The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Travel Behaviour in the Greater Copenhagen Area

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically changed the way of living for billions of people and severe restrictions were implemented by governments around the world, affecting the travel patterns of all citizens. This article investigates how travel patterns changed in the Greater Copenhagen area of Denmark during the full two-year period covering 2020 and 2021, thus allowing for an analysis of both the short-term and medium-term impacts as society gradually reopened and restrictions were lifted. The analysis covers large-scale travel survey data as well as a segmentation clustering analysis of public transport smart card data. The results showed that impacts were strongly linked to changes in trip purpose and were thus not uniformly distributed throughout the public transport system. User segmentation analysis revealed that most users changed to less intense travel use of public transport. The results highlight important policy implications in terms of how to adapt service provision within a public transport network more efficiently.