01631471

Component

Extreme weather events pose serious challenges to public transit systems. They disrupt transit operations, impair service quality, increase threats to public safety, and damage infrastructure. This paper presents the findings from a recent national survey of public transit agencies in the United States to understand what types of extreme weather transit agencies are experiencing, what risks are associated with extreme events and how they are responding to and preparing for them. The authors find that while extreme events are commonly experienced by transit agencies across states and transit managers perceive increased risks from these events, most agencies rely on the traditional emergency management approach to address extreme weather ex post rather than taking a proactive approach to mitigating the adverse weather impact on transit assets and infrastructure ex ante. Lack of access to financial resources was reported to the greatest challenge for undertaking adaptation and preparation. Overall, this study provides important implications for understanding organizational risk-mitigating behavior as well as climate adaptation policy making.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee A0020T Special Task Force on Climate Change and Energy.

01618707

17-05760

English

36p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Appendices; Figures; References; Tables

Disaster preparedness; Emergency management; Policy making; Public transit; Risk; Transportation departments; Weather conditions

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Security and Emergencies

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-05760

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 12:18PM