Transactions on Transport Sciences 2023, 14(2):68-80 | DOI: 10.5507/tots.2023.008

COVID-19 Safety Protocols: Do Commuters Prefer Public Transport after Relaxation of Safety Protocol Enforcement?

Charles Atombo*, Maxwell Selase Akple, Richard Fiifi Turkson
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ho Technical University, Ho, Ghana

There is a current discourse on how COVID-19 will impact future use of public services by people. At the time of writing this paper, most countries around the globe had relaxed safety protocol enforcement. This may change individual use of public transport, and policy implementations. The study mainly used Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) to examine the use of public transport ridership after the relaxation of COVID-19 safety protocol enforcement. A survey was used to collect data from 1692 respondents across Ghana partly online and partly face-to-face interviews from April 20th, 2022 to June 5th, 2022. The preliminary findings show that the use of private cars declined during the enforcement of safety protocols. However, after relaxation of safety protocol enforcement, the use of private transport increased more than public transport. The Relative Importance Index revealed that 'facemask wearing covering both nose and mouth', 'reduction in the number of occupants per vehicle', 'the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer', and 'vehicles cleaned after every trip' were the most important safety protocols perceived to prevent infection of the virus. However, the MLR model shows that largely, relaxation of mandatory facemask wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene, and disinfection of transport could decrease public transport ridership. These findings suggest that the COVID-19 infection anxiety had not faded and could decrease public transport ridership. To relieve the anxiety regarding virus infection through the use of public transportation, the government needs to take appropriate measures to lower the perceived risk of infection.

Keywords: COVID-19; Safety Protocol Enforcement; Public Transport; Multinomial Logistic Regression

Received: December 18, 2022; Revised: February 21, 2023; Accepted: March 29, 2023; Prepublished online: April 26, 2023; Published: September 5, 2023  Show citation

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Atombo, C., Akple, M.S., & Fiifi Turkson, R. (2023). COVID-19 Safety Protocols: Do Commuters Prefer Public Transport after Relaxation of Safety Protocol Enforcement? Transactions on Transport Sciences, 14(2), 68-80. doi: 10.5507/tots.2023.008
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