Association measures are important in quantifying the relationships between random variables in applications. In this work, we investigate the connection between Kendall’s tau and Spearman’s rho for zero-inflated data. First, we recall the state-of-the-art techniques to estimate \(\tau \) and \(\rho _S\) when the data exhibits a large number of ties at zero. Then we analyze how the values of \(\tau \) and \(\rho _S\) differ by focusing on a case study on the use of public transport in the Netherlands. We conclude the paper with a discussion of future interesting research directions on the topic.