Reliability-Aware Accessibility Measurement and Planning for Rural Transportation Systems

Reliable access to essential destinations is a persistent challenge in rural transportation systems, where long travel distances, limited infrastructure, and exposure to environmental disruptions can significantly affect mobility. Transportation accessibility is widely used in planning to evaluate how well transportation networks connect people to services and opportunities, yet most accessibility measures assume deterministic travel conditions and do not account for travel-time variability, weather disruptions, or infrastructure reliability. As a result, existing accessibility metrics may overestimate the practical ability of rural residents to reach essential destinations and provide limited guidance for transportation planning under uncertain conditions. This project develops a reliability-aware accessibility measurement and planning framework for rural transportation systems. The research will extend traditional accessibility measures by incorporating transportation network uncertainty through scenario-based modeling of travel-time variability and disruption conditions. Reliability-aware accessibility metrics will be benchmarked against conventional accessibility measures and embedded within an optimization-based planning model that helps identify transportation interventions that improve reliable access under resource constraints. The framework will be demonstrated through a rural transportation case study using publicly available data and implemented as a prototype decision-support workflow for transportation planners.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $154,111.06
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348307

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Mid-America Transportation Center

  University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  2200 Vine Street, PO Box 830851
  Lincoln, NE  United States  68583-0851
• Project Managers:

  Bruner, Britain

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Missouri, St. Louis

  1 University Boulevard
  St. Louis, MO  United States  63121-4400
• Principal Investigators:

  Enayati, Shakiba

• Start Date: 20260601
• Expected Completion Date: 20270531
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Decision support systems; Performance measurement; Reliability; Rural transportation; Service disruption; Transportation planning; Travel time; Uncertainty
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01989401
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Mid-America Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348307
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: May 16 2026 11:55AM