COVID-19: IIT Hyderabad, Bombay to study change in travel pattern

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Team Careers360 | April 2, 2020 | 06:13 PM IST

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institutes of Technology Hyderabad and Bombay or, IIT Hyderabad and IIT Bombay, have studied the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on daily commute during the transition phase between pre-lockdown and the lockdown period.

They found that about 48 percent of commuters had stopped travelling for work by the third week of March while 28 percent continued to travel at their normal frequency. Over 40 percent had cancelled their flights and train journeys due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Plus, around 93 percent said they believe private transport is safer compared to mass public transit options. In tier-1 cities, around 12 percent commuters had switched to private transport.

According to Digvijay Pawar, assistant professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, the research titled “Study on Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on work trips during transition to lockdown period” will help policymakers and local transport authorities understand the changes in travel pattern during the lockdown period.

This study follows a similar effort by IIT Kharagpur which had offered the prescient warning that in the case of a lockdown, a very large number of workers would attempt to leave the cities where they are employed for their hometowns.

Decision-making behaviour

The study helped the researchers understand “the decision-making behaviour of commuters while selecting their preferred mode of transport during a pandemic like COVID-19.”

The study analyzed the daily commute and visit behaviour changes during the third week of COVID-19 outbreak in India and during the pre-lockdown period. Analysing responses from over 1,900 participants who answered an online questionnaire, the researchers found that around 12 percent of commuters in tier-1 cities had switched to private transport by the third week of the outbreak. Although responses from tier-2 and tier-3 were fewer in number, they showed that less than 10 percent of the commuters had switched.

The following table shows the percentage of the respondents who switched from public to private mode of transport.

Tier-1	Tier-2	Tier-3
12%	9%	7%

These statistics indicate that the awareness about COVID-19 is higher in Tier-1 cities, followed by Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.

The research team comprised Digvijay S. Pawar and Pritha Chatterjee, both assistant professors in the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, and Nagendra Velaga and research student Ankit Kumar Yadav from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Bombay.

The team is also trying to understand the effect of COVID-19 on transportation related emissions.