COVID Machine and Implementation of Anti-Pandemic Measures in Railway Passenger Transport in the Slovak Republic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has had a major impact on the supply, demand, and economic performance of rail transport. The largest impact was recorded in the second quarter of 2020, from April to June. Passenger transport was more affected than freight transport, with international transport falling by an average of 85% in the second quarter of 2020. The reduction in rail transport in the first months of the crisis was a direct consequence of the public authorities’ response to the COVID-19 crisis (restrictions on passenger mobility) as well as the impact of the global economic slowdown, which generally led to a reduction in transport demand. The paper is focused on the impact of measures in railway passenger transport and subsequently on the implementation of new anti-pandemic measures in the next period. The paper describes the method of the Covid machine, which was introduced for a simple, concise, and comprehensible setting of the system of measures. The system for evaluating anti-pandemic measures is designed to inform about the current level of risk in relation to the measure in place.