IF articles

Summary - The COVID-19 containment measures are parts of the key strategies is to reduce human mobility to slow down the spread, thus at a crossroad with transport policy and affecting travel behaviors. In this paper, based on information collected with expert questionnaire and supported by a literature review, we carried out an analysis on how transport policy is affected through various COVID-19 containment measures. Our analysis shows that the COVID-19 measures on public transport are virtually all restrictive, calling for additional behavioral changes, typically wearing face masks and enforced on a precautionary basis, since there seems no epidemiological consensus that public transport is a high-risk superspreading environment at the current status of knowledge. Moreover, from the result of the expert questionnaire, it is clear that a large variety of measures has been enforced, in response to the specific problem of containment, thus demonstrating that there was neither preparedness nor common vision among the public transport operators. On the contrary, for private motorized transport, COVID-19 measures are often oriented on ease of existing restrictions and regulations. This is not in line with the principle of sustainable transport policies to encourage the use of active modes and public transport and to discourage the use of private motorized modes. It shows the vulnerability of current transport policy and policy-making.