COVID-19 will have a profound long-term impact on transport policy and travel patterns, but rapid change is less likely

Greg Marsden and Iain Docherty find that the pandemic has accelerated some transport policy commitments that were already planned, but at a time of huge stress on the government, the potential to deliver radical policy adaptation was limited. However, COVID-19 is still recognised as being a potentially path-changing disruption to existing trajectories in terms of the adaptations to business practices, industry structures, ways of working and the public finances.