Revealing the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on intercity truck transport: New insights from big data analytics

Intercity truck transport emerged as a crucial lifeline for maintaining city operations during COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding pandemic-imposed impacts on intercity truck transport can inform policymakers in crafting more effective strategies for future crises and disruptions. However, to our best knowledge, previous research predominantly focused on freight movements under normal circumstances. Due to the data limitation, the pandemic-related studies commonly relied on freight survey and focused on specific industries, which cannot capture the full spectrum of factors influencing freight trip generation (FTG) during the pandemic. Here, a novel dataset capturing large-scale individual truck movements during the COVID-19 pandemic is provided. By leveraging the mobility dataset, pandemic-induced changes in truck transport demand structure are quantified using spatial statistical methods. Furthermore, an interpretable machine learning framework for intercity freight demand estimation is developed, revealing the complex interplay of factors that influence and shape the behavior shifts of intercity truck transport systems due to the pandemic outbreak. The findings suggest significant changes in various factors influencing intercity truck movements across local and broader regions, emphasizing city-specific challenges amidst pandemic. The developed FTG model could serve as a tool to predict freight demand between cities for future crises and to support policymaking in the practice of freight management.