Recovering Sustainable Mobility after COVID-19: The Case of Almeria (Spain)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a significant change in mobility habits within cities, leading to a significant decrease in the use of collective urban transport in many countries that has been only partially and unevenly reversed. In this context, many cities are analyzing what factors are hindering this recovery process to design actions to promote sustainable mobility. Thus, this study, carried out in the city of Almeria (Spain), tried to analyze whether the main operating variables of the municipal bus network (frequency, average vehicle occupancy, the length of the lines, urban or suburban character, circularity, nodality, and intermodality) have an impact on the annual number of users recovered in 2022 compared to 2019. Although a strong statistical correlation between variables was not observed, the overall results show that the lines that have recovered the most users on average are suburban lines, as well as the nodal lines that serve key centroids such as the university, highlighting that the dependence of users on public transport might be the most important determinant in the recovery process, more than other variables representative of the service's intrinsic quality such as frequency or average vehicle occupancy. This result shows the importance of facilitating public transport to those who lack alternatives, as well as the convenience of restrictions on less sustainable transportation alternatives for the prompt recovery of the space lost by urban public transportation.