Still a long way to go
Many tasks people need to get done have not changed in centuries: getting food, finding a place to sleep, treating illness, or moving from one place to another. The business theorist Clayton Christensen built a theory of the jobs to be done around this. His key observation was that the tools people use to get these jobs done change far more often than the jobs themselves.
For mobility, people changed their main mode of transport whenever new technologies, the train, the car, the airplane, allowed and encouraged it. Most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic made some forms of transport less attractive, and health concerns meant many people travelled far less. Data from KOF showed that the average distance travelled had largely recovered from its low point at the end of March, which raises a question: did the pandemic lead to lasting changes in how people travel? Do they keep using bikes and cars instead of public transport?
trendEcon sheds light on this. Below we show searches for Velo kaufen (buy a bike) and Auto kaufen (buy a car). Interest in bikes peaked while interest in cars held up.
Public transport tells a different story. Searches for Bus Ticket and Zugticket (train ticket) plummeted and stayed well below pre-Corona levels.
Covid-19 caused some dramatic changes in people's lives and mobility preferences. Whether the elevated interest in bikes and the reduced interest in public transport would last remained to be seen.