New Times,
New Thinking.

  1. Science & Tech
  2. Coronavirus
17 April 2020updated 26 Jul 2021 6:20am

Public transport use in Rome and Madrid has now been at near-standstill levels for more than a month ​

By David Ottewell

The Covid-19 lockdown: tracking if, when and where the world starts moving again

Restrictions on international and national travel to slow the spread of the virus caused a dramatic fall in global traffic by road, sky and sea. But the picture is not uniform across the world. Some cities in the Far East have avoided a total lockdown and as such have been seeing patterns which are a little closer to the norm.

In order to track the latest situation, this graphic is fed by three key sources. We use Citymapper’s mobility index to monitor public transport use, TomTom’s live traffic index to measure road use, and summary data from FlightRadar24 to count the total number of commercial flights each day.

Movement in our cities

Hong Kong and Seoul remain the only world capitals moving at anything like normal levels – with Europe and North America at a Coronavirus standstill. Madrid, Rome, Milan and Amsterdam have now seen public transport use at less than 10 per cent of normal levels for over a month, according to data from CityMapper.

London, Brussels and New York – which locked down slightly later – will soon hit that mark. Global air traffic remains static at around one third of pre-outbreak levels.

Content from our partners
Homes for all: how can Labour shape the future of UK housing?
The UK’s skills shortfall is undermining growth
<strong>What kind of tax reforms would stimulate growth?</strong>