Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on global social and economic development, including the transport sector. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, individual states had to take radical measures, including the closure of schools, offices, and businesses. At present, an extraordinary situation persists in the Slovak Republic in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to influence the behavior and decisions of passengers when using public passenger transport. Anti-pandemic measures in the Slovak Republic were reflected in a decrease in the mobility of the population in public passenger transport; the change in mobility manifested to different extents in individual regions of the Slovak Republic. Our research at the regional level is focused on the Žilina self-governing region. The net impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was clear through a year-on-year decrease in the number of total passenger transport systems for suburban bus transport (SBT) in ŽSK by 40.2% in March, in April by 70.0%, and in May by 60.2%. There was a more significant decrease in the number of passengers in the first wave of the pandemic in the first half of 2020 than during the second wave of the pandemic in the second half of 2020. The decrease in demand was most pronounced in April 2020 in pupils and students aged 15 years (−89.3%), in children under 6 years (−85.7%), and in seniors over 65 (−80.0%). A time series of past demand for SBT in the Žilina self-governing region, including data from the pandemic period used for forecasts of single-criteria, reduced the reliability of estimated future values of demand. Estimated future demand values are an important part of SBT’s transport service plans for ensuring an adequate supply of transport services in order to maintain demand.
Highlights
Transport is one of the indicators for measuring sustainable development through overall energy consumption, transport growth, transport prices, and social and environmental impacts [1]
The COVID-19 disease caused a reduction in the mobility of the population in Slovakia and the world
In order to prevent the spread of the disease, individual countries started to close shops, shopping centers, schools, and offices. These measures reduced the rate of the disease, but, on the other hand, they had an impact on the demand for bus transport, as residents decided to use cars or public passenger transport services to make their journeys
Summary
Transport is one of the indicators for measuring sustainable development through overall energy consumption, transport growth, transport prices, and social and environmental impacts [1]. One of the ways in which residents can make their journeys is to prioritize public passenger transport over individual transport. The challenge for many cities is to at least maintain the current number of passengers using public passenger transport. Polat (2012) [2], Paulley et al, (2006) [3], and Metz (2012) [4] identified in their research several factors by which carriers and customers of transport services can, to some extent, influence the demand for public passenger transport. With the help of the transport policy of individual cities, regions, and states, stabilization of the demand for public passenger transport (PPT) is achievable [5,6]. The relationship between satisfaction with PPT and mode of transport has been investigated by Diana (2012) [7], Cantwell et al, (2009) [8], and Abouhassan (2017) [9]
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