Mining urban sustainable performance: Spatio-temporal emission potential changes of urban transit buses in post-COVID-19 future

Abstract

Highlights Proposing a framework to analyze emission patterns of buses and changes in post-COVID-19. 2056 buses with 1.5 million ridership and 7589 taxis with 0.2 million trips are used for analysis. 224 social surveys are collected and show a 56.3% ridership reduction in post-COVID-19. We find buses cannot be “greener” travel modal than cars if ridership reduces by more than 40%.

On the indirect environmental outcomes of COVID-19: short-term revival with futuristic long-term implications

“…They prioritized scientific evidence and economic functioning to be considered the core of countries' development policies. Besides, Sui et al (2020) contemplated that in the post-COVID-19 China, the ridership of buses would be reduced by 40% than before COVID-19. In that case, it would become a barrier to the sustainable future because the dependency on personal vehicles would be increased, which could increase environmental emissions in the post-COVID-19 situation.…”

Impacts of COVID-19 on energy demand and consumption: Challenges, lessons and emerging opportunities

“… The consumption of private cars declines during the lockdown, but that increases sharply after lifting the lockdown [30] . What might be worse is that 56.3% of respondents would decrease the usage of buses post-COVID-19 [31] . The energy demand for producing regular products (e.g.…”

“…However, a surge of car consumption was widely observed after lifting the lockdown [30] . Population prefers to use more frequently private cars to avoid public transportation [31] , which cannot fully follow social distancing. What can be problematic is that it can develop into a longer-term habit without active intervention.…”

Impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on user behaviors and environmental benefits of bike sharing: A big-data analysis

“…Due to high infectivity and destructiveness of COVID-19, and the suddenness of its outbreak, Chinese government has taken strong measures to stop the spreading of this new disease, such as national-wide lockdown and isolation of people at high risk areas [8] . However, COVID-19 is able to spread from human to human, while public transport tends to contain many people in one shared space, which implies people probably change their attitudes and behaviors to public transport [9] , although it is a primary travelling mode for most of people [1] .…”