Modeling and Evaluating Impacts of Post-Covid Return-to-Work Plans on Transportation Systems

Abstract

The transportation system has changed how it operates due to COVID-19. As the risks of the pandemic decrease and travel restrictions (e.g., staying at or working from home) are lifted, most people are ready to travel and return to onsite work. As such, travel demands have been changing fast from day to day and so have the impacts on transportation systems. This makes it challenging to model and anticipate the impacts on transportation in the future, which is essential to accommodate the recovery of transportation systems. In particular, due to the huge uncertainties coming from the evolving risks of the pandemic evolve and the fast-iterating return to work plans, the conventional prediction methods are no longer adequate. This study establishes a practical framework following the scenario-based approach to predict the impacts on transportation systems in the post-covid era when significant uncertainties are present. Specifically, multiple scenarios generated from different combinations of return-to-work plans and travelers’ attitudes toward using specific transportation modes are created, followed by multiple transportation simulations based on the scenarios. The simulation outputs enable a comprehensive evaluation of the potential impacts on transportation systems. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated using a case study in the Puget Sound region. The results from the case study supply important implications, e.g., for planning transit services in the post-pandemic period. The main takeaways are summarized, and further implications are also discussed.

Keywords: impact evaluation, scenario-based, COVID-19, road network, transit