Transport and COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March 2020, HVT was aware that transport would likely play a crucial role in mitigating spread of the disease and would also be vital to keep economies moving. Since that point, HVT has been gathering and disseminating critical information on dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on transport systems in low-income countries (LICs).
What we are doing
The COVID-19 Response and Recovery Transport Research
With a limited evidence base on what works within transport to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 while still keeping economies moving, we published “A Call to Action on COVID-19” for the transport community. This innovation research programme received 200 expressions of interest and we awarded 20 research projects to form the portfolio of the ‘COVID-19 Response and Recovery Transport Research’.
All 20 research projects have now been completed and show that there is an urgent need to develop transport systems that make transport less fragile and more resilient to future pandemics.
Latest project news
Supporting Collaboration
We have supported international collaboration in many ways. HVT worked with FCDO, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ) and the World Bank’s Sustainable Mobility For All (SuM4All) and others to set up an international Task Force on COVID-19 response in LICs.
We have also hosted a series of webinars and shared insight papers on managing the impact of COVID-19 in transport systems with partners such as the World Road Association (PIARC), the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI), the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) and Climate Parliament. In the early stages of the pandemic, when the lack of information was a significant issue, the HVT Programme, in partnership with leading transport sector players, facilitated development of a “Compendium of Current Practice”.
This is a platform to summarise and synthesise key material that focuses on the responses and implications that are relevant for dealing with the impact of COVID-19 in transport systems in low-income countries and provide an overview of the most useful material related to specific key topics.
The Compendium can be found here on the global Transport Knowledge Partnership COVID-19 repository.
COVID-19 has exposed many critical areas of required research such as transport-related emission and clean air modelling, infection control on transport systems, transport demand post-Covid-19, food security and resilience of transport systems etc. This is an opportunity to work even closer together as a global network with a common vision of enabling sustainable mobility for all.
– Bernard Obika | High Volume Transport, Team Leader
How is the industry responding?
Disclaimer: We are not responsible for the information found on partner sites. These lists are constantly updated as we receive new information,