Like so many other industries, the mobility landscape has been permanently altered by the Covid pandemic. Health and safety have become the main priorities for all travel decisions. As a result, car ownership and vehicle traffic have skyrocketed over the last year, particularly in major urban areas, while public transit levels remain in a long uphill climb to normalcy.
As an Out of Home Advertising provider specializing in parking facilities, the number of cars on the road is an important factor in the reach our ad space can achieve on any given day. Early on in the pandemic, we noticed our locations in Manhattan filling up nearly every day and realized things were changing, especially as many were working from home and daily commutes weren’t always required. To get a better understanding of these trends, and where these drivers were coming from, we conducted a study in partnership with Hedges & Company surveying over 10,000 car owners in Manhattan to show the shift in mobility trends post-covid.
A LOT More Cars on the Road
To understand the fast rebound and record number of cars on the road, first we have to understand where all these drivers are coming from, and who they are. Across the country, but particularly in metropolitan centers like New York City, most of these new drivers are normal commuters that have decided that traveling by car is the safest way to travel. Many of them insisting that it’s the only way they’ll travel until the pandemic is completely over. That applies to work commutes, shopping, entertainment, and road trip travel.