Mobility Trends during the COVID-19 Virus Pandemic

Abstract

The Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) has a significant impact on countries around the world and many states have introduced restrictions to transport. This includes keeping essential transport moving, for example to transport medical supplies and other essential goods. Many countries have closed their borders and imposed curfews in sharp reductions in transport demand also on regional and continental level. Public transport but also shared mobility services are vectors for distribution of the virus, on the other hand, they are severely impacted by travel bans and individual concerns in order to avoid public gatherings leading to reduced travel and transport demand. Different countries have dealt with these challenging circumstances in different ways - and, in some cases, the directives vary from city to city. Cities in developing countries and emerging economies face bigger challenges than ever before. At the beginning of the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) google maps started to collect detailed statistics on the movement of people using location data from mobile devices. The paper analyzes the data obtained and shows the results for various areas of movement such as shops, recreation areas, parks, public transport and other. A comparison was made of the collected data in the Republic of Croatia, which had a solid measures, Italian Republic which had many affected during the pandemic and Kingdom of Sweden which had very mild measures during a pandemic. Therefore, a study was made on how measures affected the mobility of people in individual countries with different measures.