Created a year ago, updated a month ago

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.

Summary of transport data

	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1¹	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Apple	Apple Mobility Index	Apr 10, 2021	Requests for directions made by its users compared to a baseline of 13 Jan 2020.	13%	44%	33%
Citymapper	Citymapper mobility index	Apr 11, 2021	Compares trips planned and trips taken within its app to a baseline of the four weeks from 6 Jan 2020	8%	28%	19%
Google	Google Mobility Report	Apr 7, 2021	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%	40%	27%
TfL Bus	Transport for London	Apr 4, 2021	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	Apr 4, 2021	Tube journey ‘taps’ on the TfL network compared to same day of the week in four weeks starting 13 Jan 2020	-	30%	21%
¹ Machines disabled for much of first lockdown

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:

Summary of data sources for pedestrian mobility

	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Walking	Apple Mobility Index	Apr 10, 2021	estimates the frequency of trips made on foot compared to baselie of 13 Jan ‘20	22%	47%	36%
Parks	Google Mobility Report	Apr 7, 2021	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	Apr 7, 2021	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.

Summary of data sources for retail/recreation

	Source	Latest	Baseline	Min value in Lockdown 1	Min value in Lockdown 2	Min value in Lockdown 3
Grocery & pharmacy	Google Mobility Report	Apr 7, 2021	Estimates frequency of trips to grovery shops and pharmacies. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	32%	55%	45%
Retail & rec	Google Mobility Report	Apr 7, 2021	Estimates frequency of trips to shops/leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 5 weeks from 3 Jan '20	32%	55%	45%
Restaurants	OpenTable State of the Industry	Apr 4, 2021	London restaurant bookings made through OpenTable	0%	0%	0%
Social venues	Purple	Dec 9, 2020	Public WiFi data from bars, restaurants and other leisure locations. Compared to baseline of 9 weeks from Jan 13 '20	4%	6%	-

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.

Summary of data sources for homeworking

	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	Apr 7, 2021	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	Apr 7, 2021	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%

Overview of key events/control measures

	Date	Average Citymapper value	Average homeworking
Work from home advised	Mar 17, 2020–Mar 21, 2020	57%	118%
Schools, pubs closed	Mar 21, 2020–Mar 24, 2020	34%	119%
UK enters first lockdown	Mar 24, 2020–May 10, 2020	10%	130%
Some workers encouraged to return to work	May 10, 2020–Jun 1, 2020	15%	125%
Schools open, small groups outside	Jun 1, 2020–Jun 15, 2020	19%	122%
Non-essential businesses re-open	Jun 15, 2020–Jul 4, 2020	24%	120%
Hospitality reopens	Jul 4, 2020–Aug 3, 2020	34%	115%
Eat out to help out scheme begins	Aug 3, 2020–Sep 8, 2020	44%	113%
Rule of 6	Sep 8, 2020–Sep 24, 2020	53%	111%
10pm Curfew	Sep 24, 2020–Oct 15, 2020	51%	112%
Tier 2 (High alert)	Oct 15, 2020–Nov 5, 2020	49%	113%
Second Lockdown	Nov 5, 2020–Dec 2, 2020	31%	118%
Tier 2 (High alert)	Dec 2, 2020–Dec 19, 2020	45%	115%
Tier 4 (Stay at home advised)	Dec 19, 2020–Jan 5, 2021	22%	124%
Third Lockdown	Jan 5, 2021–Mar 8, 2021	22%	122%
Schools open	Mar 8, 2021–Apr 12, 2021	32%	118%