COVID-19 Has Negative Impacts on Urban Traffic Recovery: A Statistical Analysis Study Based on Thirty Cities’ Data in China

To ensure traffic safety, many related works have been done to avoid traveler injury during trips. However, new public health issues threaten traffic safety because travelers might get ill during trips. The more people infected by COVID-19, the more unsafe urban traffic becomes. This paper aims to verify whether COVID-19 has negative impacts on urban traffic recovery. Based on thirty Chinese cities’ data, robust fixed-effects (within) regression was adopted to analyze impacts with a linear regression method. The regression results suggest that Urban Traffic Activity Index (UTAI) was positively associated with UTAI itself with short-term effect, meaning that UTAI could recover by itself, and new confirmed cases (NC) were negatively associated with UTAI with long-term effect, meaning that NC would prevent UTAI recovery. The findings also suggest that it is better for city governments to eliminate outbreaks before restarting economies. Future directions include improving models, grouping cities, and expanding data.