Long-Distance Travel Impacts of COVID-19 Across the United States

Abstract

Using over a thousand Americans’ population-weighted responses to a long-distance travel survey, this paper examines reductions in trips over 75-miles (one-way) in 2020, during the pandemic, versus behaviors in 2019. Negative binomial models of trip counts suggest that people age 25 to 64 took 0.20 fewer annual long-distance business trips during the pandemic, but people age 65 and older took 0.45 fewer business and 0.57 fewer non-business long-distance trips, on average. Household income was not a key predictor for long-distance non-business-trip-making during the pandemic, but was important in predicting long-distance trip rates for business purposes (both before and during the pandemic) and for non-business trips pre-pandemic.