Assessing the impacts of sunday trading restrictions on urban public transport: An example of a big city in central Poland

Abstract

The paper evaluates the temporal and spatial variability of the use of city public transport resulting from statutory Sunday trading restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic as exemplified by Łódź, a big city in central Poland. Data on the number of tickets validated in urban public transport vehicles is provided in three forms. The first one presents the number of validations in all vehicles in an hourly distribution, the second one shows the number of validations according to individual tram and bus lines, while the third one gives information on the number of validated tickets assigned to a tram/bus stop within the range of which the validation was made. The outcomes from the conducted research show an increased fluctuation in public transport load on Sundays depending on whether it was possible to conduct all types of commercial activity. This variability is observed to a much lesser extent in the presence of other mobility constraints (the pandemic situation). A spatial shift in mobility towards the periphery and inter-district connections is also observed, which may indicate changes in travel destinations.

Keywords

• Public transport
• Transport behaviour
• Trade restrictions
• COVID-19
• Big city