key: cord-0703465-u3smoc03
authors: Cartenì, Armando; Di Francesco, Luigi; Martino, Maria
title: The role of transport accessibility within the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in Italy
date: 2020-09-14
journal: Saf Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104999
sha: 4694b3aec33e70789be1e193c6a97aedbe8401aa
doc_id: 703465
cord_uid: u3smoc03

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented global crisis leading to a huge number of deaths, economic losses and disruption of daily activities. Accessibility restriction measures adopted by many countries were a fast and useful response to contain the spread of the virus. Within this topic, the aim of this paper was to support policies and decision makers in the definition of the most appropriate strategies for managing the Covid-19 crisis. Precisely the correlation between the Covid-19 positive cases and the transport accessibility of an area was investigated through a multiple linear regression model. Estimation results show that the transport accessibility was the variable that better explained the number of Covid-19 infections (about 40% in weight), meaning that greater is the accessibility of a territorial area, easier the virus reaches its population. Furthermore, other context variables were also significant, i.e. socio-economic, territorial and pollutant variables. Estimated findings underline how the accessibility, that often measures the wealth of a territory, becomes the worst enemy of a territorial area during a pandemic, resulting the main vehicle of contagion among the citizens. These results are original and would allow to define possible policies and/or best practices to better manage mobility restrictions. The quantitative estimations performed show that a possible and probably more sustainable policy for containing social interactions could be to apply lockdowns proportionally to the transport accessibility of the areas, in the sense that greater the accessibility is, greater the mobility restrictive policies must be adopted.

48 At the end of 2019, in the city of Wuhan (Hubei, China) was observed the first worldwide outbreak 49 of Coronavirus pathogen, also known as Covid-19 (Chinazzi et al., 2020) . By 20 January 2020, there 50 had been 282 confirmed cases of Covid-19 from four countries including China (278 cases), Thailand 51 (2 cases), Japan (1 case) and the Republic of Korea (1 case) (World Health Organization, 2020). On 52 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the Coronavirus epidemic was a 53 global pandemic . The outbreak of Covid-19 swept across China rapidly and had 54 spread to 117 countries outside China (60% of all countries worldwide) by 12 March 2020. On this 55 date, the WHO (2020) counted a total of 125,260 confirmed cases globally, 80,981 of which were 56 confirmed in China and 44,279 outside China, with 4,613 deaths overall (3.68%). On July 2020, a 57 total of 13.5 million cases were confirmed globally, with about 600 thousand deaths estimated 58 worldwide.

Public health priorities are to hold clinical trials on potential drugs for Covid-19, and to develop 60 an efficient and safe vaccine. This is why most of the scientific research has concerned the medical 128

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discuss the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy;

129 Section 3 reports the data collection and the model formulation; Section 4 describes results and 

154 As said, the aim of the paper was to investigate the incidence of transport accessibility within the 155 spread of the Covid-19 in Italy. Estimates were made through a provincial (zonal) aggregation level 156 (see the boundaries of the provinces Figure 2 ) following the classification of territorial units for 157 statistics NUTS 3 of the EU (2020). Overall, the data considered for the estimations were: ii) for the rail transport mode, there were much more widespread data available at a national 248 scale, which was therefore better suited for the aim of the research. Table 1 .

264 For the estimation of the Covid-19 multiple regression model (1) was considered a time period length 265 that spans from the first observed Covid-19 cases on 21 February 2020 to the lowest point of the 266 infection curve (Figure 1 ) on 20 April 2020 (60 consecutive days). 267 Other time periods were also tested and not reported for brevity because not produced significant 268 differences in estimation results.

The active rail-based gravity-type accessibility model (ACC p ) in equation (2) 285 25% for commuting, only the 10% were for tourism and the 34% for other purposes.

As said, the survey results were used to estimate the Italian rail origin-destination (pd) observed 287 percentage distribution (P pd mod ) model in equation (5). In order to estimate the best rai transport 288 accessibility indicator, the two impedance function formulations, Inverse power and the Negative 289 exponential (equation (3) and (4) 

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented global crisis leading to a huge number of 355 deaths, economic losses and disruption of daily activities. Accessibility restrictions measures adopted 356 by many countries was a fast and useful response to contain the spread of the virus. In this context, 357 policy makers and practice are moving in an unchartered water and in this period the role of the 358 research in defining robust policies and practices is more important than ever. In this context safety 359 science is a key element that could allow to proper define short, medium and long term policies aimed 360 to reduce the spread of the virus minimizing the negative economic and social impacts of this 361 pandemic.

With respect to air quality impacts upon the spread of Covid-19, some recent research has shown

2020) concluded that a prolonged exposure to air pollution 84 may help a viral agent, such as Covid-19, being more lethal among the population living in that 85 situations. At the same time

in the work places, schools, leisure areas) 93 and these activities can be reached through the transport system that allows the trips between different 94 areas of the territory (e.g. home to work trips; home to leisure trips). From a theoretical point of view, 95 the concept which combines the need to carry out an activity with the possibility (reachability) to do 96 it is the accessibility (or transport accessibility). Accessibility is commonly defined as the possibility 97 to reach activities (active accessibility) in a territorial area, or the ease of reaching activities by 98 potential citizens

Accessibility is the topic that mainly underlines the dependence between the 100 activities system and the transportation system

Countries that were impacted by this pandemic are using expedients such as strict mobility, 106 travel restrictions, minimum distance, and quarantine (Muller et al., 2020) to slow down the virus

through private car trips) because such trips 111 are a measure of the number of activities performed in a certain area, activities that are based on 112 citizens interactions (e.g. study shop, cinema, sports) and which favor the spread of the Coronavirus. 337 through a sort of weighted average of the coefficient with respect to the attributes in the dataset as 338 follow: 339 W i = Σ j |β i |·X i,j / Σ k Σ j |β k |·X k

342 X i,j is the i-th variable (attributes) relative to the j-th element (record) of the dataset

3% (2.4% for the South variable and 6.9% for PM pollutant) 348 in explaining statistically the new cases of contagion. By contrast, population density accounted only 349 for 2.1%. Finally, the non-negligible weight of the constant (37.6%and safety perspectives. Precisely, the correlation between the Covid-19 positive cases 365 and the transport accessibility of a specific area was investigated. Estimation results show that the 366 (rail-based) transport accessibility was the variable that best explained (from a statistical point of 367 view) the number of Covid-19 infections (about 40% in weight), meaning that greater is the 368 accessibility of a territorial area, easier the virus has reached its population. Furthermore, other 369 context variables were also significant in explain the number of Covid-19 positive cases, i.e. socio 370 economic variables (population and population density -about 14% in weight), territorial and 371 pollutant variables

This result is by contrast with all the good practices of transportation and territorial planning that, 374 in periods of non health-emergency, aim at increasing transport accessibility to rise the attractiveness 375 and the economy of a territory

would allow to 379 support the efforts of decisions and policy makers to improve the safety and security of citizens during 380 all phases of the Covid-19 pandemic. Precisely, the results of this research will allow to define 381 possible policies and/or best practices to better implement mobility restriction actions (e.g. lockdown) 382 which, as observed worldwide, was the most effective action for the containment of Covid-19, /region/city, a possible and probably more sustainable policy for containing social interactions 386 (with the same effectiveness) could be to apply lockdowns proportionally to the transport accessibility 387 of the areas

Lombardy region) would probably have been proposed obtaining the same overall

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