the pandemic, although lower than what was experienced by strata 4 and 5. In Buenos Aires, while the typical person buying online is of higher income, the pandemic narrowed the existing socioeconomic gap. Consumer surveys conducted by CACE indicate that consumers who started using e-commerce with the onset of the pandemic are mostly of lower-middle or lower socio-economic status. However, the size of the gap observed in 2018 was so high that it seems unlikely to have been completely reversed. Thus, if there is a substitution effect of shopping trips as a result of e-commerce, one would expect the drop in shopping trips to be larger among residents with higher socioeconomic status. Likewise, increases in urban distribution flows of goods would be expected to be higher for movements destined for high socioeconomic residential areas.

# **6. The changing urban freight dynamics during the pandemic and potential for trip elimination**

In Bogota, total daily trips to areas associated with commercial activity – areas with shopping centers, areas near shopping centers, and areas that prior to the pandemic concentrated many shopping trips – fell more than trips to other areas in both 2020 and 2021 (Figure 4). This effect was particularly strong in the case of trips to areas with shopping centers: total trips to these areas in 2020 fell by 25.3 percent on weekdays compared to 2019 (compared to a 17.1-percent drop to other areas), by 17 percent on Saturdays (compared to 8.1 percent) and by 14.9 percent on Sundays (compared to 3 percent). The drop in mobility to commercial areas was particularly strong in the south of the city.

**_Figure 4:_** _Change in trips to areas with shopping malls and the rest of areas in 2020 and 2021 vs. 2019 (%)_

<!-- Start of picture text --> a. Bogota b. Buenos Aires<br>Workdays Saturday Sunday Workdays Saturday Sunday<br>5% 5%<br>0% 0%<br>-5% -5%<br>-10% -10%<br>-15% -15%<br>-20% -20%<br>-25% -25%<br>-30% -30%<br>-35% -35%<br>Areas with Rest of areas Areas with Rest of areas Areas with Rest of areas Areas with Rest of areas<br>shopping shopping shopping shopping<br>centers centers centers centers<br>2020 2021 2020 2021<br>Source: Team’s estimate based on CDR data<br><!-- End of picture text --> In Buenos Aires, total daily trips to areas associated with commercial activity in 2020 fell slightly more than in the city as a whole, although this was not the case of areas with shopping centers on weekdays, in which case the trips declined by 32.5 percent compared to 32.8 percent to the rest of areas. In 2021, the trend observed in 2020 was reversed: total daily trips to areas associated with commercial activity recovered faster than trips in the city overall. Of particular note are Sundays, when non-home-based trips with destination in areas with shopping malls was only 6.6 percent below the 2019 level, while non-home-based trips to other areas of the city were still 24.6 percent below.

Most of the other metrics suggest that in Bogota e-commerce did not reduce shopping related travel during the pandemic. The evolution of demand in times of the day that concentrate shopping travel according to the 2019 survey is contrary to what would be expected in case there was a substitution effect of trips through increased e-commerce adoption. The drop in travel to shopping areas was smaller in the 9:00-12:00 time slot – the window with most shopping-related mobility in 2019 – than in the day as a whole. Only in the case of the 10