report on transport during lockdown
Answers
Transportation sector has been one of the primary victims of COVID-19. From rickshaw pullers to airlines, all have been affected economically by the pandemic. India's overall energy demand fell by 11% in March 20201. Due to lockdown in many countries, the demand for passenger transport has been adversely hit. The freight segment has had a mixed short-term effect in terms of transportation demand. There is a surge in demand for truck drivers in transportation of essential goods. For instance, there is 40% to 60% increase of product being moved into grocery stores and warehouses in US since COVID spread started2. However, the supply chain disruption and slowdown caused by COVID is expected to pull down freight demand in the medium-term. Urban freight segments in India have also had a mixed short-term effect in terms of transportation demand. Since February, the online food orders have dropped by 20% whereas online grocery orders are overflowing3. It is to yet to be seen whether these acquired habits of online grocery shopping will sustain after the pandemic passes.
Answer:
Lockdown in cities across the globe has imposed severe travel restrictions to limit the spread of Coronavirus disease. The travel behavior and operations will not be the same as before due to requirements such as physical (social) distancing. This study analyzes the resulting shortage in supply of public transport (buses) that will likely widen the existing gap between demand and supply. In this work, system optimization models are developed to efficiently reallocate the bus fleet to routes for different levels of physical distancing gaps and travel demand. The proposed models are applied to a real-life network of 34 bus routes of Delhi, considering three types of scenarios: current, practical, and ideal. In the practical scenarios, the additional, idling bus fleets can be allocated to the routes efficiently while maintaining physical distancing. The results show that the Business-as-Usual (BAU) scenario involving the current allocation approach will make it impossible to use public buses even if the bare minimum physical distancing has to be maintained. Further, the models proposed in the study significantly improve the key performance indicators for all scenarios.