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Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong

COVID-19 threatens the world. Social distancing is a significant factor in determining the spread of this disease, and social distancing is strongly affected by the local travel behaviour of people in large cities. In this study, we analysed the changes in the local travel behaviour of various popul...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Nan, Jia, Wei, Wang, Peihua, Dung, Chung-Hin, Zhao, Pengcheng, Leung, Kathy, Su, Boni, Cheng, Reynold, Li, Yuguo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7877214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33589850
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103139
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author Zhang, Nan
Jia, Wei
Wang, Peihua
Dung, Chung-Hin
Zhao, Pengcheng
Leung, Kathy
Su, Boni
Cheng, Reynold
Li, Yuguo
author_facet Zhang, Nan
Jia, Wei
Wang, Peihua
Dung, Chung-Hin
Zhao, Pengcheng
Leung, Kathy
Su, Boni
Cheng, Reynold
Li, Yuguo
author_sort Zhang, Nan
collection PubMed
description COVID-19 threatens the world. Social distancing is a significant factor in determining the spread of this disease, and social distancing is strongly affected by the local travel behaviour of people in large cities. In this study, we analysed the changes in the local travel behaviour of various population groups in Hong Kong, between 1 January and 31 March 2020, by using second-by-second smartcard data obtained from the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) system. Due to the pandemic, local travel volume decreased by 43%, 49% and 59% during weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays, respectively. The local travel volumes of adults, children, students and senior citizens decreased by 42%, 86%, 73% and 48%, respectively. The local travel behaviour changes for adults and seniors between non-pandemic and pandemic times were greater than those between weekdays and weekends. The opposite was true for children and students. During the pandemic, the daily commute flow decreased by 42%. Local trips to shopping areas, amusement areas and borders decreased by 42%, 81% and 99%, respectively. The effective reproduction number (R(t)) of COVID-19 had the strongest association with daily population use of the MTR 7–8 days earlier.
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spelling pubmed-78772142021-02-11 Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong Zhang, Nan Jia, Wei Wang, Peihua Dung, Chung-Hin Zhao, Pengcheng Leung, Kathy Su, Boni Cheng, Reynold Li, Yuguo Cities Article COVID-19 threatens the world. Social distancing is a significant factor in determining the spread of this disease, and social distancing is strongly affected by the local travel behaviour of people in large cities. In this study, we analysed the changes in the local travel behaviour of various population groups in Hong Kong, between 1 January and 31 March 2020, by using second-by-second smartcard data obtained from the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) system. Due to the pandemic, local travel volume decreased by 43%, 49% and 59% during weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays, respectively. The local travel volumes of adults, children, students and senior citizens decreased by 42%, 86%, 73% and 48%, respectively. The local travel behaviour changes for adults and seniors between non-pandemic and pandemic times were greater than those between weekdays and weekends. The opposite was true for children and students. During the pandemic, the daily commute flow decreased by 42%. Local trips to shopping areas, amusement areas and borders decreased by 42%, 81% and 99%, respectively. The effective reproduction number (R(t)) of COVID-19 had the strongest association with daily population use of the MTR 7–8 days earlier. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-05 2021-02-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7877214/ /pubmed/33589850 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103139 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Zhang, Nan
Jia, Wei
Wang, Peihua
Dung, Chung-Hin
Zhao, Pengcheng
Leung, Kathy
Su, Boni
Cheng, Reynold
Li, Yuguo
Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title_full Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title_fullStr Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title_full_unstemmed Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title_short Changes in local travel behaviour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong
title_sort changes in local travel behaviour before and during the covid-19 pandemic in hong kong
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7877214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33589850
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103139
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