Is the multimodality related to urban mobility changes during the pandemic?

COVID introduced new considerations and changed the urban mobility ecosystem and perception. During the pandemic, mobility patterns change according to several factors. Few studies have investigated the impact of the mobility system features on the dynamic of people during the pandemic. This research attempts to understand the relationship between the urban mobility system advancement and the behaviour of people throughout different stages of the pandemic. This study uses big data for day-to-day mobility in different regions in Germany and employs the correlation coefficient matrix to analyze the impact of the smart mobility indices on the trends of mobility and the number of contacts between people. The study covers the whole pandemic period, from 2019 to mid-2022, to derive a pandemic crisis travel mobility patterns for each wave. Overall, a negative correlation between developed mobility systems and mobility trends means that the smarter cities and regions have, the fewer people tend to travel; the second wave marks the greatest mobility decline in correlation with more advanced mobility systems. While sophisticated and advanced mobility systems are often cited as having more attractiveness and a positive effect on the traveller's satisfaction, our findings suggest no clear and discernible impacts during the pandemic were observed. On the contrary, more multimodal trips, sharing options, and smarter mobility, in general, were associated with less mobility of people, yet it does not interfere with the contact between people, during the different stages of COVID in Germany.