The Impact of the COVID-19 Movement Restrictions on the Road Traffic in the Czech Republic during the State of Emergency

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has impacted numerous areas of people’s work and free-time activities. This article aims to present the main impacts of the COVID-19 movement restrictions on the road traffic in the Czech Republic, measured during the first epidemic wave, i.e., from 12 March to 17 May 2020. The state of emergency was imposed by the Czech government as a de jure measure for coping with the perceived crisis, although the measure eventually resulted only in a quite liberal de facto form of stay-at-home instruction. Unique country-scale traffic data of the first six months of 2020 from 37,002 km of roads, constituting 66% of all roads in the Czech Republic, were collected and analyzed. For the prediction of the prepandemic traffic conditions and their comparison with the measured values in the period of the state of emergency, a long-term traffic speed prediction ensemble model consisting of case-based reasoning, linear regression, and fallback submodels was used. The authors found out that the COVID-19 movement restrictions had a significant impact on the country-wide traffic. Traffic density was reduced considerably in the first three weeks, and the weekly average traffic speed in all road types increased by up to 21%, expectedly due to less crowded roads. The exception was motorways, where a different trend in traffic was found. In sum, during the first three weeks of the state of emergency, people followed government regulations and restrictions and changed their travel behavior accordingly. However, following this period, the traffic gradually returned to the prepandemic state. This occurred three weeks before the state of emergency was terminated. From a behavioral perspective, this article briefly discusses the possible causes of such discrepancies between de jure and de facto pandemic measures, i.e., the governmental communication strategy related to loosening of movement restrictions, media reality, and certain culture-related traits.

Impact of COVID-19 and closed fishing season on commercial fishers of Davao Gulf, Mindanao, Philippines

“…Travel protocols and other government provisions such as social distancing made it difficult for fishers to operate, resulting in limited operation time. With these limitations, the volume of fish caught started to decrease ( Jomitol, 2020 ; Simunek et al, 2021 ).…”

Impacts of COVID-19 on the Catch of Small-Scale Fishers and Their Families Due to Restriction Policies in Davao Gulf, Philippines

“…The ECQ meant "stay at home" as mobility and transportation (air, water, and land) were restricted (Ferrer et al, 2021). It affected people's daily activity patterns or regular movements and habits from jogging, walking to dining in restaurants, which were previously thought normal or usual (Simunek et al, 2021). In the fisheries, movement restrictions significantly affected the fishers and also affected fish supply and demand, including fish distribution, labor and production of fish (Love et al, 2020;Belton et al, 2021).…”

“…Smallscale fisheries contribute to coastal communities' social and economic development as they provide food, livelihood, and income to the poor, vulnerable and marginal sectors (FAO, 2020a;Ferrer et al, 2021). However, severe implications of COVID-19 for the SSF have become more obvious (Simunek et al, 2021). Fishing area restrictions due to the implementation of border lockdowns was a major problem experienced by the fishers in Davao Gulf (Jomitol et al, 2020), complete shutdowns of fisheries were also experienced, stay-at-home orders preventing travel to and within fishing areas during imposition of draconian measures of lockdown (Okyere et al, 2020).…”

“…During this time (February 2020-May 2020), travel restrictions were implemented preventing the movement or travel of workers seeking to go from their residence to their work sites, or offices. This was a big challenge for the fishers' families because according to many of them, their other family members capable of finding jobs or already working outside their place of residence were not able to travel due to the tight policy restrictions from border to border (Simunek et al, 2021). In addition, the closing of the educational institutions (basic education to college level) was not very helpful for the fishers' families, as this has the unintended effect of some of the families unable to cope up with the sudden change in the education system (Chaturvedi et al, 2021).…”

Analyzing the Trends of COVID-19 and Human Activity Intensity in Malaysia

“…During an outbreak of the disease, government-imposed movement restrictions or self-imposed travel willingness would reduce human activity intensity. This indicated that the outbreak would be followed by a reduction in human activity intensity as well [ 30 , 31 ]. Therefore, we would explore the patterns of the disease cases and the check-ins to uncover the relationship between the two sets of time series.…”