Transportation Resilience

When critical transportation infrastructure fails, travelers, agencies, and researchers need timely information about how traffic conditions and travel patterns are changing. Yet this information is often scattered across platforms, difficult to compare, and unavailable once the immediate crisis has passed. Our research develops a shared data platform for collecting, curating, and visualizing traffic data to study transportation disruptions and support response and recovery. Supported by two NSF RAPID awards, this work spans the 2023 I-95 bridge collapse in Philadelphia and the 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore.

A Shared Traffic Data Platform

We develop an interactive traffic data platform that brings data collection, curation, and visualization together in one place. As shown in Figure 1, the platform enables users to examine changing traffic conditions and preserves data for research beyond the immediate disruption. Developed to support both NSF RAPID projects, it provides a shared resource for studying travel adaptation, network responses, and recovery following infrastructure failures. Our goal is to make disruption-related traffic data easier to access and interpret, supporting transportation research and informed response and recovery decisions.

Applications in Philadelphia and Baltimore

The June 11, 2023, I-95 bridge collapse in Philadelphia and the March 26, 2024, Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore provide two applications of this shared platform (Figures 2 and 3). The I-95 project examines how a highway closure affects transit use and travelers’ perceptions, including whether travelers who tried transit during the closure continued using it after the road reopened. The Key Bridge project focuses on collecting and curating traffic data to examine the transportation consequences of losing a major regional connection. Together, the projects connect data-platform development with questions about how travelers adapt and how transportation networks respond to infrastructure failures.