Global City Economic Watch
As large scale quarantine measures limit the movement of urban populations globally, we are providing a weekly glance at real-time indicators to assess the level of slowdown in economic activity and how quickly they are beginning to return to normal.
3 minutes to read
In this week’s edition we analyse the level of flight departures from 16 global cities, according to Flightradar24 AB, as well as an update on the Traffic Index from TomTom International BV and Citymapper’s Mobility Index that we looked at in last week’s blog.
In terms of the number of scheduled flight departures from each city’s busiest airport, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong have all seen an uptick over the same time one week and one month ago. In the two Chinese cities the number of schedule departures has increased over 60% month-on-month, to 598 and 506 flights respectively.
The most notable contraction in scheduled departures can be seen in European hubs. Paris, with 180 flights scheduled on 2nd April, has seen a fall of 70% when compared to 2nd March, whilst Milan, with 61 departures has seen a 75% decline. The decision by EasyJet to ground its fleet may have further contributed to these declines in recent days, with the change in scheduled flights for Paris falling 55% between 1st and 2nd April alone.
Looking at the number of scheduled flights alone paints half the picture, therefore we also examine the number of departures tracked by Flightradar24 AB to see how many actually take off. As the chart below indicates Tokyo, Los Angeles and Hong Kong are operating closest to their scheduled capacity with 70%, 51% and 48% of flights being tracked, on average over the past seven days. Dubai has the least number of scheduled flight departing, on average 3%, with just seven flights a day over the past week.
Revisiting the Citymapper Mobility Index* gives us an indication as to how much of a city’s population is moving around compared to normal. Singapore again leads this indicator with a little under half, 49%, of the population remaining mobile, although this has fallen from 56% a week ago and 88% a month ago – perhaps in response to stricter rules recently implemented.
Sydney and Madrid, who both saw higher than average mobility on 2nd March, at 115% and 107% respectively, have seen their movements over the last week remain largely static at just 13% and 5% of normal.
City movement
The proportion of the population moving around 2 April 2020 compared to normal and the corresponding daily, weekly and monthly change in absolute terms
We have looked at travel by plane and foot so it is only right we also look at by road. For the week ending 3rd April the change in traffic congestion, as measured by TomTom**, showed that it is Paris’ roads which are the most notably quieter. The average weekday morning congestion has fallen to 5% from a 2019 average of 72%. As we noted last week, both Beijing and Shanghai have almost returned to normality with congestion just 1% and 5%, respectively, off of their 2019 averages of 64%and 59%.
We will continue to monitor these and other measures on a frequent basis. These will offer real-time indication as to how quickly society and consumer patterns return to pre-pandemic levels and will serve as a guide on the time that it will take for economic recovery.
Notes on methodology
*The Citymapper Mobility Index looks at the percentage of the population moving compared to a recent typical usage period, they do this by comparing trips planned in the Citymapper app to a recent typical usage period as trips planned are correlated to trips taken.
**The congestion level looks at how much longer a trip would take compared to baseline, e.g. a level of 53% means that a 30-minute trip will take 53% more time than it would during baseline uncongested conditions.