Impact of COVID-19 on Urban Mobility during Post-Epidemic Period in Megacities: From the Perspectives of Taxi Travel and Social Vitality

Guangyue Nian, Bozhezi Peng, Daniel (Jian) Sun, Wenjun Ma, Bo Peng and Tianyuan Huang
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Guangyue Nian: Department of Transportation and Shipping Logistics, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Bozhezi Peng: Department of Transportation and Shipping Logistics, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Daniel (Jian) Sun: State Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Wenjun Ma: China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Bo Peng: China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Tianyuan Huang: School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-29

Abstract: The prevention and control of COVID-19 in megacities is under large pressure because of tens of millions and high-density populations. The majority of epidemic prevention and control policies implemented focused on travel restrictions, which severely affected urban mobility during the epidemic. Considering the impacts of epidemic and associated control policies, this study analyzes the relationship between COVID-19, travel of residents, Point of Interest (POI), and social activities from the perspective of taxi travel. First, changes in the characteristics of taxi trips at different periods were analyzed. Next, the relationship between POIs and taxi travels was established by the Geographic Information System (GIS) method, and the spatial lag model (SLM) was introduced to explore the changes in taxi travel driving force. Then, a social activities recovery level evaluation model was proposed based on the taxi travel datasets to evaluate the recovery of social activities. The results demonstrated that the number of taxi trips dropped sharply, and the travel speed, travel time, and spatial distribution of taxi trips had been significantly influenced during the epidemic period. The spatial correlation between taxi trips was gradually weakened after the outbreak of the epidemic, and the consumption travel demand of people significantly decreased while the travel demand for community life increased dramatically. The evaluation score of social activity is increased from 8.12 to 74.43 during the post-epidemic period, which may take 3–6 months to be fully recovered as a normal period. Results and models proposed in this study may provide references for the optimization of epidemic control policies and recovery of public transport in megacities during the post-epidemic period.

Keywords: taxi travel; COVID-19 control policy; travel temporal and spatial; sustainable transport; Point of Interest; post-epidemic; spatial lag model (SLM); social activity recovery assessment; urban mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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