Analysis of Interregional Commuters Traffic Delay Induced by Shoreline Protection of Different Areas of the San Francisco Bay Area
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 29, Issue 4
Abstract
The effects of global climate change are already observed in coastal communities, and one of the key impacts of climate change is sea level rise (SLR). Such increases in sea level are expected to have large impacts on transportation infrastructure and result in region-wide commute disruption. Studies and adaptation strategies in coastal areas will allow decision-makers to take better actions against SLR. The present paper uses the San Francisco Bay Area as a case study. The study quantifies the interregional traffic delay of commuters due to the inundation of shoreline protection segments of the Bay Area. The approach is based on the marginal effect of protection within San Francisco Bay where individual stretches of coastline known as operational landscape units (OLUs) are protected one at a time. In the study, we integrate detailed shoreline scenarios, coastal inundation modeling, and traffic disruption modeling. Important insights from the analysis are obtained: the protection of an OLU (and specifically San Rafael OLU) will produce an average commute time reduction of up to 17% in the neighboring areas or the neighborhoods located across the bay. Five OLUs along with four bridges were identified as critical for minimizing disruptions to commute times. This methodology may be used by decision-makers when proposing adaptation and protection strategies that account for both local and regional areas.
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Data Availability Statement
Some data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The following data are available: shape file of the GIS inundation map of the transportation network for all the case scenarios, VHT result for the case scenarios, calibration data for hydrodynamic base case scenario, and hydrodynamic inundation map for all the case scenarios.
Acknowledgments
This research was partially funded by the National Science Foundation under the Collaborative Research: Multi-scale Infrastructure Interactions with Intermittent Disruptions: Coastal Flood Protection, Transportation and Governance Networks (CRISP) program (Grant No. 1541181) and by an New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) research grant to the third author. The authors benefited from discussions with other members of the Transportation Infrastructure Management Lab at NYUAD. The simulations were carried out using the Core Technology Platforms resources at New York University Abu Dhabi.
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 27, 2022
Accepted: Apr 16, 2023
Published online: Aug 30, 2023
Published in print: Dec 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jan 30, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Bays
- Case studies
- Coastal engineering
- Coasts, oceans, ports, and waterways engineering
- Commute
- Engineering fundamentals
- Infrastructure
- Methodology (by type)
- Models (by type)
- Research methods (by type)
- Shoreline protection
- Shores
- Traffic analysis
- Traffic delay
- Traffic engineering
- Traffic management
- Traffic models
- Transportation engineering
- Water transportation
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