Citation

Susilo Y, Flodén J, Geurs K. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 2021; 13(1): e48.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, European Conference of Transport Research Institutes, Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1186/s12544-021-00513-2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak a pandemic on March 11th 2020, authorities around the globe were urged to implement non- pharmacological interventions (NPIs) to decelerate infection rates (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2020). This led to many European countries to implement various measures to reduce the spread of the virus, ranging from banning unnecessary travel, to social distancing, to the closure of schools, restaurants, hotels, shops and other amenities, to the closing of borders. These measures have immediate impacts on the movement of both people and freight. From the reductions, re-arranging, rescheduling and cancelation of trips (e.g. [15, 20, 21, 29]) to shifting the activities into different destinations (e.g. [28]) or to the virtual realm (e.g. [3, 7, 23]), the measures have lead to significant impacts. An unprecedented disruptions of supply chains has been seen, causing impacts on food systems, public health, and employments.
Whilst there have been a lot of studies on the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on transport and mobility, there have not been much a reflection on how we can do better if another pandemic strike in the future, and this is the objective of this editorial article. Based on the evidences drawn upon 11 papers from select European countries, which investigated wide range issues, from the readiness of port-state control inspection procedure [1], the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions to the work and travel patterns of civil servants in Sweden [14], the impacts of inter personal distance towards the sustainability operation of public transport in Italy [12], the willingness to pay to use the public transport and shared services given the COVID-19 circumstances in Spain [5], and the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions to travel and spatial movement patterns and trade-off behaviours of urban and rural residents in Germany [4, 16,17,18], Greece [26], Italy, India and Sweden [2, 8], there are common learned lessons that can serve as a guidelines on how we can deal with the disruptions better in the future. ...

Language: en