Влияние пандемии COVID-19 на транспортные предпочтения горожан (на примере Санкт-Петербурга)

In December 2019 outbreak of pneumonia was detected in Wuhan (China). Since then the spreading of coronavirus, which was named Covid-19, had happened all around the world. On the 11th of March 2020 World Health Organization has declared Covid-19 to have a status of a pandemic (WHO, 2020).
The coronavirus pandemic led to dramatic changes in everyday activities all around the world. Governments of most countries have introduced different measures to prevent rapid spread of the virus. Most of government’s measures were aimed to reduce social contacts, for example, closing shops, city malls, schools, cinemas, restaurants, canceling public events and stimulating distant work and education. There is no doubt, that these measures influence day-to- day activities of citizens. Recent research show impact of Covid-19 pandemic on household activities (Beck and Hensher, 2020), shopping patterns (grocery, bulk and malls) (Li et al., 2020), outdoors activities (de Haas et al., 2020), etc.
Several studies discuss disruption of people’s habits due to social distancing mandates. One of them (Sneth, 2020) claims that after crisis consumers can go back to their old habits, but it is more likely that the habits will be modified by new regulations and procedures. Previous behavioristic studies also prove the idea that habits that once were formed influence future choices (Cantillo et al., 2007). The adoption of these ideas makes it necessary to review policy approaches in many areas. First of all, due to the fact that the existing regulatory tools were formed taking into account existing habits, they will not necessarily be effective against new habits that appeared during the Covid-19 pandemic. Moreover, new habits may be desirable or negative for society. Therefore, depending on their assessment, regulators should decide whether to try to “fix” new habits or to get rid of them by returning to the before pandemic behavior.
One of spheres which is needed to be investigated for changes in people’s habits is urban mobility and transportation modes. Scientific field faces a rapid growth of articles revealing great concerns about impact of pandemic on mobility issues, including public transport usage (Meena, 2020; Tan et al., 2020). Most of them claim that during the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a significant traffic decrease and a statistically proven significant influence on the transport mode choice (Przybylowski et al., 2021).
Findings of academic researchers can be also proven through data analysis and statistics, collected by several data aggregators. Most of countries face drops in car traffic (there is a statistical evidence of it, based on decrease of congestion and air pollution (Tian et al, 2021), and in public transport ridership (it also can be statistically proved by decrease of average revenue of transportation companies).
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Moreover, Moovit Public Transit Index analyzes the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on public transportation ridership, relative to the typical usage before the outbreak began (Figure 1). Updated daily, Moovit’s insights show the percentage of changed demand for public transit around the world. This aggregated index shows a rapid decrease of public transit usage and there is no return of the index to the before-Covid-19 state even a year after pandemic start.
Figure 1 Statistics about worldwide public transport usage citizens compared to previous year Source: Moovit Public Transit Index (2021)
Also, Google Mobility Data (Google, 2020) shows a substantial decrease in trips to any locations, except for trips to parks (Franchetti and Noussan, 2020).
The presence of changes in transportation behavior due to the Covid-19 pandemic raises the following points and questions for taking into account by the authorities:
1) Identifying whatever changes in transportation preferences have occurred among citizens. Which modes of transportation have become the most preferred and which ones are the least preferred?
2) Understanding the characteristics of passengers who have changed their transportation preferences. What groups of citizens often changed their usual transport behavior due to the Covid-19 pandemic?
3) Determining the reasons that contributed to changes in transportation preferences. What were the important factors influencing mode choice before and during the Covid-19 pandemic? What kind of switching costs are most receptive by passengers?
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4) Determining which changes in transportation preferences are beneficial for the development of the urban transport system, and which of them are negative..
5) Proposing supportive initiatives to boost socially beneficial changes in transportation behavior and restraining measures for changes having negative effect on transportation.
All in all, the goal of transportation policy in case of the Covid-19 pandemic is to understand better how to cultivate and positively support switching tendencies so that can help to achieve welfare gains.
Relevance of research in St.Petersburg
These 5 determined points and questions should be investigated in case of St. Petersburg. Due to the novelty of the topic, there are no academic studies explaining the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on changes of citizens’ transportation behavior in case of St.Petersburg. However, data aggregators’ information could show that some changes have occurred.
For example, Citymapper Mobility Index (Citymapper, 2020) compares requests for routings before and during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Citymapper app. According to its data, at the world’s biggest cities moving citizens from one point to another have decreased by several times in 2020. St.Petersburg data also shows the same trend, citizens moved less in 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019.
However, the data about changes in the number of requests for routes by Apple (Apple, 2020) (Figure 2) shows that compared to the previous year, at some time of the pandemic duration, the mobility of citizens even increased. However, in general, during the period of the pandemic, there was a decrease in requests for routing both for cars and for walking routes. Perhaps, this can be explained by the assumption that during the pandemic, people may have stopped walking and driving on unfamiliar routes and moved mostly on familiar routine routes, for which there is no need to look for routes in app.