The COVID-19 Pandemic and Public Transportation Usage in Utah

This study aims to investigate public transportation usage in the state of Utah during the period from 2017 to 2020. The study also aims to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the system in the year 2020. Based on the ridership data for different transportation modes including commuter rail, light rail, paratransit, and regular bus, the regular bus was the most used public transportation mode followed by light rail. The results also showed that the population is growing in Utah while the ridership for different modes is declining except for commuter rail. The system ridership decreased by almost half during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The highest impacted mode was the commuter rail followed by the light rail. The lowest impacted mode was the regular bus.