Impact of COVID-19–Related Travel Restrictions on the Environment and Travel Time Reliability
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149, Issue 7
Abstract
This study analyzes the effect of the restrictions in traffic movement enforced in order to combat the spread of coronavirus on air quality and travel time reliability under heterogeneous and laneless traffic conditions. A comparative analysis was conducted to examine quantity of pollutants, average travel time distributions (TTD), and their associated travel time reliability (TTR) metrics during the COVID-19 pandemic, postpandemic, and during partial restrictions. Pollutants data (, , and ) and travel time data for selected locations from Chennai City in India were collected for a sample period of one week using Wi-Fi sensors and state-run air quality monitoring stations. It was observed that the average quantity of , , and were increased by 433.1%, 681.4%, and 99.2%, respectively, during the postlockdown period. Correlation analysis also indicated that all considered air pollutants are moderately correlated to Wi-Fi hits, albeit to varied degrees. From the analysis, it was also found that average TTD mean and interquartile range values were increased by 47.2% and 105.2%. In addition, the buffer time index, planning time index, travel index, and capacity buffer index associated with these TTD metrics were increased by 148.1%, 63.7%, 42.8%, and 202.9%, respectively, soon after relaxing travel restrictions.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support for this study as a part of the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) project funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (Project No. CIE/18-19/289/SPAR/LELI).
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 149 • Issue 7 • July 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 7, 2022
Accepted: Feb 27, 2023
Published online: Apr 28, 2023
Published in print: Jul 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Sep 28, 2023
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