How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected wheelchair users? Time-series analysis of the number of railway passengers in Tokyo

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed 'new barriers' to people with disabilities (PwDs) who have already experienced many barriers to using public transportation. However, there is limited quantitative knowledge of how PwDs have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of public transportation by PwDs over time. Specifically, we analysed time-series data on wheelchair rail passenger numbers and all rail passenger numbers in Tokyo from April 2012 to December 2021. The impact of COVID-19 was more accurately assessed by excluding seasonal variations in the time-series, and two key findings were obtained. First, the change point for the decline in the number of passengers owing to the COVID-19 pandemic was March 2020, one month earlier than the declaration of the state of emergency. Second, using the time-series model, the actual and estimated values were compared, and we found that wheelchair rail passenger numbers reduced by approximately 20 percentage points on average compared with all rail passengers. Wheelchair rail passengers were more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than all rail passengers. Based on previous studies, these findings demonstrated that opportunities to participate in society were disproportionately reduced for PwDs during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study's quantitative data and the resulting conclusions on wheelchair users are useful for inclusive planning for mitigating the pandemic's impact by national administrations and public transport authorities.