Recovery tracker: Rise in mobility, transit station visits at record high

Power generation, traffic numbers hold steady

Footfalls at transit points such as bus stops, train stations and subways in the latest week were at their highest since February 2020, the earliest since mobility data began to be available.

Search engine Google tracks people’s visits to various categories of places using anonymised location data to understand how people are moving during the pandemic. The data is released with a lag. The latest is as of November 25. This is one day after the identification of the new Covid-19 variant (Omicron). The World Health Organisation designated it as a variant of concern on November 26. Retail and recreation trips also moved up during the latest week, shows the mobility data (see chart 1).

Power generation was stable last week with the generation largely in line with the output a week before. Power utilities across the country generated 3,519 million units of electricity on average per day, based on reporting day data, for the week ended November 29, 2021, up 1.3 per cent from 3,473 MUs a week ago. Generation last week was however 6.8 per cent lower than the corresponding week in 2020 and only 1.5 per cent higher than generation in corresponding week in 2019 (see chart 2).

Business Standard also tracks emissions of nitrogen dioxide. It comes from industrial activity and vehicles. Higher levels can point to more economic activity. Delhi emissions were 46 per cent higher than in 2019. It is also higher than the previous week. Mumbai emissions remained muted (see chart 3,4)

Traffic congestion in Mumbai was relatively lower than the previous week, shows data from global location technology firm TomTom International. It was 35 per cent lower than 2019 for the latest week compared to 33 per cent below 2019 levels in the previous week. New Delhi traffic congestion came in at 22 per cent below 2019 levels. It was 27 per cent below 2019 levels in the previous week (see chart 5).

Growth in the quantity of goods carried by the Indian Railways slowed. It was 6.3 per cent for the latest week compared to 10.7 per cent in the previous week. The money it made from carrying these goods, or freight revenue, was up 8.9 per cent; compared to 21.6 per cent in the previous week (see chart 6).

Business Standard tracks these weekly indicators as means of getting a current picture of how the economy is doing. Official macreconomic data is often released with a lag. Analysts globally have been tracking similar indicators as different countries imposed restrictions to help control the Covid-19 pandemic. This helps get a sense of the fast-changing situation on the ground. Google data is released with a lag. The latest is as of November 25. All other data is as of Sunday, November 28.