Transportation Impacts of Berkeley Hills Tunnel Disruption by Earthquakes

Tianyu Han, Bingyu PhD Zhao, Yili Kelly PhD Tang, Louise PhD Comfort and Kenichi PhD Soga

Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley

Abstract: In the San Francisco Bay Area, earthquake damage to a small number of critical transportation facilities can produce regionwide mobility impacts. This report evaluates the Berkeley Hills Tunnel, a key Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cross-hills connection, using an integrated model that links tunnel seismic performance to transportation consequences during disruption and recovery. The model couples scenario-based seismic assessment of the tunnel with screening-level fragility for substitute corridors and propagates the resulting time-dependent capacity states through a transportation simulation. At a representative recovery-stage demand of 25 percent of normal, mean cross-hills travel time rises from about 9 minutes in the mildest scenario (327-year return period) to about 41 minutes in the most severe (654-year). In that severe case, a fully subscribed bus bridge can lower the mean cross-hills travel time by up to 30 percent. Uncertainty quantification identifies recovery-stage demand as the dominant source of travel-time variance and shows that unfavorable capacity combinations can nearly double travel time relative to the central estimate. Disruption falls disproportionately on transit-dependent travelers, who either endure longer travel times or pay an extra travel fee. Agencies can use the workflow to assess disruption impacts and identify likely bottlenecks, compare recovery-stage operational strategies, and target equitable service for affected populations.

Keywords: Engineering; Earthquakes; Earthquake engineering; Tunnels; Hills; Rail transit; Highways; Disaster resilience; Service disruption; Computer models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/87w0j2qk.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt87w0j2qk

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().