MOBIS-COVID19/04

Results as of 27/04/2020

A Project of IVT, ETH Zurich and WWZ, University of Basel

Contact: Joseph Molloy ()

Previous and future reports can be found at: https://ivtmobis.ethz.ch/mobis/covid19/en


News

27 April:

  • New chart on the change in activity type by land zoning.

20 April:

  • Mobile participants per day.

  • Non-mobile participants are now included in the activity-space numbers in addtion to a new table on median weekly activity spaces.

  • New graphs, including average trip distance by mode.

  • Formatting improvements and other small corrections.

13 April:

  • Earlier weeks have been grouped and colored grey in certain graphs.

Introduction

On March 16, 2020, 3700 participants who completed the MOBIS study between September 2019 and Janurary 2020 were invited to reinstall the GPS Logger and Travel Diary App ‘Catch-My-Day’, developed by MotionTag, to record their mobility behaviour during the period of special measures implemented to control the spread of the Corona Virus. The first 4 weeks of mobility data from the original MOBIS Study is taken for each participant as a baseline against which to compare current mobility patterns. These 4 weeks start place anywhere between 1st September and 15th November, depending on the participant. Only trips in Switzerland are currently considered, although data on cross border travel is available.

The following figure shows the number of registered and tracking participants per day. A running panel of around 250 participants were already tracking before the sample was reinvited. This allows results for the weeks before the MOBIS:COVID-19 study was officially started, although the sample size is a lot smaller, and hence the results.

In the MOBIS study, participants were only eligible if they used a car at least 3 days a week - which skews the sample away from the Swiss general population.

The number of tracking participants each day used to calculate the average daily values includes all participants who recorded tracks before or after that date. This allows the consideration of those who stay at home while still allowing for survey dropouts.

The GPS Travel diary used, Catch-My-Day (for iOS and Android) can have a 2-3 day delay before the tracks are available for analysis. The scaling by active participants accomodates for this, but the results of previous reports may change when the report is updated.

Participation


Differences in the distributions

The following charts show the characteristics of the MOBIS:COVID-19 sample compared to the original MOBIS Sample. There are some small differences, but generally the samples are consistent. This chart will be extended to compare to the relevant census data.


Comparison with the last national travel diary Mikrozensus (MZ) 2015
N
%
Covid MZ Covid MZ
Aargau 81 4,325 5.0 7.6
Basel-Landschaft 182 1,940 11.3 3.4
Basel-Stadt 39 1,555 2.4 2.7
Bern 188 7,244 11.7 12.7
Fribourg 8 1,942 0.5 3.4
Geneva 125 3,062 7.8 5.4
Schwyz 17 1,005 1.1 1.8
Solothurn 17 1,813 1.1 3.2
Vaud 290 5,303 18.0 9.3
Zurich 660 10,410 41.0 18.2
Other 3 18,491 0.2 32.4

Average Daily Distance


Active Days

Change in kilometers travelled by transport mode

Change in kilometers travelled by:


Reduction in kilometers travelled by Canton

Change in kilometers travelled by home canton (%)
Canton N Mar-02 Mar-09 Mar-16 Mar-23 Mar-30 Apr-06 Apr-13 Apr-20
Aargau 60 -25 -41 -71 -58 -50 -57 -55 -41
Basel-Landschaft 150 -14 -9 -60 -61 -59 -60 -55 -52
Basel-Stadt 31 -14 -36 -70 -75 -68 -62 -67 -51
Bern 151 -30 -33 -66 -60 -57 -57 -50 -45
Fribourg 6 -61 -23 -63 -56 -61 -52 -44 -60
Geneva 103 9 -44 -68 -61 -58 -65 -56 -43
Schwyz 10 -24 -13 -55 -70 -50 -49 -42 -29
Solothurn 16 -13 -41 -62 -65 -53 -49 -50 -27
Vaud 226 -8 -22 -65 -70 -68 -65 -63 -53
Zurich 545 -17 -25 -60 -59 -57 -53 -54 -43

Trip duration by transport mode and gender

Median trip duration by gender and mode (minutes)
Mode Gender Baseline-2019 Mar-02 Mar-09 Mar-16 Mar-23 Mar-30 Apr-06 Apr-13 Apr-20
Bicycle Female 15 15 16 14 19 27 31 39 27
Male 14 14 15 25 24 28 36 33 30
Bus Female 11 7 8 4 5 6 5 6 5
Male 11 8 9 7 7 6 7 7 6
Car Female 52 41 38 36 36 36 37 36 38
Male 51 47 42 34 34 35 35 35 35
Train Female 35 31 35 19 28 28 16 18 29
Male 35 25 33 12 26 23 19 25 23
Tram Female 15 13 16 8 14 14 9 7 12
Male 18 20 17 12 11 13 12 11 12
Walk Female 17 22 21 19 18 21 21 21 19
Male 17 20 20 16 18 20 21 21 19

Average trip length by transport mode (km)


Activity space and daily travel radius

A commonly used definition of the activity space is the 95% confidence ellipse of the activity locations, in this case weighted by duration. In the following analysis, the activities at the home location are included, for those that had the app activated on that day. This is an important metric which gives an idea of the area in which travel is being performed. The daily travel radius is also presented.

Change in average activity space area and average daily radius (%)
Week # Activities/day Change Area (km2) Change Daily Radius (km) Change
Baseline-2019 Weekday 4.75 199.68 10.08
Weekend 3.93 227.77 9.91
Mar-02 Weekday 3.98 -16% 188.70 -5% 8.70 -14%
Weekend 3.46 -12% 128.24 -44% 8.06 -19%
Mar-09 Weekday 3.97 -16% 119.97 -40% 7.39 -27%
Weekend 3.19 -19% 81.71 -64% 5.90 -40%
Mar-16 Weekday 2.87 -40% 31.27 -84% 3.96 -61%
Weekend 2.02 -49% 16.77 -93% 2.28 -77%
Mar-23 Weekday 2.67 -44% 34.51 -83% 3.60 -64%
Weekend 2.23 -43% 31.11 -86% 3.17 -68%
Mar-30 Weekday 2.87 -39% 41.02 -79% 3.82 -62%
Weekend 2.54 -35% 33.07 -85% 3.67 -63%
Apr-06 Weekday 2.94 -38% 37.09 -81% 4.08 -60%
Weekend 2.77 -29% 43.30 -81% 3.80 -62%
Apr-13 Weekday 2.97 -37% 40.90 -80% 4.33 -57%
Weekend 2.78 -29% 52.73 -77% 4.24 -57%
Apr-20 Weekday 3.28 -31% 57.93 -71% 4.96 -51%
Weekend 2.86 -27% 43.68 -81% 4.41 -56%
Change in median weekly activity space (km2) by type of day and age class
Age 2019 Mar-02 Mar-09 Mar-16 Mar-23 Mar-30 Apr-06 Apr-13 Apr-20
(18,25] Weekday 63.3 35.9 48.1 6.9 2.6 3.0 5.7 7.9 10.6
Weekend 35.6 5.8 9.8 0.6 0.9 0.8 1.2 1.3 2.4
(25,35] Weekday 70.9 85.2 42.6 2.3 4.9 4.6 7.4 6.1 10.5
Weekend 42.6 14.5 3.3 0.4 0.6 1.3 2.3 1.8 2.6
(35,45] Weekday 76.3 36.4 75.0 6.8 3.3 7.6 8.2 10.8 11.3
Weekend 24.3 29.9 20.5 0.4 1.6 0.8 1.4 1.5 4.2
(45,55] Weekday 74.1 40.5 53.8 4.0 3.1 4.4 7.0 5.2 10.0
Weekend 28.1 13.3 7.0 0.7 1.2 1.6 1.6 2.3 4.0
(55,65] Weekday 67.0 64.0 46.4 7.3 2.8 5.8 5.1 7.1 8.6
Weekend 21.3 9.1 8.7 0.1 1.2 1.1 1.2 3.8 3.1

Hourly Counts

The number of trips started per hour. The y axis is normalized by the maximum hourly value in the graph.

Activity types and zoning

Around 30% of activities were voluntarily labelled with their purpose by participants using the app. Work is ongoing to impute the purposes for the rest of the activities. Using simplification of the ARE development zoning classification, the activities are assigned with the closest zone classification within a 100m radius. The following graph shows how both the activity duration and the number of activites has changed from the baseline period in 2019 to the COVID-19 period.

Please note that only stationary leisure activites are included, not walking/cycling/hiking/etc