Changes in transport behaviour during the Covid-19 crisis

The restrictions put in place to limit the diffusion and impacts of Covid-19 have had a widespread impact on people’s lives, and the way energy is used across entire economies.One of the biggest impacts has been the reduction in passenger transport demand, due to a combination of government lockdowns and fears of contracting and spreading the virus when using mass transport modes. While freight transport has also been reduced, the drivers of freight activity during the current crisis are complex, driven by both supply- and demand-side factors, and in the latter, by the need to keep essential services operating. In contrast, passenger transport, (for both leisure and business travel) is often optional, and more influenced by people’s decision-making processes. The focus of this paper is therefore on passenger transport.The crisis has affected all forms of transport, from cars, and public transport in cities, to buses, trains and planes nationally and internationally. Global road transport activity was almost 50% below the 2019 average by the end of March 2020 and commercial flight activity almost 75% below 2019 by mid-April 2020. Public transport has also been affected. For example, the strict lockdown imposed in the UK in March 2020 has led to a 95% decrease in underground journeys in London. This is supported by data1 from one popular transport planning smartphone app showing that trips are down by over 90% since the crisis began in many of the world’s major cities. Covid-19 is changing our behaviour and transport energy use patterns .highcharts-legend-item { font-family: Graphik,Arial,sans-serif; } .highcharts-heatmap-series path { stroke-width: 0.5px !important; stroke: black !important; } Note: Changes are compared to a ‘typical usage period’, generally defined as 4 weeks between Jan 6th and Feb 2nd, 2020 although different typical usage periods are used for certain cities.