Loyalty Towards Metropolitan Public Transport and COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from Madrid Region

The COVID-19 outbreak has been related to a decrease in the use of metropolitan public transport (PT). However, new thinking is required to gain insights into how the pandemic impacts people’s loyalty towards public transport. This chapter contributes to better understanding the mentioned problem by discussing on how a range of population groups have different levels of loyalty towards the metropolitan bus and metropolitan train services. To support the discussion, a cross-sectional questionnaire has been disseminated in the Metropolitan Area of Madrid. The data is analyzed through two methodological phases: (i) clustering respondents in homogeneous population groups based on loyalty’s components (overall satisfaction toward PT, intention to use PT after the pandemic, willingness to recommend PT based on previous experience); (ii) running the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests to establish the existence of statistically significant differences between the population groups previously identified. The chapter identifies three population groups for the metropolitan bus service (loyal bus users, neutral bus users, disloyal bus users), while two for the metropolitan train (quasi-loyal train users, disloyal train users). Bus users show to be statistically different regarding their socioeconomic characteristics as well as regarding their perceptions towards metropolitan bus. However, population clusters for metropolitan train are only statistically different in relation to the perceptions towards metropolitan train. The chapter closes with a discussion and some concluding remarks that highlight the need to continue exploring loyalty towards public transport in metropolitan areas against disruptive and future events.