New Digital Database Identifies Over 500 Global Mobility Responses to COVID-19

COVID Mobility Works

COVID Mobility Works is an independent platform dedicated to collecting, synthesizing and sharing mobility initiatives that are keeping the world moving through the COVID-19 crisis and recovery. Recognizing the myriad actions taken to provide safe mobility around the world, the platform is intended to support policymakers, planners, innovators, researchers, service operators and advocates as they rise to the challenge of creating more resilient, inclusive and sustainable transportation systems for all.

Jeroen Borst, TNO Program Manager Societal Impact for accessibility and liveability:  “TNO works on future urban areas to stay easily accessible, liveable and sustainable. With this initiative our organization supports the sharing of knowledge across continents and cities striving for no less than zero: Zero Emission, Zero Loss and Zero Casualties”.

“Organizations of all sizes mobilized rapidly to respond to the transportation-related challenges created by the pandemic, such as curtailed public transit service,” said Harriet Tregoning, director of NUMO. “COVID Mobility Works is an NGO-led effort, in partnership with academia,  to collect those responses in a digitally searchable format so they can be easily identified, shared, studied and scaled.”

Partnership

The platform is the result of a partnership of global nonprofit organizations — including NUMO, the New Urban Mobility alliance; Polis; TNO; TUMI, Transportation Sustainability Research Center; University of California, Berkeley; the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative; Urbanism Next at the University of Oregon and the World Economic Forum’s Global New Mobility Coalition — dedicated to resilient, inclusive and sustainable mobility for all.

Over 500 responses from nearly 250 cities have been initially collected on COVID Mobility Works, and the partners plan to add new entries monthly through Spring 2021. These responses — ranging from actions taken to safely continue mobility services for essential workers to addressing the provision of transportation services to identifying modifications to critical infrastructure — represent public, private and nongovernmental organization efforts to ensure the movement of people and goods during the novel coronavirus pandemic response and recovery.

“These responses were intended to support public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic and will have a lasting impact long after the crisis subsides,” said Christoph Wolff, head of mobility at the World Economic Forum. “We are at the tipping point of a great reset of our global transportation ecosystem that could usher in a new age of resiliency, inclusivity and sustainability. We hope researchers and operators reflect on the actions taken out of urgency and learn from and act toward a better tomorrow.

For more information, check out the website of COVID Mobility Works.