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Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the transportation sector hard; particularly air transportation, as a major mode of long-distance transportation, has been affected tremendously. Since the dawn of COVID-19, politicians and policy makers have discussed the idea of introducing travel bubbles between coun...

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Autores principales: Sun, Xiaoqian, Wandelt, Sebastian, Zhang, Anming
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Tsinghua University Press. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9676165/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.commtr.2022.100089
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author Sun, Xiaoqian
Wandelt, Sebastian
Zhang, Anming
author_facet Sun, Xiaoqian
Wandelt, Sebastian
Zhang, Anming
author_sort Sun, Xiaoqian
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the transportation sector hard; particularly air transportation, as a major mode of long-distance transportation, has been affected tremendously. Since the dawn of COVID-19, politicians and policy makers have discussed the idea of introducing travel bubbles between countries (or counties), to allow for a continued exchange of people and goods. The eponymous Trans-Tasmanian travel bubble is a major example, involving quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand. While both countries have tried to form a travel bubble various times, recurring setbacks and difficulties were faced. In October 2021, this ambitious project presumably has come to an end, with both countries announcing the essential capitulation of their COVIDZero strategies and a planned opening towards broader international travel. In this study, we perform a close investigation of the history behind the Trans-Tasmanian travel bubble as an on-off relationship, identifying a set of drivers for the serious problems involving a sustainable setup and operation. We develop a framework which represents important factors for successful travel bubbles and believe that the satisfaction of all factors at once is extremely challenging. Our results and insights are not specific to the Trans-Tasmanian case only, although it is taken as a running example, but can be generalized to various scales and environments. We hope that our study contributes to the literature by improving our understanding of the highly buzzed travel bubble concept, while providing empirical evidence for the troubles that inherently make such bubbles a tightrope walk.
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spelling pubmed-96761652022-11-21 Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case Sun, Xiaoqian Wandelt, Sebastian Zhang, Anming Communications in Transportation Research Full Length Article The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the transportation sector hard; particularly air transportation, as a major mode of long-distance transportation, has been affected tremendously. Since the dawn of COVID-19, politicians and policy makers have discussed the idea of introducing travel bubbles between countries (or counties), to allow for a continued exchange of people and goods. The eponymous Trans-Tasmanian travel bubble is a major example, involving quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand. While both countries have tried to form a travel bubble various times, recurring setbacks and difficulties were faced. In October 2021, this ambitious project presumably has come to an end, with both countries announcing the essential capitulation of their COVIDZero strategies and a planned opening towards broader international travel. In this study, we perform a close investigation of the history behind the Trans-Tasmanian travel bubble as an on-off relationship, identifying a set of drivers for the serious problems involving a sustainable setup and operation. We develop a framework which represents important factors for successful travel bubbles and believe that the satisfaction of all factors at once is extremely challenging. Our results and insights are not specific to the Trans-Tasmanian case only, although it is taken as a running example, but can be generalized to various scales and environments. We hope that our study contributes to the literature by improving our understanding of the highly buzzed travel bubble concept, while providing empirical evidence for the troubles that inherently make such bubbles a tightrope walk. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Tsinghua University Press. 2023-12 2022-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9676165/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.commtr.2022.100089 Text en © 2022 The Authors 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 Full Length Article
Sun, Xiaoqian
Wandelt, Sebastian
Zhang, Anming
Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title_full Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title_fullStr Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title_full_unstemmed Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title_short Why are COVID-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? An investigation based on the Trans-Tasmanian case
title_sort why are covid-19 travel bubbles a tightrope walk? an investigation based on the trans-tasmanian case
topic Full Length Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9676165/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.commtr.2022.100089
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