Micromobility services before and after a global pandemic: impact on spatio-temporal travel patterns

Sudden changes in urban mobility were caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts are yet to be furtherly measured and analyzed. Our article uses GPS records provided by three different micromobility operators in Madrid to study how the pandemic affected their service usage and its relationships with land use. Thus, spatio-temporal travel patterns are compared between pre-COVID 19 (from January 2019 to February 2020) and COVID times (from March to December 2020). Additionally, multiple regression analyses are conducted to assess how the two scenarios differentiate in relation to micromobility trips, generated or attracted, to or from different land uses, and during morning or afternoon peak hours. Results show that the most pandemic-resilient shared mode is bike-sharing, and that COVID-19 has caused a downfall in micromobility trips of approximately 10%, which is relatively lower compared to the 80% ridership drop reported by the public transport system. Our models reveal that residential and commercial areas gained importance after the pandemic, while workplace locations (office and industrial), educational and transport facilities lost relevance with teleworking and online studying. These findings could help authorities to plan future policies and improve the infrastructure needed to promote micromobility services.