EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Transportation Planning for Disasters: An Accessibility Approach

Stephanie E Chang
Additional contact information
Stephanie E Chang: Department of Geography, Box 353550, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3550, USA

Environment and Planning A, 2003, vol. 35, issue 6, 1051-1072

Abstract: A methodology is developed in this paper for evaluating and enhancing the performance of urban transportation systems in the aftermath of a disaster. A performance measure is proposed for assessing overall and distributional impacts based on the concept of accessibility. The methodology is demonstrated with two case studies. The first focuses on passenger railroad disruption in the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan. An accessibility measure is applied to evaluate the loss of transportation service and, in particular, its attendant spatial disparities. Alternative repair and restoration strategies are investigated and shown, in hindsight, to be preferable to the actual sequence of repairs. The second case study focuses on the potential loss of road and highway transportation in Seattle, WA, after a hypothetical earthquake. A refined accessibility measure is applied that accounts for postdisaster detouring and congestion. Again, this brings attention to spatial disparities in loss and the spatial implications of alternative restoration priorities. It further demonstrates that restoration strategies should be designed from a systems perspective. The limitations and broader applicability of the approach are discussed.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a35195 (text/html)

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:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:6:p:1051-1072

DOI: 10.1068/a35195

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:35:y:2003:i:6:p:1051-1072