Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions and Urban Vehicle Mobility in Seoul During Covid-19

Non-pharmaceutical interventions to control human mobility are important in preventing COVID-19 transmission . These interventions must also help effectively control the urban mobility of vehicles, which can be a safer travel mode during the pandemic, at any time and place. However, few studies have identified the effectiveness of vehicle mobility in terms of time and place . This study demonstrates the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions at both local and national levels on intra- and inter-urban vehicle mobility by time of day in Seoul, South Korea, by applying the autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous variables. The study found that social distancing measures at the national level were effective for intra-urban vehicle mobility, especially at nighttime, but not for inter-urban mobility. Information provision with emergency text messages by cellphone was effective in reducing vehicle mobility in daytime and nighttime, but not during morning peak hours. At the local level, both restrictions on late-night transit operations and stricter social distancing measures were mostly significant in reducing nighttime mobility only in intra-urban areas. This study recommends that restrictions on human mobility should also be extended to vehicle mobility, especially in inter-urban areas and during morning peak hours, by systematically designing diverse non-pharmaceutical interventions.