GLA Covid-19 Mobility Report

Since March 2020, London has seen many different levels of restrictions - including three separate lockdowns and many other tiers/levels of restrictions, as well as easing of restrictions and even measures to actively encourage people to go to work, their high streets and local restaurants. This reports gathers data from a number of sources, including google, apple, citymapper, purple wifi and opentable to assess the extent to which these levels of restrictions have translated to a reductions in Londoners' movements.

The data behind the charts below come from different sources. None of these data represent a direct measure of how well people are adhering to the lockdown rules - nor do they provide an exhaustive data set. Rather, they are measures of different aspects of mobility, which together, offer an overall impression of how people Londoners are moving around the capital. The information is broken down by use of public transport, pedestrian activity, retail and leisure, and homeworking.

Public Transport

For the transport measures, we have included data from google, Apple, CityMapper and Transport for London. They measure different aspects of public transport usage - depending on the data source. Each of the lines in the chart below represents a percentage of a pre-pandemic baseline.

activity	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Citymapper	Citymapper mobility index	2021-09-05	Compares trips planned and trips taken within its app to a baseline of the four weeks from 6 Jan 2020	7.9%	28%	19%
Google	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Location data shared by users of Android smartphones, compared time and duration of visits to locations to the median values on the same day of the week in the five weeks from 3 Jan 2020	20.4%	40%	27%
TfL Bus	Transport for London	2022-10-30	Bus journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020	-	34%	24%
TfL Tube	Transport for London	2022-10-30	Tube journey ‘taps' on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020	-	30%	21%

Pedestrian activity

With the data we currently have it's harder to estimate pedestrian activity and high street busyness. A few indicators can give us information on how people are making trips out of the house:

activity	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Walking	Apple Mobility Index	2021-11-09	estimates the frequency of trips made on foot compared to baselie of 13 Jan '20	22%	47%	36%
Parks	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Frequency of trips to parks. Changes in the weather mean this varies a lot. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	30%	55%	41%
Retail & Rec	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	30%	55%	41%

Retail and recreation

In this section, we focus on estimated footfall to shops, restaurants, cafes, shopping centres and so on.

activity	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Grocery/pharmacy	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Estimates frequency of trips to grovery shops and pharmacies. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	32%	55.00%	45.000%
Retail/rec	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	32%	55.00%	45.000%
Restaurants	OpenTable State of the Industry	2022-02-19	London restaurant bookings made through OpenTable	0%	0.17%	0.024%

Home Working

The Google Mobility Report estimates changes in how many people are staying at home and going to places of work compared to normal. It's difficult to translate this into exact percentages of the population, but changes back towards ‘normal' can be seen to start before any lockdown restrictions were lifted. This value gives a seven day rolling (mean) average to avoid it being distorted by weekends and bank holidays.

name	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min/max value in Lockdown 1	Min/max value in Lockdown 2	Min/max value in Lockdown 3
Residential	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Estimates changes in how many people are staying at home for work. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	131%	119%	125%
Workplaces	Google Mobility Report	2022-10-15	Estimates changes in how many people are going to places of work. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	24%	54%	40%

Restriction	Date	end_date	Average Citymapper	Average homeworking
Work from home advised	17 Mar '20	21 Mar '20	57%	118%
Schools, pubs closed	21 Mar '20	24 Mar '20	34%	119%
UK enters first lockdown	24 Mar '20	10 May '20	10%	130%
Some workers encouraged to return to work	10 May '20	01 Jun '20	15%	125%
Schools open, small groups outside	01 Jun '20	15 Jun '20	19%	122%
Non-essential businesses re-open	15 Jun '20	04 Jul '20	24%	120%
Hospitality reopens	04 Jul '20	03 Aug '20	34%	115%
Eat out to help out scheme begins	03 Aug '20	08 Sep '20	44%	113%
Rule of 6	08 Sep '20	24 Sep '20	53%	111%
10pm Curfew	24 Sep '20	15 Oct '20	51%	112%
Tier 2 (High alert)	15 Oct '20	05 Nov '20	49%	113%
Second Lockdown	05 Nov '20	02 Dec '20	31%	118%
Tier 2 (High alert)	02 Dec '20	19 Dec '20	45%	115%
Tier 4 (Stay at home advised)	19 Dec '20	05 Jan '21	22%	124%
Third Lockdown	05 Jan '21	08 Mar '21	22%	122%
Roadmap 1	08 Mar '21	29 Mar '21	29%	118%
Roadmap 2	29 Mar '21	12 Apr '21	36%	117%
Roadmap 3	12 Apr '21	17 May '21	51%	113%
Roadmap out of lockdown: Step 3	17 May '21	19 Jul '21	65%	109%
Roadmap out of lockdown: Step 4	19 Jul '21	07 Nov '22	68%	107%