Table 2.
Indicative major issues revealed by the pandemic and major recommendations.
| Land Transport --- Operations |
| Technological tools and rail transportation |
| Physical distancing in mass transit operations is almost infeasible to implement in crowded cities |
| • Technology-based self-service (e.g., interactive vending machines or mobile payment systems) facilitate contactless travel |
| Urgent need to understand the robustness of railway network to predict and anticipate large-scale disruptions |
| • Collection of near real-time reliable empirical data |
| • Cascading effects can largely affect the functionality of railway transport |
| Control measures for urban traffic |
| Previous forms of long-distance hypermobility are incompatible with recent lockdown policies |
| • Encourage modal shift towards more sustainable active modes of transport |
| • Provide transit users with information about levels of congestion inside public transport platforms/vehicles |
| • Use smart technologies to check body temperature of users |
| • Staff behaviors should be properly regulated |
| • Tracking the health and movements of travelers |
| • Transition towards Responsible Transport (i.e., considering the impact your travel choices have on others) |
| Debate surrounding the use of face masks |
| • Without face protection, frequent cleaning, and ventilation, public transportation increase risk of viral transmission |
| • Avoid talking without wearing masks and talking loudly |
| Non-motorized mobility |
| Conventional public transport is often unable to meet the newly impose regulations |
| • Bike sharing systems have shown to be more resilient than the subway systems with less significant ridership drops |
| • Promote greater connectivity among users, vehicles, and infrastructures through real-time smartphone apps |
| Rethink urban spaces and mobility |
| • Consider cycle paths, processes, and systems, taking into account the entire life cycle of the infrastructure |
| • Adoption of pedestrian and traffic calming areas, sharing mobility programs and temporary tactical urbanism tools |
| Public transit |
| Challenges to manage passenger flows due to the complexity of station design and unexpected passenger behavior |
| • Operators must monitor, scan, manage, investigate factors, and update plans based on the level of expected hazard |
| • Simulation of people movement as a powerful microscopic crowd modeling tool |
| • Evaluate epidemic control policies from both public health side (e.g., reducing infectious rate) and transportation side |
| (e.g., distributing departure time, closing bus routes) |
| Human factors within the public sector (e.g., unsafe acts or unsafe supervision) play a vital role in the control of the epidemic |
| • Human factors are likely to result in imperfect management, and the possibility of a nationwide epidemic |
| • Artificial Intelligence through automated processes can help to complement the mitigation efforts |
| Land Transport — Traffic Demand |
| Protective behavior and working from home |
| Rapid and drastic changes have become apparent in people’s mobility-styles due to enacted regulations |
| • Information disseminated through television lead to higher risk perception for discretionary trips |
| • Trade-off between the severity of the threat and crippling socio-economic activities |
| • Reduce parking fees to encourage car owners to travel by private cars |
| • Issue bike-sharing coupons to encourage short-distance commuting crowds to ride bicycles |
| To how and what extent various socio-economic segments of the population have adjusted to the mitigation measures |
| • Working from home carries high potential for moving towards a more sustainable future |
| • Investment in maintaining working from home can lead to large improvements in travel networks and overall cost savings |
| • Flexible working arrangements are perhaps the biggest policy lever available to government |
| Spreading speed and travel behavior trends |
| Densely populated urban environments and the heavy dependence on traffic could increase the spread of the virus |
| • Different opening hours to distribute the demand for public transport to avoid rush hours |
| • Minimize the lag of orders and actions designed to increase social distance between urban and rural areas |
| • Use of mobile data instead of census population data to assess the implicit risk of the locations |
| • Document the impact on the most vulnerable segments, e.g., those unable to socially distance |
| Inter-city migration as a main source of local transmission |
| • Proper advice should be given to those people who are likely to travel |
| • Mobility, could indicate how people perceive the risk they are exposed to and the level of risk they are willing to take |
| • Quarantine, reportage of suspected cases and shutdown of transportation as main measures to generate infection scenarios |
| • Cities should not only prevent the epidemic from the epicenter, but also protect against infection from other areas |
| Reduction in traffic demand heavy depends on network configuration |
| • Cities with high road network density and compact urban structure should decisively implement mobility restrictions measures |
| • Networks with less connectivity and lower roadway density benefits more from the demand reduction |
| Sustainability of urban mobility |
| Lockdown periods induced psychological and physical mobility problems but also reinvented the spatial structure of social ties |
| • Mobility sharing will reduce while the acceptance of electric cars will increase |
| • Gradually developing landscape influence on mobility transitions |
| • Closely monitor and analyze the governance responses (e.g., serious threat of increasingly populist or undemocratic governance) |
| A very rare chance for industry suppliers and policy makers to learn about the role e-scooters on urban transportation networks |
| • Regulatory regimes to handle environmental (e.g., abandoned and damaged vehicles) and safety problems (accident numbers) |
| • Limited the number of scooters per operator |
| • Potential demand can increase due to fiscal incentives and to the battery cost reduction induced by technological change |
| • Regarding the manufacturers it is of great importance to use materials on which the virus has been proven less durable |
| Challenges associated with conventional travel to stop the rapid spread of the infection |
| • Requalification of the road infrastructure and acquisition of electric micromobility |
| • Design of road infrastructures and the enhancement of pedestrian and bicycle lanes |
| • Promote integrated infrastructure design and control through intelligent transport system technologies |
| • As society is aging, shifts in the transport systems for comprehensive health promotion has become of primary importance |
| • Take into consideration the needs of the elderly, as one of the most fragile and vulnerable social groups |
| Air Transport |
| Aviation’s recovery flight plan |
| U/L-shaped recovery depending on duration and magnitude of the outbreak |
| • Create safe travel bubbles to suit the specific circumstances of the bilateral country pair or regional grouping |
| • Focus on the prevention of the infection at airports and on-board aircraft |
| • Destination management organizations to improve their Big Data analytical and evidence-based, decision-making skills |
| • Airlines to negotiate with authorities to survive the demand shortage |
| • Restart flights too soon and too fast will result in more infections and may cause even further reduction in travel demand |
| Imported cases is critical for containment |
| • Develop risk indexes to accurately measure the imported case risk from different foreign countries and even specific routes |
| • Transport flights to be categorized into high-risk flights, medium-risk flights, and low-risk flights |
| • Local governments should provide clear instructions and countermeasures |
| • Reduce the air transport frequency without canceling all the flights |
| • Cut air services first while keeping most of the rail services |
| Passenger preferences and willingness to fly |
| Airport screening measures failed in halting the spread of the virus at the very early stage of the epidemic |
| • If new confirmed cases remain stable, easing the requirements for self-isolation could increase travel demand |
| • Contactless self-service as a means to feel safe during the passenger journey |
| • Elderly passenger preferences for private transport to travel to and from the airport |
| • Airlines to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect their passengers and then to explain why these steps will be effective |
| • A clear protocol needs to be established in order to know what to do with a passenger with a positive test result (true or false) |
| Significant differences between domestic and international travel markets |
| • Increase airport shuttle and public transit frequencies right before the peak hours of international flights |
| • The reliability of mass transport modes can be marketed to passengers to increase their uses |
| • Health screening measures to be first implement within (domestic) airports, afterwards, generalization for intercontinental traffic |
| Safety and security in aviation |
| Landside capacity is crucial in the event of a health crisis |
| • Evaluate the level of service of functional subsystems (departure/arrival halls, check-in, boarding gates, baggage claim, etc.) |
| • Constantly supervise the movement of the passengers in security control lanes, and give them tips for keeping a distance |
| • Develop integrated management system to meet service quality requirements |
| (avoiding bottlenecks and long waiting times, while ensuring that sanitary measures) |
| Social distancing norms reduce airplane capacity |
| • Encourage passengers to carry fewer luggage aboard the airplane |
| • Middle-seat blocking policy |
| • Evaluate different boarding methods in terms of boarding time and health-related metrics |
| Airlines’ strategic responses |
| Restrictive movements, weak tourism, and curtailed income compressed passenger demand |
| • Focus on minimizing losses rather than profit maximization |
| • Provide access to markets at a deeper discount for pre-purchase via corporate fares |
| • Fleet downsizing variations and accompanying layoffs |
| • Temporary deficits and deferred cost recovery |
| The crisis would lead to consolidation and a significantly smaller industry |
| • Mergers and acquisitions, tax policy, and government subsidies |
| The need for support and the actual support to airlines provided by governments vary significantly in each country |
| • Differentiated state aid, whether to provide financial support, guarantee existing debt, or to believe in market mechanisms |
| • Public non-regulated airports to keep charges low during the crisis to rise after |
| • Reorientation of public policy in the post-pandemic may limit the importance of the policy priorities (e.g., climate change) |
| Environment |
| Changes in concentration of air pollutants |
| Global action to mitigate the pandemic has consequently involved switching off most pollutant emission sources |
| • Differentiation between local pollutant emissions and regional pollutant transport |
| • To enhance regional environmental cooperation and to implement a united prevention and control of air pollution |
| • Encourage people to use public transport, sharing cars and workers to work from home |
| Depending on the city, traffic-free conditions could not cause substantial reductions in pollution levels |
| • Prioritize reductions in air pollution based on what air quality standards might be feasible |
| • Investigate generation mechanisms of secondary pollutants |
| • Car-free days or odd–even number-plate schemes are effective policies to reduce NOx and NO |
| Air transport mobility and noise emissions |
| Aviation is one the most carbon-intensive forms of transport and one of the most difficult to decarbonize |
| • Development of alternative aircraft fuels, introduction of hybrid-electric, or fully electrified propulsions of aircrafts |
| • Evaluate the efficacy and net societal benefits of policy changes related to jet fuel taxation |
| The traffic reduction has also had consequences for noise |
| • Significant reduction in sound levels can be achieved through aggressive traffic reduction strategies |
| • Promote walking and cycling to improve overall sustainability of the transport infrastructure |
| • Ordinances of traffic limitation should be accompanied by appropriate interventions to reduce speed limits |
| Energy systems and renewable fuels |
| Decarbonization of transport and economic recovery do not compete, but rather represent a win-win solution |
| • Promote and implement well-designed and reliable sustainable low-carbon fuel refineries |
| • Increase the ambition and promote higher amounts of domestic renewable and low carbon fuels |
| Little understanding about temporal and spatial variation transportation emissions |
| • If transit ridership is largely reduced, public transport can perform worst than cars on a person emissions basis |
| • Transparency of the potential individual and societal benefits of congestion pricing plans |