Impacts of long-term transit system disruptions and transitional periods on travelers: a systematic review

Governments around the world are heavily investing in building new transit infrastructures and expanding existing ones. The construction of these projects does not happen overnight and can lead to extended long-term disruptions in the transit network, which can have undesirable impacts. Research regarding such disruptive periods, or transitional periods, seems to be thematically and geographically dispersed in the literature. Similarly, a consolidated understanding of the impacts of long-term transit service disruptions due to other causes, such as labor strikes and transit system failures, on travelers’ behavior seems missing from the literature. Using a systematic review method, this study aims at providing a comprehensive review of the academic literature that focused on analyzing the impacts of the aforementioned issues on transit users’ travel behavior and perceptions, while understanding the mitigation strategies applied to address these effects. Given the wide array of disruption types, durations, spatial coverage, and the modes affected, the review indicates a dearth of knowledge regarding their impacts along with a very limited understanding of the relative benefits of mitigation strategies. The most common impacts are mode changes. Some evidence, which is rather limited, shows that transit users did return to their previous travel behavior after the end of long-term service disruptions. The study offers a better understanding of the relative impacts of transit systems’ long-term disruptions and transitional periods, while highlighting important gaps in the current literature.