Impactos da pandemia de covid-19 no transporte público de Toledo-PR

Abstract

It is evident that the new coronavirus pandemic caused several economic and social impacts throughout the world, including in means of transportation used by people. For the fact that they are locations where the virus is rapidly spread, due to the agglomeration in such places, buses were one of the most affected means as the disease spread. For this reason, the present work aims to analyze the impacts of Covid-19 in the public transportation system in Toledo-PR, a medium city located in the countryside of the state. Through this work, data presented before the pandemic and during the pandemic were statistically analyzed. Among the variables considered are: number of confirmed cases, deaths, vaccinated people, the amount of people using public transportation and the decrees released at the time. Results show that Saturdays and Sundays were the days that presented a bigger reduction of passengers after the pandemic beginning. This reduction may be connected to the decrease of leisure activities, usually performed on weekend. Moreover, through the analysis, it was possible to observe that in the pre pandemic period, as well as in the pandemic period, the ratio between passengers during rush hours and all the other hours were very similar, reinforcing the idea that many passengers that continued using public transport in the city did so because they did not have another means of transport to work or carry out essential activities. The statistical part of the work showed that as the number of vaccinated people grew, so did the number of bus passengers, which may be linked to the importance of vaccination to people feel safe again to use public transport. The positive correlation of new cases and new deaths with the number of passengers, on the other hand, can reinforce the idea that these users compose the demand for emergency situations, which are users who, despite totally delicate and unusual situations, continue to depend solely on transport public to move.