Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Road and Transport Sectors using Relative Importance Index

The road and transport industry are few of the sectors most impacted by COVID-19. Thus, the movement restrictions were put in place by most of the countries in the world including Asia and Australasia to manage the pandemic. This has disrupted the supply chains and mobility networks and the overall economic slowdown. Some of the impacts has seriously affected transport operator finances, including revenue and cash flow, moving many companies closer to bankruptcy. With road and transport sectors as the key driver of economic and social activities, the recovery from COVID-19 in countries all over the world is at risk. Thus, this paper presents the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on road and transport sectors in Asia and Australasia based on a quantitative method through an online questionnaire survey. One hundred and seventeen (117) participants from various countries and background have responded and gave their feedbacks on the impact factors. The findings shows that the top five (5) factors impacting the road and transport sectors are suspension of current activities and operations, followed by the reduction in company’s revenue, profits, cashflow, turnover, interruption in construction planning and scheduling, transport disruptions to supply chains, mobility network and public transport usage and the transport travel pattern and ridership. This study is limited to number of survey samples as indicated in the paper. Only on the surface impact was measured in this study. Thus, it is recommended to carry out details analysis on the impacted area to investigate the magnitude and scale of the impacted area to road and transport sectors due to COVID-19 pandemics.