Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on Travel Behaviour: Evidences from early stages of the Pandemic in India

The paper demonstrates the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on travel behaviour in India during the early stage. A questionnaire, consisting of five stages, was designed for collecting peoples’ responses with respect to various aspects of travel and distributed through various online modes. A total of 3,830 refined responses obtained from various cities across India were analysed using various statistical techniques. The analysis brings out several interesting findings related to the travel characteristics of people including the trend of ‘work from home’, modal shift, risk perception about travelling on different modes, and expected travel characteristics during post COVID scenario. The results clearly shows evidences of peoples’ higher risk perception for public transport, intermediate transport, and flights, modal shift in favour of personal vehicles during the initial stage, and expected delayed recovery of ridership on PT and IPT modes during post COVID era.