As work and shopping went online, more people and freight moved locally.
As people escaped home offices through outdoor recreation and avoided public transport, bicycle sales and use increased. Retaining and extending pandemic pop-up bike lanes and providing new open space facilities will help to maintain this trend.
Working from home also led to more people walking in their neighbourhoods.
For public transport users, increased cleaning, physical distancing and seeing real-time occupancy data on apps helped to maintain a base level of trust. While use appears to be generally recovering in line with the return to office-based commuting, it is unclear if or when overall patronage will go back to pre-pandemic levels.6
Rideshare providers switched from moving people to moving goods.
Online food orders were delivered by scores of delivery bike-riders with varying levels of cycling competence. Crashes, a number of them fatal, focused attention on the safety needs of this growing group of road users.
Faced with empty supermarket shelves (or the prospect of them), communities accepted the suspension of longstanding constraints on freight operations in their suburbs. Supply chain operators have challenged governments to maintain these conditions beyond the pandemic.
With car travel, people changed the time and route of their trips as they were driving to the shops, or children to school, instead of commuting to an office. The spread of road congestion across more hours, and into local networks, continues to challenge all levels of government.