Pandemic in the Metropolis: Transportation Impacts and Recovery(20 Springer Tracts on Transportation and Traffic)

This book brings together reports of original empirical studies which explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban mobility and transportation and the associated policy responses. Focusing on the California region, the book draws on this local experience to formulate general lessons for other regions and metropolitan areas.  The book examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has had different impacts on vulnerable populations in cities. It explores the pandemic's impacts on the transportation industry, in particular public transit, but also on other industries and economic interests that rely on transportation, such as freight trucking, retail and food industries, and the gig-economy. It investigates the effect of the viral outbreak on automobile traffic and associated air quality and traffic safety, as well as on alternative forms of work, shopping, and travel which have developed to accommodate the conditions it has forced on society. With quantitative data supported with illustrations and graphs, transportation professionals, policymakers and students can use this book to learn about policies and strategies that may instigate positive change in urban transport in the post-pandemic period. 

Table of Contents:
Introduction.- Part I: Vulnerable Populations.- Automobile Debt, Delinquency and the COVID-19 Crisis: Impacts on Vulnerable Populations.- A Bus Home: Impact of COVID-19 on Homelessness in Transit Environments.- Impacts of COVID-19 on Workers in the Transportation Gig Economy: Safety, Equity, and Sustainability.- Shelter-in-Place Orders and their Impacts on At-Risk Groups.- Part II: Economy.- The Pandemic and its Impacts on California Transportation Finance.- COVID-19 Impacts on Urban Freight Distribution: A Supply and Demand Analysis.- Understanding the Impacts of COVID-19 on Food Shopping.- Understanding and Modelling the Impacts of Covid-19 on Freight Trucking Activity.- Part III: Environment and Safety.- Changes in Traffic Patterns and Localized Air Quality during the Pandemic.- How Much Further Does Emission Pollution Need to Decrease Before We Achieve Ozone Benefits? Observations During the Pandemic.- Measuring Changes in Traffic Patterns due to COVID-19.- Highway Crashes in California during the Pandemic: Insights and Considerations.- Part IV: Mobility and Travel.- Travel Behavior Changes Associated with the COVID-19  Pandemic.- Surveying the Impact of Transit on COVID-19 Dispersion.- Walking and Bicycling in the Time of COVID-19.-  Telecommuting in California: Changes Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.- Part V: Responses.- The Future of Public Transit and Shared Mobility: Scenario Planning in Response to COVID-19 Recovery.- Double the Trouble: A Playbook for Evacuations during COVID-19.- How the Pandemic Is Changing Public Transit.- Impact of COVID-19 Recovery Policies on Public Transportation Systems.- Responding to the Pandemic Crises: Monitoring of Bus Transit in Bat Area.- Conclusions.

About the Author :
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris is Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Associate Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She holds degrees in architecture and urban planning and has published extensively on issues relating to mobility and safety, women’s travel, transit-oriented development, high-speed rail development, inner-city revitalization, gentrification, and displacement. She has served as a consultant to several organizations including the Transportation Research Board, Southern California Association of Governments, and Project for Public Spaces, on issues of transportation and urban design. Her research has been supported by the US and California Departments of Transportation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the AARP, among others. She is the author or editor of 10 books and more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters.   Alexandre Bayen is Liao-Cho Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. He is also Faculty Scientist in Mechanical Engineering, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was Visiting Researcher at NASA Ames Research Center from 2000 to 2003, and has also worked as Research Director of the Autonomous Navigation Laboratory at the Laboratoire de Recherches Balistiques et Aerodynamiques. Bayen has authored two books and over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He has received several awards and prizes, including the Ballhaus Award from Stanford University, the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and he is a NASA Top 10 Innovators on Water Sustainability.   Giovanni Circella is Honda Distinguished Scholar for New Mobility Studies and Director of the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program at the University of California, Davis, and Senior Research Engineer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr Circella’s interests include travel behavior, emerging mobility services, travel demand modeling, and travel survey methods. He is currently leading a large study on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation in 17 regions of the USA and Canada. Dr Circella is the chair of the TRB Committee on ICT and Transportation (AEP35) and a member of the Travel Behavior and Values (AEP30) committee. He is a member of the Executive Board of the International Association for Travel Behavior Research (IATBR). He serves on several NCHRP/TCRP panels on the impacts of emerging transportation technologies and cooperates with several planning agencies and non-profit organizations.   R. Jayakrishnan is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and affiliated to the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Irvine,since 1991. He received a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. He has served as the director of the Radio-Optics and Telecommunications Laboratory of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology at UCI. His research interests are in traffic flow theory and simulation, transportation systems analysis, network modeling, public transit, and shared mobility systems. He developed Dynasmart, one of the earliest modeling frameworks of Intelligent Transportation Systems from the early 1990s, and for popularizing the use of Gradient Projection algorithms for network assignment in transportation planning. He has served in the editorial committees of ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Transportation Research Part-C, and other journals, and has served in several professional committees and academic panels of the Federal Highway Administration, National Science Foundation, and the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He has over 125 refereed publications to his credit.

Review :
“The book will be valuable to graduate students and academics in urban studies, transportation planning, and civil engineering (with a focus on transportation). The introduction and conclusion would be appropriate to be assigned to undergraduate students in those fields to provide insights into the early days of the pandemic.” (Eric Petersen, Journal of Urban Affairs, July 7, 2023)