When the impossible becomes possible: COVID-19’s impact on work and travel patterns in Swedish public agencies

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly led to some of the most revolutionary changes in private and professional life around the world. While the extent and duration of these changes are not certain, they have already had a great impact on travel patterns. This is also the case in Sweden, despite its relatively liberal approach to restrictions, which relies on voluntary measures such as social distancing and self-monitoring for symptoms. Methodology Due to the pandemic, a shift to telework and virtual meetings is being tested in what can be seen as a large-scale experiment, and the knowledge and experience from that experiment may have lasting effects on everyday life. This study seeks to analyse the effects of government and public agencies’ recommendations on meeting and travel behaviour on employees at five public agencies in Sweden. Results The results indicate that the public authorities surveyed were well prepared and had a ‘backup collaboration solution’, at least technically, to make a rapid behavioural shift when travel was not an option. Though the Swedish government’s and Public Health Authority’s strong recommendations have led to the most dramatic reductions in work-related travel in modern times, the operations in Swedish agencies continue to function, along with the employees’ communications and collaborations. These results indicate that there is great potential for digital tools to influence if and how we commute and make business trips. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that such tools can make the impossible possible.

Travel Demand Prediction during COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational and Working Trips at the University of Padova

“…Income was found to have a positive effect on the probability not to carry out the trip [4,45,46], but only for employees. Gender has an impact only for students, with males more willing to travel rather females [10,12,29,46,65]. Moreover, as a consequence of the choice to stay at home, the developed model predicts that employees might reduce their commuting trips using sub urban bus, bikes and walking.…”

“…On the other hand, trip frequency before the COVID-19 outbreak has a negative impact on the choice to cancel the journey [23,29,46] for both students and workers. As regards the effects of COVID-19 on educational and working trips, health risk perception plays a fundamental role in trip cancellation decisions [19], in particular for public transport modes [24,65].…”

“…In order to analyse travel demand related to mandatory activities during a "new normal" period, data from a mobility survey administered to employees and students in the University of Padova (Italy) were used. These specific groups were selected since they contain individuals who can decide whether to take a trip or not, because of remote working and online learning, thereby considering realistic conditions of the modelled period [7,8,29]. In addition, answers were collected from July to September 2020, when people had accumulated experience of these online activities for four months [52].…”

“…Many authors reported significant changes in users' travel habits worldwide [7,8,21,22], with variations in the frequency of trips, travel purposes and modal split [12], which may have varied in accordance with country-specific factors [23,24] and socio-economic characteristics of citizens [25]. As regards European nations, comparing trip statistics before and after the pandemic: in Germany, about 60% of persons changed transport mode [14], in particular, the number of people performing monomodal trips rose from 68% to 83% [26]; in Greece, the average number of daily trips decreased by 50% [12]; in the Netherlands, about 80% of people reduced their out-of-home activities and the number of trips decreased by 55% compared to 2019 [9]; in Poland, 50% of people reduced their travel time by more than two thirds [20]; commuting trips dropped by 80% in Spain [13]; in Italy, the number of people reporting no daily trips increased by 27% [24] and the number of internal trips decreased by 50% [27,28], while commuting trips were reduced by 69% [8]; even in Sweden, where restrictions were voluntary, 86% of the population changed their commuting trips with 66% of people who commuted for 5 days a week prior to the pandemic deciding not to travel [29]. In particular, public transport, despite its fundamental role in everyday mobility needs, was the most affected travel mode [8,30] since it was often perceived as a high-risk environment for contagion [31].…”

“…Firstly, remote working and online learning may induce the cancellation of many systematic trips [4,8,9,46,50] since individuals have the possibility to carry out the corresponding activities at home [7,29,51]. Although factors influencing both remote working and the prediction of its adoption were investigated by many authors [7,10,13,29,51,52], only a few previous works focused on the impact of online learning and students' behaviours on travel demand, but without any predictive analysis. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students experienced drastic changes in their lives [15].…”