Impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on-road externalities

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Alexandra Fortes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/36331
• topic: Impact on mobility; Coronavirus; Pollutants emissions; Environmental and social costs; COPERT

The year 2020 was marked by the experience of a pandemic context, due to COVID-19. The rapid spread of this disease led to restrictive travel measures being implemented by all countries, causing traffic levels to decrease. In addition, the very perception of the risk of contagion led individual people to change their behaviours, impacting mobility patterns. These changes in the way people move had impacts on the environment, namely in terms of pollutant emissions and greenhouse gases. Besides air pollution, there are changes in externalities related to road safety and noise. Thus, it is essential to estimate how the pandemic affected these externalities and how to act in similar future situations. Thus, the dissertation aims to present an assessment of the mobility challenges and environmental impacts associated with the current pandemic situation, considering different European regions. A data-driven comparative analysis is carried out, based on several online mobility reporting platforms. Some mobility scenarios are defined, depending on the evolution of the pandemic situation in the regions. Traffic-related externalities and costs associated with accidents, air pollution, climate change and noise are estimated. The results suggest that indeed the level of restrictions imposed by the authorities in each city impact differently on people’s mobility levels. The estimated CO₂ and NOₓ emissions tend to decrease at times of more severe restrictions, as is the case in March 2020. With regard to estimated external costs, it can be seen that they follow the mobility and emission trends. For example, at the end of March 2020, total external costs decrease by 80 percent in Lisbon, 67 percent in Bucharest and 24 percent in Stockholm, compared to the beginning of the month. These changes demonstrate the pandemic’s impact on road externalities and the need to study them.