The outbreak of infectious diseases affects people’s lifestyles significantly, as they undertake fewer outdoor activities as a protective measure and to follow government orders of restricted movements. This paper reviewed the scientific literature related to transport and infectious diseases to gain insights into managing such circumstances. The outcomes indicate that the transport sector has a two-fold role during the outbreak of infectious diseases: controlling the spread of infection and assessing the impact of reduced outdoor activities on the transport sector. It was found that local and international travel restrictions, if applied at the initial stages, are effective in controlling the spread of infectious disease; at a later stage, behavioral changes become prominent in limiting the spread. Further, the outbreaks resulted in a significant reduction in mobility, altering traffic patterns with lower peaks and improving traffic safety. The public transport mode share reduced considerably and people preferred cars and active modes. These changes also showed positive impacts on air pollution and water pollution. Further, the air transport and tourism sector were noted to be the hardest hit and will recover slowly. The outcomes from the review will be useful for planners and administrators in managing future emergency conditions better.

This study investigates the impacts of temporal and weather characteristics on pedestrian volumes in a hot climate condition. A major neighborhood located in an urban area in Doha, Qatar was chosen as a case study site. The pedestrian volume data was gathered for three seasons, two days in each season, and three time periods for each day using observations from video recordings for the entire neighborhood. Overall, low pedestrian activity was noticed for all seasons. Pedestrians walked more during the weekday in the winter season, and during the weekend in the summer and spring seasons. Generally, the pedestrian volume was higher during the evening time. The results of a multiple linear regression analysis showed that the pedestrian volume had a log-linear relationship with the weather characteristics. The temperature was the only significant parameters affecting the pedestrian volume. This research is one of the first to study the effect of weather conditions on the pedestrian volumes in a hot weather climate environment

Response measures to contain COVID-19 spread varied from country to country, some imposed a complete lockdown while some imposed partial restrictions. This paper compares the transport impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic for two countries having dissimilar characteristics, Germany and State of Qatar, based on the rates of infection and response measures. Secondary data, obtained from Google mobility reports, and primary data, collected from local agencies, were used for comparison purposes. The secondary data comparison from February 2020 to July 2020 indicated an overall decline in mobility for all commercial activities and an increase was noted for parks and residential locations for Saxony, Germany. For State of Qatar, the mobility was decreased to all places except residential locations. Further, the comparison for traffic volumes and the number of crashes during the first wave of the pandemic indicated that the reduction in traffic volumes, major, and minor crashes was coupled with restrictive measures rather than COVID-19 incidences for both countries. Further, the traffic volumes showed a statistically significant inverse linear relationship with the stringency index for both countries during weekdays as well as weekends. These results suggest that the policy measures are key in governing movement restrictions and containing the spread of pandemic rather than the number of COVID-19 incidences. Further, the authorities should monitor the traffic trends during the pandemic and enforce the traffic rules and regulations as soon as the movement restrictions are lifted.