Longer commute times and crowded apartments came with higher rates of COVID-19 transmission at the height of the pandemic in New York City, according to a recent study from Cornell University. The researchers, whose disciplines merged architecture, public health and engineering, looked at a range of environmental factors that could be tied to the spread of the coronavirus in urban areas and found commutes and crowding had the strongest correlation.

Simply being on a train or bus has never been a great predictor of catching the virus. A September 2020 study found no clear connection between coronavirus spread and riding the New York City subway and other transit systems worldwide, noting that cases fell in the five boroughs even as ridership gradually increased. The New York Times pointed out in May 2020 that ridership had rebounded in cities around the world where the pandemic had ebbed without mass transit being linked to any superspreader events.

The Cornell study made a similar finding, but by looking at a wider variety of potential trends, it revealed a correlation between infection rates and the average number of minutes spent commuting on public transit.

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