**_Figure 6_** _: Change in total number of trips per hour in the two metropolitan areas in 2020 compared to 2019 (%)_

<!-- Start of picture text --> a. Bogota b. AMBA<br>AM peak PM peak AM PM peak<br>50% hour hour 50% peak hour<br>hour<br>30% 30%<br>10% 10%<br>-10% -10%<br>-17.2%<br>-21.0%<br>-30% -30%<br>-28.3%<br>-32.0% -31.6%<br>-38.0%<br>-50% Hour of day -50% Hour of day<br>0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011121314151617181920212223<br>Source: Authors based on CDR data<br><!-- End of picture text --> The initial reduction of public transport was much more drastic in AMBA than in Bogotá, declining from a modal share of 24.8 percent in October 2019 to 9 percent a year later, compared to a decline from 34.7 percent to 28.2 percent in Bogota. The drop in public transport demand occurred mainly during peak hours and late in the day in Bogota while it was quite uniform throughout the day in AMBA. While the drop was less steep, also in Bogota the isolation measures imposed by the national government and the users' perception of a high probability of contagion in the public transport system drove a sharp reduction in trips (by more than 30 percent on weekdays, with the sharpest declines in Bogotá D.C.) and fare revenues. In the case of Transmilenio, while transport supply was reduced during the first weeks of mandatory isolation, in the following months the goal was to operate with the same levels of supply to ensure compliance with passenger spacing requirements. The drop in demand and the maintenance of supply caused the proportion of the cost covered by fares to halve, from 71 percent in 2019 to 35 percent in 2020 (Bogotá 2021). In AMBA, fare coverage for bus services stood at around 12 percent of total costs in 2020, representing a third of the coverage from before the pandemic, and the required subsidy to keep the operation running in 2020 was 71 percent higher than in 2019. In the case of rail, fare coverage was already extremely low before the pandemic and during it declined to just a few percent for some operations.

In both metropolitan areas the use of non-motorized transport initially grew significantly, increasing from 37.2 percent to 44.2 percent of trips in Bogota and from 18.6 percent to 25.3 percent in AMBA. However, the shift to NMT in AMBA was mostly concentrated in CABA, while in AMBA, most of the shift from public transport was towards private motorized vehicles (56.7 percent to 65.7 percent), compared to almost no change in Bogota. Instead, in Bogotá, even a large share of trips as long as 10 km were replaced by non-motorized modes.

The underlying regulatory context provides some clues for the differing modal shift trends in the two metropolitan areas. While both CABA and Bogota D.C. have well developed cycleway networks, the broader Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area lacks such a network, meaning that inter-jurisdictional trips (between CABA and the Province of Buenos Aires, PBA) are not as feasible by cycling, nor are trips within PBA itself, which have increased in importance in recent years as a share of overall trips in AMBA. Moreover, part of the explanation for the much more significant shift to private vehicles in AMBA than in Bogota has to do with the underlying regulatory context. Namely, while a license plate based vehicle circulation restriction scheme ( _Pico y Placa_ ) has 12