Galway Bay fm newsroom - New data from Apple and Google reveals while many people have returned to normal patterns of life in rural areas and smaller towns, city centres such as Galway are not as active as they were pre pandemic.
As the last restrictions on society begin to ease and with many still working from home, mobile phone data reveals that city living has yet to fully recover after lockdown.
According to Today's Irish Independent, the Apple and google movement data which was anonymously collected from hundreds of thousands of Irish smartphones,reveals traffic and movement of people has returned to pre-pandemic levels across most of the country.
Google data, which tracks where people are going, shows activities such as retail and commercial have now largely recovered.
Nationally only public transport and office attendance lag pre-pandemic levels
People have returned to normal patterns of life in rural areas and smaller towns but, with many office workers still operating from home, city centres such as Galway are not as active.
The use of cars has now soared in rural areas, with public transportation still not fully restored.
But it's a different story in Galway city where according to the Apple data, the number of journeys people made on foot has increased by up to 100 percent compared to before the pandemic began.
