It is no surprise that COVID-19 has had massive economical and sociological impacts on our society. In a way, it changed the way consumers operate and live their lives. In 2020 and 2021, the public transportation industry was affected in an extreme negative way as most were forced to work from home and encouraged to avoid closed spaces such as buses and trams. Naturally, the numbers of riders declined drastically.
However, today, in April 2023, three years after the pandemic outbreak, this is not the case anymore. While it is true that some pre-pandemic riders decided to opt for alternative modes of transportation such as scootering, walking, or cycling, in cities such as New York City and Tel Aviv subways and buses are again jam packed at most times of day, especially during commuting hours.
With such a pandemic affecting the entire world and creating adjustments in everyone’s daily routines, naturally adaptation is key. The public transportation systems have gone through many changes over the past three years but focused specifically on two major ones. The first one being increased sanitation. The second major positive change to have come from post-pandemic adaptations is investing in new technologies such as contactless payment options for riders.
In order to encourage the pre-covid riders to ride on public transportation again, investing in increased cleaning and sanitation has been crucial to entice them to come back to mass transit. Cities such as London and NYC have invested in increased and better sanitation and clearly it has benefitted them as it has made people a lot more comfortable riding on public transportation.
Similarly to most industries, a major post-pandemic change that occurred within the mass transit system over the past three years is the increasing amount of new technologies that have emerged, such as contactless payment. Contactless payment includes, but is certainly not limited to, Apple Pay and Google Pay. As they were new opportunities in the market, many applications and platforms were created to make public transit payment more convenient and oftentimes also have rewards associated with them (like Enroute) to entice the user to utilize contactless payment. What differentiates those platforms from the digital wallet, is that it goes beyond being just a payment system. As on those platforms, users can plan their routes, check transit times, look at previous routes’ history, and as mentioned before, in some cases earn a type of reward.
Two examples of the rewards system mentioned above are Enroute and SEPTA Perks.
Enroute, is a personalized shopping platform, which is integrated into mass transit applications. They connect potential customers and existing online shoppers to retailers, such as AliExpress and ASOS, by offering a loyalty program. As a result, they enable users to ride public transportation for free. On the other hand, SEPTA Perks in Pennsylvania, rewards its users that purchase daily, weekly, or monthly passes with discounts and special offers for museums, restaurants, and shops across the Southern Pennsylvania region.
As described above, the whole world is transitioning into a post-pandemic era. This opened the market for many new opportunities including major positive changes and adaptations in the public transportation industry.