Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on commuting

Abstract

We carried out an international online survey about changes in everyday mobility during the COVID-19 outbreak in 21 languages, collecting more than 11,000 responses from more than 100 countries. In this paper, we present our analysis about commuting travels of the responses between 23 March and 12 May 2020 from the fourteen countries with 100 or more responses, namely Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, and the UK. Home office is used typically by between 40% and 60% of working respondents. Among people with workplaces with possibility for home office, the percentage is between 60% and 80%. Among people with workplaces where presence is essential, the percentage does not typically go beyond 30%. This result potentially implies an ultimate magnitude of a strong home office measure. Among those who continued to commute but switched commuting transport modes from public transport to others, the COVID-19 infection risk in public transport is the reason that is most often referred to, but many of those who changed to private cars and to bicycles report reduced travel time, too. Measures to encourage the use of active travel modes where possible are strongly recommended, as this would potentially mitigate undesirable modal shift towards private motorized modes triggered by perception of infection risks while travelling with public transport.

Role of stay-at-home requests and travel restrictions in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in Japan

“…Many countries (e.g., the United States, France, and Italy) implemented mandatory lockdowns, limiting all nonessential travel (Haas et al, 2020; Shibayama et al, 2021 , Xiong et al, 2020 ). In contrast, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency in April and May 2020, urging people to stay at home and refrain from nonessential outings.…”

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Risk Perception and Use of Local Public Transport During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In the study of Finbom et al (2020), participants from Germany reported a mode shift from public transport (bus, tram, and metro) to car, bicycling, and walking. In the study of Shibayama et al (2021), a large shift from public transport to home office was noticed, but some participants also reported shifting to car and bicycling. In the April/May 2021 panel of DLR Transport, 53% of participants reported using public transport less or much less, whereas walking (+26%), bicycling (+18%), and car (+14%) usage had increased.…”

“…Protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1975;Floyd et al, 2000) suggests that risk perception might have played a role in these trends concerning the use of public transport: Since the beginning of the pandemic, public transport was stigmatized as an infectious space in public health communication campaigns (Tirachini and Cats, 2020). The perception of public transport as a high-risk environment might have triggered protection motivation in form of a general avoidance of traveling (Zheng et al, 2021) and a specific avoidance of public transport (e.g., Finbom et al, 2020;Shibayama et al, 2021;DLR Transport, 2022b). A positive relationship between risk perception and protective behavior is already known from other pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks (for a review, see Bish and Michie, 2010).…”

“…In the survey of DLR Transport (2022b), former public transport users spoke of the hygiene in the vehicles and the inability to keep their distance from other passengers as the two main reasons for deciding against using buses and trams within the pandemic. Shibayama et al (2021) found that 72% of those who shifted from public transport to other travel modes reported to do so because of an increased risk perception in public transport. A more differentiated look on users and non-users of public transport during the pandemic revealed an interesting pattern.…”

Changes in People’s Mobility Behavior in Greece after the COVID-19 Outbreak

“…Recently, many studies around the globe, i.e., China [10,11], Italy [12], Australia [13], Sweden [14], Spain [15], the United States [16], Pakistan [9], Germany [17][18][19], Greece [20], Jordan [21], and Turkey [1], have been focusing on the variations in people's mobility and travel behavior during COVID-19. Past studies pointed out that trip frequencies, travel duration, mode choice, commuting, and public transport usage worldwide have been receiving adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic [22,23]. A review of previous studies highlights that few modeling efforts have been conducted in the past to explore the relationship among mobility behaviors (travel trips by modes and by purposes), sociodemographic, and COVID-19 severity periods.…”