Insight into the Impact of COVID-19 on Australian Transportation Sector: An Economic and Community-Based Perspective

Reviewers comments (1^st Reviewer)

Response

*         A short paragraph introducing the study definition and actions taken should be included at the end of this section.

Thank you for highlighting this point. We have included a proper description defining the study and what is the main theme of it in Section 1 as follows:

The study aims to analyse how the policies adopted by government and transportation authorities have affected the transport industry in Australia. Precisely, this study aims to determine how the pandemic has affected the demand for public transport and the travel patterns of consumers. Furthermore, the impact of a pandemic on air travel and freight transport system in Australia and its influence on revenue generation will be investigated.   

The paper is organized as follows: The next section describes the methodology followed and the materials used to conduct this research. Section three discusses the measures adopted by the Australian government and local authorities against the virus outbreak. The fourth section investigates the impact of these measures on the transport system of the country. Section five discusses the findings of this research. Section six concludes the study while drawing some recommendations for improving the current and post-pandemic conditions of the transport sector.

*         Please explain how relations between keyword are defined in Figure 3 and how this Figure was created.

Thank you for the constructive comment. Figure 3 is created using VOSviewer tool and an explanation is added to Section 2 to further explain it.

VOSviewer software tool was used to visualize the bibliometric networks from different databases. Search phrases to be used on the search engines of these websites were carefully designed to exhaust the database of each website and retrieve a maximum number of relevant articles. For instance, the search phrases formulated for Cat-1 included phrases like "COVID-19 policies", "COVID-19 restrictions" and "coronavirus response". The idea is to use various sequence of keywords related to each category. Similarly, for Cat-2 the search phrases include "Impact of COVID-19" and "effects of coronavirus".  For Cat-3 we used specific keywords for each subcategory. Such phrases included "coronavirus and public transport in Australia", "coronavirus effect on air travel in Australia" and "coronavirus impact on freight transport in Australia".

*         The problem of interest should be clearly defined in a new short section after the Introduction (problem statement)

Thank you for highlighting this point. A new subsection 1.1 is added after the introduction section as follows:

1.1.         Problem Statement

This paper analyses the impact of COVID-19 on transportation sector of Australia based on economic and community perspective because cities and metropolitan areas are quite populated and therefore, are more susceptible to the health-related crisis. Hence, it is important to understand the transport behaviour of citizens and their impact on the transport systems during the pandemic. Ivanov identified the necessity of planning the supply chain for transport networks during the pandemic to determine the components of risk preparedness and recovery (Ivanov., 2020). In line with this research, we aim to further probe the existing and post-pandemic risks to the transport sector. Further, this study aims to analyze how the policies adopted by government and transportation authorities have affected the transport industry in Australia.

*         The discussion section should be considerably improved. The authors should further develop critical appraisal in their discussion.

The discussion section has been reviewed and updated.

*         The Conclusions section is too short, and it should be completely rewritten. The authors do not summarize the actions taken and results.

The conclusion has been revised.

Reviewers comments (2^nd Reviewer)

Response

-Introduction: I suggest minimizing the descriptions on Covid (line 36-50) but focusing on the impact of the pandemic on the transport sector. 

it's better the authors insert sub sections. The actual section 3 (lines 223..) could be a subsection of the introduction, however it should be move before of the material and methods.  The literature review requires  improvement in terms of structure and delivery. Lines 54-59 why only Budapest, Netherlands and Spain? Please insert other countries. And I think in this section should show the comparison of many existing studies in detail.

Thank you for your constructive comment. We have created section 3 as subsection 1.2 of the introduction section. The travel data from other countries and a comparison of other studies on COVID-19 has been included.

-Material and methods: lines 139-140 it's a repetion. Figure 3 did you use a  specific method? It's not clear.

The authors list the retrieved Research Articles (table 1) but really they are insufficient. As reported, a screening method was applied (line 185). How these articles were useful to the manuscript? The literature review does not show sufficient evidence to explain relationships among the variables. Some literature will enhance it.

Figure 7 Please the authors insert a legend to explain acronyms (ACT, NSW..)

The line has been removed. The methodology for figure 3 has been updated. The literature review has been enhanced. Figure 7 is updated and all the acronyms are defined.

-Cross-check the references and check the style.

The references are now cross-checked and the style is updated.