The Correlation Between COVID-19 Mandated Social Distancing and Public Transit Ridership by Metro Area

This visualization describes the relationship between government-mandated social distancing measures and changes in public transit ridership for seven major US metro areas from March 2-20, 2020. These two weeks were crucial for decision-making to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) throughout the country. Click on the buttons below to display the dates of each event and hover over the streamgraph for more information about each metro area.

Tue 3/03 Thu 3/05 Sat 3/07 Mon 3/09 Wed 3/11 Fri 3/13 Sun 3/15 Tue 3/17 Thu 3/19 Estimated Ridership (millions of trips) 8.0 7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0 5.5 5.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 8.0 7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0 5.5 5.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0

Sources: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet), King County Metro Transit Department, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority