Impact of Covid-19 on Urban Traffic Patterns

Abstract

This work explores urban traffic patterns in the city of Athens during the first few waves of the Covid-19 pandemic and in particular between March and November 2020. Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by WHO on the 11th of March 2020, and several measures were implemented to mitigate its spread utilizing social distancing practices. As a result, our lives changed substantially, and so did our travel patterns. The aim of this paper is to identify how Covid-19 affected urban traffic patterns, and which were the contributory factors affecting this effect. Traffic data were collected from 73 road sites of the Athenian road network, for specific days in 2020 and their respective ones in 2019 (set as base conditions). The explored road sites, days and time periods were determined by the different trip purposes that were explored: work and leisure trips, taking into account the typical Athenian traveller habits. Covid-19 related data was also collected (e.g. Covid-19 reported cases), while the application dates of the different restrictions were noted. The impact of Covid-19 was explored with the design of multiple linear regression models, where the dependent variable was the change in traffic flow between the two periods. Results demonstrated a substantial reduction of traffic flow in 2020, which varied both spatially and temporally, while the most significant Covid-19 related factor was found to be the number of deaths.