Starting from December 2019 the world has faced an unprecedented health crisis caused by the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) due to the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Within this topic, the aim of the paper was to ...quantify the effect of mobility habits in the spread of the Coronavirus in Italy through a multiple linear regression model. Estimation results showed that mobility habits represent one of the variables that explains the number of COVID-19 infections jointly with the number of tests/day and some environmental variables (i.e. PM pollution and temperature). Nevertheless, a proximity variable to the first outbreak was also significant, meaning that the areas close to the outbreak had a higher risk of contagion, especially in the initial stage of infection (time-decay phenomena). Furthermore, the number of daily new cases was related to the trips performed three weeks before. This threshold of 21 days could be considered as a sort of positivity detection time, meaning that the mobility restrictions quarantine commonly set at 14 days, defined only according to incubation-based epidemiological considerations, is underestimated (possible delays between contagion and detection) as a containment policy and may not always contribute to effectively slowing down the spread of virus worldwide. This result is original and, if confirmed in other studies, will lay the groundwork for more effective containment of COVID-19 in countries that are still in the health emergency, as well as for possible future returns of the virus.
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•We quantify the effect of mobility habits in the spread of the Coronavirus in Italy.•Daily COVID-19 cases are directly related to the mobility habits performed 21 days before.•Population density, PM pollutant and number of tests per day have a direct relationship with the infection.•Temperature has an inverse relationship with the spread of the virus.•The areas close to the outbreak had a higher risk of contagion (time-decay phenomena).
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the travel behavior of commuters, with soft modes emerging as reliable options for short-distance trips. This research focuses on evaluating the bike-friendliness ...of Venice, Italy, a unique city for its morphological and mobility characteristics. When considering daily commuting between the mainland and the historic city center in the lagoon, the bicycle is not an adopted solution. Yet, the recent construction of a bicycle and pedestrian path that runs alongside the main bridge between the mainland and historical city could alleviate the pressure on public transport and the use of cars, especially in peak hours. This contribution evaluates the potential for using bicycles to reach the historic center of Venice from the mainland, and the appropriateness of the infrastructural equipment. The quantitative analysis examines the current supply and demand in absolute values and in terms of modal share. Projecting the number of actual users under different scenarios until 2030, in accordance with the Venice Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan and other relevant plans, the inadequate provision of parking areas for bikes emerges as an unsolved issue. A revision of the mobility layout is thus required if bicycles are expected to be a competitive alternative solution.
Weekend rest is an important part of a person's recreational cycle. Northerners need a good rest to maintain their health. The choice of a place for vacation is associated with restrictions on the ...time of movement, since its period should not be longer than 2–3 days. The purpose of the research is to select the most suitable transport areas for residents of the Arkhangelsk urban agglomeration, taking into account the landscape and tourist resources. Based on the study of vehicles and the geographical location of tourist services, three sectors were identified, limited by five–hour transport accessibility from the cities of the Arkhangelsk agglomeration. The most promising for priority development is the southern sector, the centers of which can be the villages of Kholmogory and Emetsk. Excursion, relaxation, ecological and sports tourism can be offered there at any time of the year. The transit position of the main roads of the region gives this sector the advantages of attracting tourists from other regions. The western and eastern sectors have significant recreational potential, but their use is constrained by poor transport accessibility. The western sector with the center in the city of Onega is promising for the development of seaside relaxation tourism in summer and sports tourism in winter. The eastern sector with two centers in the villages of Pinega and Karpogory is promising for ecological, sports and excursion tourism throughout the year.
Considering the relevance of providing good accessibility to public transport and adequate non-motorized infrastructure to lower social inequality and exclusion, this study evaluates the public ...transport coverage and the quality of the walking infrastructure in the thirty barangays of Pasig City (Philippines). Using regression analysis, the research attempted to identify socioeconomic factors at the barangay level that correlated to the assessed walkability and public transport accessibility. It was found that barangays with less financial resources, having higher populations, and with a larger share of lowest monthly income households and informal settlements were more likely to have lower walkability. Similar results to explain poorer access to public transport were also observed. These results can be used to o identify disadvantaged barangays to prioritize for improvement for social inclusivity.
The article presents a method for modelling an intermodal graph of accessibility of urban areas. The accessibility of the city's territories is usually understood as a zone where a person can walk or ...get by transport for a certain time from a given point. Accessibility assessment is fundamental in the problems of computational urbanism and is used for a variety of applied spatial indexes and estimates. At the same time, traditional methods of assessing the transport accessibility of the urban environment require the creation of models of transport systems of the studied city, which is associated with significant costs. The situation is complicated by the peculiarities of the urban environment and the need to consider the movement of different types of transport in combination with walking. The method proposed in this article uses an alternative approach to assessing the accessibility of urban areas based on the construction of an intermodal accessibility graph. This makes it possible to use this algorithm in solving applied urban problems without the need to build complex transport models.
Several works have addressed the impact of transport accessibility on regional development. Nevertheless, it is not consensual that new levels of accessibility lead to the improvement of regional ...development. This article proposes a methodological approach to assess whether significant relationship exist between these two variables. The methodology uses Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate regional performance and spatial statistics methods (local bivariate relationships) to evaluate the type of relationships between accessibility and performance for each region, along with its significance. The approach was applied to 186 NUTS that cover 19 European countries, extending previous works which focus on global results, in the sense that only one (usually large) area is considered. Results indicate that approximately half the regions have a significant relationship between transport accessibility and regional performance. Logit regression analyses show that central regions are more likely to exhibit significance, as well as regions with high (low) levels of performance surrounded by regions with high (low) levels of accessibility, hinting at a synergy between the two variables. An important policy implication is that regions of high performance surrounded by regions of low accessibility may benefit from investments in the transport infrastructure.
Internationally, transit oriented development (TOD) is characterised by moderate to high density development with diverse land use patterns and well connected street networks centred around high ...frequency transit stops (bus and rail). Although different TOD typologies have been developed in different contexts, they are based on subjective evaluation criteria derived from the context in which they are built and typically lack a validation measure. Arguably there exist sets of TOD characteristics that perform better in certain contexts, and being able to optimise TOD effectiveness would facilitate planning and supporting policy development. This research utilises data from census collection districts (CCDs) in Brisbane with different sets of TOD attributes measured across six objectively quantified built environmental indicators: net employment density, net residential density, land use diversity, intersection density, cul-de-sac density, and public transport accessibility.
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