English Abstract
Abstract :
This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on traffic and transportation
in Bahrain, India, Pakistan, and European countries (mostly Belgium and Italy). The findings indicate significant changes in travel behavior and a substantial reduction in overall trips during the pandemic. Respondents varied in their out-of-home activities, with Europe showing a preference for continuing such activities. The study highlights the need for effective policies and strategies to address the challenges posed by the pandemic and provides valuable insights for future pandemic preparedness. Furthermore, the study explores the long-term effects on travel behavior, transportation preferences, and hygiene measures, emphasizing the importance of adapting transportation systems. A questionnaire link was initiated and distributed to gather people’s experiences in the targeted regions and statistical tests are used to distinguish the differences between before compared to during COVID-19 situation. In addition, minitab software is used to anticipate the total number of trips based on selected parameters and among different
models. In this context and by measuring different aspects of the data, it is noticed that
overall trips are reduced significantly and fuel saving percentage confirms this argument.
However, the trips related to groceries resulted to minimal to zero differences in all the
targeted regions as they are necessities. The regressions models also indicate some of the
factors that have strong influence on the total number of trips like occupational status,
distance from home to shopping locations, predominant travel mode for shopping,
frequency of out-of-home activities, and preference on performing out-of-home activities.
