Accessibility-Based Transportation Network Resilience Planning: Extending Vermont's TRPT

Vermont’s Transportation Resilience Planning Tool (TRPT) assesses the criticality of roadway links by measuring how much vehicle hours of travel (VHT) increases across the network when a link fails. This metric, and similar metrics used in other network resilience applications, are practical as a measure of mobility, but they obscure the question that matters most to communities and planners: which places lose their ability to reach needed destinations? Accessibility — the ease with which people can reach destinations such as jobs, healthcare, grocery stores, and emergency services — is the true purpose of transportation infrastructure, and a road network criticality measure grounded in accessibility can reveal both which links are critical and which communities bear the burden when those links fail. This project will develop an Accessibility Criticality Index (ACI) for Vermont's statewide roadway network and evaluate it against the existing mobility-oriented Network Criticality Index (NCI) used in Vermont's TRPT. The accessibility metric will be developed using publicly available destination data and the Vermont statewide Travel Demand Model (VTDM). The core research questions are: (1) How do link criticality rankings differ when measured using accessibility rather than mobility, and what does that reveal about the current TRPT's blind spots, and (2) what Vermont towns and census tracts stand to see the greatest access loss when links fail, and how does community vulnerability differ when measured using accessibility rather than mobility? Findings will directly inform a proposed Phase 2 project to integrate the ACI into the TRPT web application.

• Record URL:
  • https://ncst.ucdavis.edu/project/accessibility-based-transportation-network-resilience-planning-extending-vermonts-trpt

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $202,796.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DOT 69A3552348319

  DOT 69A3552344814

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Managing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of California, Davis

  1 Shields Ave
  Davis, California  United States  95616

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Project Managers:

  Cliff, Sydney

• Performing Organizations:

  National Center for Sustainable Transportation

  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA  United States 

  University of Vermont

  Transportation Research Center
  Burlington, Vermont  United States  05405
• Principal Investigators:

  Rowangould, Greg

  Nelson, Clare

• Start Date: 20260901
• Expected Completion Date: 20270831
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Disaster resilience; Infrastructure; Mobility; Transportation planning
• Geographic Terms: Vermont
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 02001855
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Center for Sustainable Transportation
• Contract Numbers: DOT 69A3552348319, DOT 69A3552344814
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 8 2026 4:11PM