Chapter 5 - Impacts of COVID-19 on the transport sector in China: Facts and insights from early stages

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in the last season of 2019 seriously impacted the transportation industry. Countries around the world adopted various restrictions and policies to prevent the spread of the pandemic, which resulted in a sharp drop in the demand for transportation. To analyze the impact of the pandemic on China’s transportation sector at the early states and propose measures that may be taken to recover from the impact of COVID-19, the existing policies and impacts were reviewed. The government preparedness, recovery measures during/after pandemic, and their effects are analyzed. This chapter summarized the influence of COVID-19 to transportation system as well as the lifestyles and the whole society, and stated that future research could delve more deeply into this area. The research findings provided solid policy implications and experiences for constructing sustainable transportation system and improve flexibility, reliability, and resilience of traffic governance in postpandemic era.