Info IEB

Infrastructures and Transport

Info IEB. Metropolitan Mobility and COVID-19: Can Public Transport in Barcelona Absorb Demand? Number 38. May 2020

In large metropolitan areas, the public transport network is essential for proper and smooth mobility and hardly has a substitute. Following the impact of COVID-19, public transport in the metropolitan area of Barcelona faces the challenge as to whether it will be able to continue to guarantee such mobility. On the one hand, individuals have been shifting toward less mobility—a result of distrust of movements in general and, in particular, of public transport. The use of private transport in the de-escalation is increasing. On the other hand, controlling the epidemic requires maintaining restrictions on the level of public transport use, which greatly diminish its ability to absorb mobility flows. How can the city of Barcelona deal with this problem? To what extent has mobility through public transport been delimited in Barcelona so that it does not become saturated? These questions have been analysed in the new Info IEB by IEB researchers and professors of the UAB Anna Matas and Javier Asensio.