Analyzing the Effect of Social Distancing Policies on Traffic at Sinchon Station, South Korea, during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021

Nam-gun Kim, Hyeri Jang, Seungkeun Noh, Ju-hee Hong, Jongsoon Jung, Jinho Shin, Yongseung Shin and Jongseong Kim
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Nam-gun Kim: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Hyeri Jang: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Seungkeun Noh: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Ju-hee Hong: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Jongsoon Jung: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Jinho Shin: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Yongseung Shin: Seoul Metropolitan Government Research Institute of Public Health and Environment, Seoul 13818, Korea
Jongseong Kim: Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Korea

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 14, 1-14

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is recognized as one of the most serious global health problems, and many countries implemented lockdown measures to mitigate the effects of the crisis caused by this respiratory infectious disease. In this study, we investigated the relationship between social distancing policies and changes in traffic volume in Sinchon Station, South Korea. We used an official COVID-19 report provided by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA) and Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) to review social distancing policies, and the changes in traffic patterns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic between January 2020 and November 2021 were analyzed. Our study reveals that the changes in the overall traffic patterns from acceleration phases to deceleration phases of COVID-19 were related to the alert levels of social distancing policies implemented to tackle the situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Herein, we found that a significant decline in traffic volume took place from August to September 2020 (13.5–19.7%, weekday; 19.4–31.7%, weekend), from December 2020 to January 2021 (20.0%−26.6%, weekday; 26.8–34.0%, weekend), and from July to September 2021 (3.2–13.1%, weekday; 38.3–44.7%, weekend) when compared to the corresponding periods in 2019 (paired t -test; p < 0.001). The results of this study provide strong support for the effectiveness of Seoul’s preemptive measures, namely, the central government’s intensive social distancing campaign, in managing and reducing the impact of the pandemic situation based on the precise analysis of 10 types of facilities.

Keywords: social distancing policies; change traffic volume; COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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