Stephen Wong, PhD, Jacquelyn Broader, Adam Cohen, Susan Shaheen, PhD
2021
Evacuation and response plans require thoughtful strategies that build mandatory evacuation order compliance, reduce vehicular congestion, and increase social equity for disadvantaged populations. However, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic coincided with a series of devastating disasters in 2020 that have required mass evacuations, leading to several new compounding effects (i.e., “double the trouble”).
A year into the coronavirus pandmeic there's hope on the horizon. It's too soon to know the lasting impacts on the Bay Area, but we asked experts in mental health, transportation and education to try and predict what we might expect in our day-to-day lives as we slowly emerge from this crisis.
Susan Shaheen, the co-director of the Transporation Sustainability Research Center, discusses her latest study, Future of Public Transit and Shared Mobility Scenario Planning for COVID 19 Recovery.
While the COVID-19 crisis has devastated many public transit and shared mobility services, it has also exposed underlying issues in how these services are provided to society. As ridership drops and revenues decline, many public and private providers may respond by cutting service or reducing vehicle maintenance to save costs. As a result, those who depend on public transit and shared mobility services, particularly those without access to private automobiles, will experience further loss of their mobility.
Well planned and coordinated evacuations are critical to saving lives during natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, wildfires) and human-caused disasters (e.g., chemical spills, terrorism). To complicate matters, recent wildfires in the western United States (U.S.) and multiple hurricanes in the Gulf Coast have coincided with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. As of mid-October 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to over 7.9 million positive cases and over 217,000 deaths in the U.S. alone.
Transportation Sustainability Research Center Co-Director Susan Shaheen discusses the potential future of public transit and shared mobility during recovery from and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transportation Sustainability Research Center Co-Director Susan Shaheen discusses how scooters and electric bikes (e-bikes) are gaining traction as the COVID-19 lockdowns ease in the Pineville, North Carolina.
Car-sharing platforms, which have suffered during the Covid-19 lockdown, see an opportunity emerging: an increase in short-distance, local trips as U.S. consumers look for a different way of getting to work and running errands.
While clean air and traffic-free roads have been one of the few silver linings amid the coronavirus pandemic, there are worrying signs that the Bay Area’s fearsome congestion could come roaring back once public life resumes — and perhaps be worse than ever.
