Nonpharmaceutical interventions on public transport

Non-pharmaceutical interventions applied over the world are very much similar and based on the general recommendations adopted at the beginning of the COVID-19 spread. Italy and Croatia as two European countries sharing the border faced COVID-19 crisis similarly but with some differences. Both countries acted promptly introducing radical measures. The first case officially recorded in Croatia was imported from Italy, so Croatian authorities copied Italian and general EU measures in order to prevent a similar scenario. Both countries introduced strict non-pharmaceutical interventions when the number of COVID-19 cases was rather low and still limited to few areas, and afterwards adapted according to COVID-19 spread but also mobility needs. It is difficult to forecast how and to which extent the mobility of the future will change after COVID-19 and if non-pharmaceutical interventions will still play a role. However, some messages are clear: citizens’ favours to passenger cars and unpreparedness of transit to cope with sudden events have been and still are the strongest elements of weakness in coping with this event. Changing sentiment is a key issue but re-orienting the travel demand towards transit will be certainly challenging and to date no real interventions are in sight, aside from the attempt to have some infrastructural measures becoming structural in the near horizon.