COVID-19 impacts on passenger rail transport in Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Romania

The spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has urged to take special actions to limit the level of contagion. The unprecedented scale of measures declared by the national governments in nearly every country of the world would have a huge impact on public transport services and in general, on the citizens travel behaviours. This paper endeavours to give an overview of the emerged epidemic situation caused by COVID-19 in Hungary and some of its neighbouring Central and South-East European countries. It identifies the most important public transport service changes together with their interrelated impacts on the mobility patterns. The responses vary country per country so an overall comparison shows novel findings on emergency transport management policies.