When 2020 began, we had no idea what was to unfold globally as we learnt about the Novel-Coronavirus in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of China. As this virus spread rapidly, it became a matter of time ...before many countries began to implement measures to try and contain the spread of the disease. COVID-19 as it is referred to, resulted in two main approaches to fighting the viral pandemic, either through a progressive set of measures to slow down the number of identified cases designed to ‘flatten the curve’ over time (anticipated to be at least six months), or to attack it by the severest of measures including a total lock-down and/or herding exposure to fast track ‘immunisation’ while we await a vaccine. The paper reports the findings from the first phase of an ongoing survey designed to identify the changing patterns in travel activity of Australian residents as a result of the stage 2 restrictions imposed by the Australian government. The main restrictions, in addition to social distancing of at least 1.5 m, are closure of entry to Australia (except residents returning), and closure of non-essential venues such as night clubs, restaurants, mass attendee sporting events, churches, weddings, and all social gatherings in any circumstance. With some employers encouraging working from home and others requiring it, in addition to job losses, and many children attending school online from home, the implications on travel activity is extreme. We identify the initial impacts associated with the first month of stricter social distancing measures introduced in Australia.
•General support for the actions of government and business.•Widespread suppression of travel demand for all trip purposes across all modes.•Sizeable shift to working from home by those who can.•Public transport will face the largest hurdles in regaining confidence.•Retail and food logistics will need to examine distribution processes•The aviation sector will likely need to restart with a heavy focus on domestic travel.•Public transport will need to take overt measures to restore confidence.•The dominance of the car is further enforced in the context of biosecurity concerns.•Active transport is a viable option for short inner-city trips.•Infrastructure investment should be carefully considered.•Flexible working arrangements are perhaps the biggest policy lever available to governments.
With the onset of COVID-19 restrictions and the slow relaxing of many restrictions, it is imperative that we understand what this means for the performance of the transport network. In going from ...almost no commuting, except for essential workers, to a slow increase in travel activity with working from home (WFH) continuing to be both popular and preferred, this paper draws on two surveys, one in late March at the height of restrictions and one in late May as restrictions are starting to be partially relaxed, to develop models for WFH and weekly one-way commuting travel by car and public transport. We compare the findings as one way to inform us of the extent to which a sample of Australian residents have responded through changes in WFH and commuting. While it is early days to claim any sense of a new stable pattern of commuting activity, this paper sets the context for ongoing monitoring of adjustments in travel activity and WFH, which can inform changes required in the revision of strategic metropolitan transport models as well as more general perspectives on future transport and land use policy and planning.
•Two wave study examining work from home (WFH) and commute behaviour through COVID-19 pandemic.•New models for WFH and impact on commuting activity.•Evidence of changes WFH and commuting from immediately after restrictions to their initial easing•Small decreases in WFH and increases in car-based commuting starting to occur.•WFH has been a positive experience and many would to WFH more than before COVID-19, if they have an appropriate space.•Policy makers should encourage employer support for working from home and help identify and reduce barriers to doing so.
The COVID-19 disease continues to cause unparalleled disruption to life and the economy world over. This paper is the second in what will be an ongoing series of analyses of a longitudinal travel and ...activity survey. In this paper we examine data collected over a period of late May to early June in Australia, following four-to-six weeks of relatively flat new cases in COVID-19 after the initial nationwide outbreak, as many state jurisdictions have begun to slowly ease restrictions designed to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We find that during this period, travel activity has started to slowly return, in particular by private car, and in particular for the purposes of shopping and social or recreational activities. Respondents indicate comfort with the idea of meeting friends or returning to shops, so authorities need to be aware of potential erosion of social distancing and appropriate COVID-safe behaviour in this regard. There is still a concern about using public transport, though it has diminished noticeably since the first wave of data collection. We see that working from home continues to be an important strategy in reducing travel and pressure on constrained transport networks, and a policy measure that if carried over to a post-pandemic world, will be an important step towards a more sustainable transport future. We find that work from home has been a generally positive experience with a significant number of respondents liking to work from home moving forward, with varying degrees of employer support, at a level above those seen before COVID-19. Thus, any investment to capitalise on current levels of work from home should be viewed as an investment in transport.
•Aggregate travel has increased by 50% but is still less than two-thirds of that which occurred prior to COVID-19.•Motor vehicle travel rebounding more than other modes, those planning a return to train and bus intended to do so strongly.•Large increases in activity planned for shopping and social and recreation purposes.•People feel most comfortable with meeting with friends, going to the shops and visiting restaurants.•Working from home continues, and has been largely positive for those who have been able to do so..•Concern about the risk of COVID-19 has decreased significantly since the initial outbreak.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we go about our daily lives in ways that are unlikely to return to the pre-COVID-19 levels. A key feature of the COVID-19 era is likely to be a rethink of ...the way we work and the implications this may have on commuting activity. Working from home (WFH) has been the ‘new normal’ during the period of lockdown, except for essential services that require commuting. In recognition of the new normal as represented by an increasing amount of WFH, this paper develops a model to identify the incidence of WFH and what impact this could have on the amount of weekly one-way commuting trips by car and public transport. Using Wave 1 of an ongoing data collection effort done at the height of the restrictions in March and April 2020 in Australia, we develop a number of days WFH ordered logit model and link it to a zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression model for the number of weekly one-way commuting trips by car and public transport. Scenario analysis is undertaken to highlight the way in which WFH might change the amount of commuting activity when restrictions are relaxed to enable changing patterns of WFH and commuting. The findings will provide one reference point as we continue to undertake similar analysis at different points through time during the pandemic and after when restrictions are effectively removed.
Although regulation makes audit committees responsible for determining and negotiating audit fees, researchers and practitioners express concerns that CFOs continue to control these negotiations. ...Thus, regulation may give investors a false sense of security regarding auditor independence. We utilize the recent financial crisis and economic recession as an exogenous shock that allows us to shed light on the relative influence of the audit committee and the CFO on fee negotiations. During the recession, we find larger fee reductions in the presence of more powerful CFOs, and smaller fee reductions in the presence of more powerful audit committees. We also find the CFO or the audit committee primarily influences fees when their counterpart is less powerful. Our findings suggest a more complex relationship between the CFO and the audit committee than current regulations recognize and cast doubt on the ability of regulation to force one structure on the negotiation process.
The need to recognise and account for the influence of working from home on commuting activity has never been so real as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only does this change the performance ...of the transport network, it also means that the way in which transport modellers and planners use models estimated on a typical weekday of travel and expand it up to the week and the year must be questioned and appropriately revised to adjust for the quantum of working from home. Although teleworking is not a new phenomenon, what is new is the ferocity by which it has been imposed on individuals throughout the world, and the expectation that working from home is no longer a temporary phenomenon but one that is likely to continue to some non-marginal extent given its acceptance and revealed preferences from both many employees and employ where working from home makes good sense. This paper formalises the relationship between working from home and commuting by day of the week and time of day for two large metropolitan areas in Australia, Brisbane and Sydney, using a mixed logit choice model, identifying the influences on such choices together with a mapping model between the probability of working from home and socioeconomic and other contextual influences that are commonly used in strategic transport models to predict demand for various modes by location. The findings, based on Wave 3 (approximately 6 months from the initial outbreak of the pandemic) of an ongoing data collection exercise, provide the first formal evidence for Australia in enabling transport planners to adjust their predicted modal shares and overall modal travel activity for the presence of working from home.
While many countries have experienced more than one wave of the pandemic throughout 2020, Australia has been able to contain the virus in a way that makes it a stand out (with New Zealand) in the way ...that it has been contained, with an exception in Victoria linked to failed quarantine procedures for travellers returning from overseas. Through descriptive analysis, this paper builds on earlier papers by the authors on the Australian response, with a focus on the changing dynamics of travel activity, concern with public transport, and attitudes surrounding activity given the perception of risk of COVID-19 and the level of public support for regulatory intervention and restrictions on movement. We find that Australia continues to suppress travel, particularly that for commuting, that comfort in completing day-to-day activities continues to rise (with the exception of Victoria where confidence feel significantly), and while support for intervention measures remains high, there has been an erosion in sentiment. As with previous work, we discuss what this might mean for future transport policy, and attempt to draw lessons from the Australian experience.
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•We adopt the theoretical road pricing framework to examine user charging potential in air drone use.•Responses from 825 active drone flyers were analysed using a random parameters logit model.•WTP ...of $0.11 for flying a drone in a safe and orderly manner for one hour was found.•Modelling also shows much higher WTPs for various currently prohibited activities (e.g. fly at night)•A LAAM system with variable user charges is preferred and fairer than flat registration fees/taxes.
Applications and demand for airborne drone operations, including urban air mobility, are growing rapidly in regional and metropolitan areas. However, the expected traffic volumes in cities will make it impossible to operate drones in uncontrolled airspace. Despite the wealth of literature on pricing transport infrastructure usage showing that variable pricing is the optimal way for charging for road use, jurisdictions are reluctant to move towards this efficient mechanism evident in the slow uptake of road pricing implementation globally. What is worse, regulations have been drafted to tax the drone growth similarly to cars proposing the adoption of annual registration fees for drones. This paper proposes that drone use should instead adopt a pricing structure modelled on road user charging, and presents evidence suggesting that a case can be made for enabling controlled and fair growth through low altitude airspace management (LAAM) systems and variable drone user charges. A stated preference experiment with 825 respondents who actively fly drones has shown user charge potential in way of willingness to pay (WTP) of A$0.11 for flying a drone for one hour. Random parameters logit models further allowed us to establish much higher WTP for various currently not permitted activities such as A$7.09 to fly beyond line of flight or A$4.29 to fly outside daylight hours. As such, if those occasional uses are variably charged, we argue that a commercially viable LAAM system could be implemented, and low altitude air traffic user charging could overtake implementation of the wider (i.e. road) transport capacity pricing on the fast lane.
The presence of institutional mechanisms to facilitate collaborative activities between operators, and consumer preferences for these activities, have not been studied in the public transport ...context. Exploring preferences in both intracity and intercity transport options (incorporating long distance transport components such as air services), we use random parameters logit models to analyse integrated travel choice experiments. We show that consumers have preferences for attributes resulting from operator collaboration that can deliver them better door-to-door travel options across the whole transport ecosystem, both in their own city but just as importantly, when travelling to another city. Our results suggest that the proposed method of institutional integration (MaaS 2.0 or CaaS) creates better value for respondents, such that they would be more likely to engage with integrated transport solutions rather than the default option for many, which is the car. Consumers are willing to pay for collaboration activities that inherently arise out of institutionally facilitated interaction between operators and that lead to improvements in their journey. Expansion of institutional integration such as that which may be possible through smart ticketing platforms as an institutional coordination mechanism may facilitate greater development of these features and lead to more integrated travel being chosen by consumers.
The year 2020 has been marked by the most extraordinary event we have witnessed since World War II. While other health threats and geographical disasters have occurred, none have been on the global ...scale of COVID-19. Although many countries have experienced more than one wave of the pandemic throughout 2020, Australia has been largely able to contain the impact of the virus. While there are many reasons for this, a key component of reducing transmission has been restrictions on movement, and the widespread adoption of working from home (WFH) by those who can. In describing the experience Australian’s have had with working from home across 2020, via three waves of data collection, we find that WFH become a positive unintended consequence in contributing to the future management of the transport network, especially in larger metropolitan areas. Evidence suggests that support for WFH will be continuing in the form of a hybrid work model with more flexible working times and locations, linked to largely positive experiences of WFH during 2020, an improved wellbeing of employees, and no loss of productivity to the economy. We highlight potential future benefits of WFH to society, including significant implications for congestion and crowding, concluding that WFH is a formidable transport policy lever that must become embedded in the psyche of transport planners and decision makers so that we can gain some benefit from the pandemic.
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