain insights into the groups of anxious and non-anxious train travellers in the Netherlands. This project is part of a larger project, which focuses on the impacts Covid-19 has on train travelling behaviour, by NS and TU Delft (Van Hagen et al. (2021). Covid-19 and train travel behavior. Paper presented at the European Transport Conference). This subproject focuses on the effects of anxiety on train travelling behaviour during and after Covid-19. The data from the surveys are used to divide the participants into groups based on their anxiety levels: anxious, neutral, and non-anxious. The anxious group consists of people that do not feel free to travel by train during Covid-19 and the non-anxious group does feel free to travel by train during Covid-19. To analyse the characteristics and travel behaviour, the data from the survey of April 2021 are used, and statistical tests such as chi-square test and classification tree analysis are used to analyse the differences between the groups.
The main purpose of this project is to investigate the group of anxious train travellers during Covid-19 to gain more insights into their characteristics, attitude, and behaviour. This study finds that the main factors that influence anxiety levels are age, gender, and vaccination status. Our research shows that females and older people are more likely to be anxious. As a result, a typical profile of an anxious person is a female, older than 25 years old and not vaccinated. Furthermore, a non-anxious person is likely to be male, 25 years old or younger, and fully vaccinated.
Since attitude has a strong relationship with (travel) behaviour, the anxious group is compared to the non-anxious group to investigate the effects of anxiety on attitude and travel behaviour. The results show that anxiety has a negative effect on attitude which leads to less train usage, both current and expected usage in the future. Anxious people generally tend to have a negative attitude towards the train, while non-anxious people usually have a positive attitude towards the train. In current train travelling behaviour, anxiety has the effect of people travelling less, and are more likely to not travel at all. For future expected travel, anxious people are more likely to plan to travel less than non-anxious people.
The number of anxious people fluctuates over time and seems to be related to the number of cases or hospitalizations. The size of the anxious group is higher when there are peaks in number of cases and hospitalizations, and lower when things are calmer. Additionally, vaccinations seem to influence the number of anxious people as well, where the size of the anxious group reduces when a lot of people in the Netherlands are fully vaccinated. During the first year (April 2020 to April 2021), the anxious group has been between 40 and 70% of train travellers. It can be assumed that there will still be a group of people that are anxious after Covid-19, because in September 2021, when cases had been low for some time, 20% of train travellers were still anxious and a small group of 6% was still feeling very anxious.
The results of this paper help to identify the anxious group and establish the effect of anxiety on attitude and behaviour, which helps with designing future timetables and planning rolling stock purchases. For future research, it is recommended to look further into the relationship between the number of anxious people and the number of cases or hospitalizations as that relationship can help predict train usage in the future. Furthermore, it is recommended to investigate why people are still feeling anxious even after a time of low number of cases and no restrictions. That information can help with reducing the size of the anxious group and increase train usage.@en

With the arrival of COVID-19 in the Netherlands in Spring 2020 and the start of the “intelligent lockdown”, daily life changed drastically. The working population was urged to telework as much as possible. However, not everyone had a suitable job for teleworking or liked teleworking. From a mobility perspective, teleworking was considered a suitable means to alleviate travel. Even after the pandemic it can (continue to) reduce pressure on the mobility system during peak hours, thereby improving efficiency and level of service of transport services. Additionally, this could reduce transport externalities, such as emissions and unsafety. The structural impact from teleworking offers opportunities, but also challenges for the planning and operations of public transport. The aim of this study is to better understand teleworking during and after COVID-19 among train travellers, to support operators and authorities in their policy making and design. We study the telework behaviour, attitude towards teleworking, and future intentions through a longitudinal data collection. By applying a latent class cluster analysis, we identified six types of teleworkers, varying in their frequency of teleworking, attitude towards teleworking, intentions to the future, socio-demographics and employer policy. In terms of willingness-to-telework in the future, we distinguish three groups: the high willingness-to-telework group (71%), the low willingness-to-telework group (16%), and the least-impacted self-employed (12%). Those with high willingness are expected to have lasting changes in their travel patterns, where especially public transport is impacted. For this group, policy is required to ensure when (which days) and where (geographical) telework takes place, such that public transport operators can better plan and operate their services. For those with low willingness, it is essential that the government provides tools to companies (especially in education and vital sector) such that they can be better prepared for teleworking (mostly during but also after the pandemic). Employers on the other hand need to better support their employees, such that they stay in contact with colleagues and their concentration and productivity can increase.

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Tijdens de ‘intelligente lockdown’ zag NS het aantal treinreizigers kelderen met maar liefst 93 procent. Dat is een ramp op zich. Maar de ov-organisatie vraagt zich ook bezorgd af wat al die klanten in de toekomst gaan doen. Om dat scherp te krijgen, benaderden NS en TU Delft het NS-panel met een serie vragen. Bijna 46.000 panelleden deden mee aan het onderzoek.@en

This paper describes two perspectives to improve the passenger experience. The passenger satisfaction pyramid is introduced, consisting of the base of the pyramid (dissatisfiers) focusing on time well saved and the top of the pyramid (satisfiers) aiming at time well spent. The challenge in planning and design of public transport services is to find the most efficient (set of) design choices. Depending on the context this might either mean focusing on the top or on the bottom of the pyramid. We found that influencing and enhancing the qualities of the satisfiers is far more important than traditional studies showed us. For stations, regression analyses show that dissatisfiers are responsible for explaining almost half of the total score of the station and satisfiers are responsible for the other half of the scores passengers give for the station. We still have to put a lot of energy in getting the basics right, starting in the planning phase, but then we are not allowed to lean back. We have to keep investing in qualities like ambience, comfort and experience which makes the customers truly happy at the end of the day.@en

De reiziger centraal stellen in treinnetwerken, busdienstregelingen en tramexploitatie valt nog niet mee. Het vergt kennis van meerdere disciplines. Die kwamen onlangs samen in Barcelona op de European Transport Conference. De deelnemers zetten een eerste stap, want het samenbrengen van het gedachtegoed van psychologen en vervoerkundigen is nog schaars goed. Maar is wel keihard nodig@en