Mobility Insights

Mobility Drops 50% in Western U.S. Due to Wildfires

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 17:16:47 +0000

Mobility Drops 50% in Western U.S. Due to Wildfires

By Estelle Laziuk, Flurry Analyst

Anonymous Thu, 10/01/2020 - 10:16

2020-10-01

Tags

Mobile Insights

Mobility Insights

Coronavirus has severely impacted U.S. mobility in 2020. Foot traffic to financial centers plunged by 60%. Trips to retail stores declined by 26%. Airport visits collapsed by 75%. And now with wildfires raging across much of the Western U.S., we see a new factor impacting mobility. With air quality critically impacted in California, Oregon and Washington, compounding a state of reduced mobility due to Coronavirus, we’ve seen an unprecedented reduction in people leaving their homes. In this report, we examine the impact of U.S. wildfires in the West on mobility through the usage of navigation apps.

Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon Media, is used in over 1 million mobile applications, providing aggregated insights across more than 2 billion mobile devices per month. For this analysis, Flurry estimated user mobility using sessions across navigation mobile apps that provide drivers with directions, maps or speed meters. We also used the Air Quality Index from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We focus this analysis on users in California, Oregon and Washington as these states have been most impacted by wildfires, as measured by the number of acres burnt.

Using car trips measured across navigation apps we can see the shift in mobility.

In the chart above, we show the daily percent change in navigation app sessions compared to a pre-wildfires baseline. We set the baseline to August 1 before wildfires grew severe enough to become a U.S. trending topic, according to Google Trends. Since observed changes were similar across California, Oregon and Washington, we present their group average in the chart. The color of the dots across the line represents the air quality measured on that day. For instance, the August 1 data point is green because air quality was considered “good” while the September 14 data point is red because it measured “very unhealthy” on that day.

On September 11, for the first time in 2020, air quality was considered “unhealthy” across California, Oregon and Washington. Over the next 3 days, air quality grew “very unhealthy,” resulting in navigation app sessions dropping by a staggering 55%. Similar but less severe drops also occurred when air quality worsened from “good” to “moderate” on both August 20 and September 5. Navigation apps reached their lowest point on September 19 following seven straight days of “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” levels. As air quality dropped, so too did mobile trips outside the home. More recently, while air quality has come back to healthy levels in Oregon and Washington, moderate air quality persists in California, resulting in depressed mobility.

Due to poor air quality from wildfires, user mobility has dropped by 50% on average across California, Oregon and Washington. With new wildfires such as Zogg and Glass spreading in California as of September 27, the west coast is not yet back to normal. We’ll keep you updated on future important trends in travel and mobility. For the latest reports, subscribe to the Flurry Analytics blog and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to get the latest industry analyses.

Work Travel to City Financial Centers Has Plummeted by 60% Due to COVID-19

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 16:28:32 +0000

Work Travel to City Financial Centers Has Plummeted by 60% Due to COVID-19

By Estelle Laziuk, Flurry Analyst, and Yan He, Principal Research Engineer at Verizon Media

Anonymous Thu, 07/30/2020 - 09:28

2020-07-30

Tags

Mobile Insights

Mobility Insights

Measures taken to contain Coronavirus —restricting travel, closing non-essential businesses and enforcing social distancing— have plunged the U.S. economy into a severe recession. Financial districts in major U.S. cities house a disproportionate number of corporate headquarters, which generate a significant share of economic activity in America. In this report, we show how travel to U.S. financial districts has plummeted during the economic downturn.

Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon Media, sees app usage on one million mobile applications, with a large concentration in the United States. To estimate the change in traffic to U.S. financial districts, we averaged the number of active mobile devices across 5 of the country’s largest financial centers: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco. For our pre-coronavirus baseline, we use January 13 - 19, the most recent non-holiday week prior to the first U.S. coronavirus case. Let’s examine the changes in traffic to these business centers.

In the chart above, we show the percent change in daily active mobile app users located in U.S. financial districts from March 1 to July 20 compared to the January baseline. We display this change in blue against the rising number of new coronavirus cases in gray. During the first two weeks of March, the pandemic had not yet impacted travel to financial city centers. As we observe in the chart, travel to financial districts was relatively stable, hovering around 10% higher than the baseline.

Starting March 13, when the federal government declared a national emergency, activity in financial districts began to decline. Over the next two weeks, activity further dropped by 25 percentage points.

Then, from March 27 to 28 —in just a one day period— travel to financial districts nosedived by an additional 35 percentage points. At this time, CDC data showed an exponential rise in new COVID-19 cases. Additionally, stay-at-home orders had already been put in place by around half of U.S. states, resulting in a large part of the population beginning to work from home.

From April through July, travel to financial districts remained low, around 60% lower than the January baseline. As new cases of coronavirus began surging again in June, travel to financial districts remained low and unchanged, indicating that most professionals continued working from home. Additionally, visits to financial districts declined by 6 percentage points more on weekdays than on weekends. This corresponds to people no longer commuting to financial districts during the workweek, as 88% of organizations encouraged or required employees to work from home, according to Gartner.

With stay-at-home orders issued mid-March, trips to financial districts have tumbled by a staggering 60%. This sudden plunge coincides with the significant decline in U.S. economic activity that began in February. As we write this report, with coronavirus cases on the rise again, many companies have announced that the majority of their employees will work from home until 2021. As a result, we do not anticipate activity in financial districts to return to baseline levels anytime soon. We’ll continue to monitor mobile app usage and keep you informed about important trends.

Mobile Usage Reveals 75% Drop in Visits to Airports Due to COVID-19

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 18:05:01 +0000

Mobile Usage Reveals 75% Drop in Visits to Airports Due to COVID-19

By Yan He, Principal Research Engineer at Verizon Media, and Estelle Laziuk, Flurry Analyst

Anonymous Thu, 07/02/2020 - 11:05

2020-07-02

Tags

Mobile Insights

Mobility Insights

The Coronavirus pandemic has impacted nearly every industry, but travel and tourism has been among the hardest hit. With states issuing stay-at-home directives, both business and leisure travel declined significantly. With soft demand, airlines greatly reduced the number of operating flights and remaining flights are running at reduced capacity. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, described the impact of COVID-19 on airlines as “worse than 9/11.” In this report, Flurry analyzes the change in daily visits to U.S. airports from March through May.

Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon Media, sees app usage on 1 million mobile applications, with a large concentration in the United States. To estimate the change in airport traffic, we use the number of unique devices with app activity across a sample of U.S. airports. For a baseline, we use the daily average of unique devices during January 13 - 19, the most recent non-holiday week prior to the first reported U.S. coronavirus case. We then compared the relative change of all subsequent days to that baseline. To cover a large segment of the U.S. air travel territory, we averaged the number of active users across 12 different U.S. airports. Our sample includes airports located in Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Miami, New York, Newark, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Tampa and Washington DC. These airports cover some of the most populated U.S. cities across 9 different U.S. states. Let’s take a look.

In the chart above, we show the percent change in daily active mobile app users visiting U.S. airports compared to the January baseline. We display this change in blue against the rising number of new coronavirus cases in gray. The beginning of March until March 13 represents a period when the number of mobile app users at airports remained stable, about 11% higher than the baseline, with airport visits not yet affected by the pandemic.

Starting March 13, as President Donald Trump issued a federal emergency declaration over the coronavirus outbreak, the number of mobile app users at airports began to decline. Over the course of two weeks, from March 13 to March 27, the number of mobile app users at airports declined by 30 percentage points relative to January’s pre-coronavirus baseline.

From March 27 to 28, over the course of one day, the number of mobile app users at airports experienced an even sharper decline by an additional 40 percentage points relative to pre-coronavirus. During this period, new U.S. cases of COVID-19 were rising exponentially according to CDC data. Additionally, stay-at-home orders were in place in roughly half of U.S. states.

This sustained period of low demand for air travel may not only be attributed to stay-at-home or shelter-in-place directives that raised travel anxiety, but also to the cancelation of conferences and sporting events, combined with the closures of amusement parks, museums, and many more leisure activities. Plus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged travelers to avoid discretionary travel and many governments issued bans on international travel or mandatory 14 day quarantines upon arrival.

As we write this report, airlines have announced plans to increase flights, while coronavirus cases are on the rise again. We’ll continue to monitor the resulting change in airport visits and keep you informed about important trends.