When I learned “safety and resiliency” was the topic for this column, I initially thought the two subjects were completely different. I soon concluded, however, that they are actually quite similar.
Let's start with safety. You probably know that the general idea of the Safe Systems Approach involves the "Swiss cheese model." It represents the idea that if one component of the transportation systems fails, other components will kick in and prevent a serious crash and severe or even fatal injuries. To illustrate, I'll use a fictional example involving a woman we'll call Erin.
Erin is in a hurry to arrive at an event because she left her house too late. She is exceeding an appropriate speed for the snowy conditions and as she takes a curve, her car slides off the road. Luckily (no, not luckily—by design), her car is corrected by a guardrail, her seatbelt engages, the airbags deploy, and an ambulance arrives quickly. While she misses the event, she soon recovers from minor injuries and returns to work in a few days.
Stick a pin in that story as we switch to the topic of resiliency. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, resiliency refers to the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to disruptions while recovering quickly. Still, it seems like we don’t hear much about transportation resiliency until we’re confronted with a catastrophic incident like a hurricane, a wildfire, or bridge collapse.
Here’s a semi-fictional example of how transportation resiliency comes into play. My friend Pat lives in a rural neighborhood that is heavily forested and at high risk of wildfire. Knowing this risk, she and her neighbors participated in the FireWise program, which taught her to thin the vegetation around her home. She also put her phone number on the neighborhood’s emergency calling system list.
The preparation paid off when a lightning strike ignited a fire in her area. She received a text urging her to evacuate and reminding her of the alternate gravel route available for emergency use in case the only paved road serving her neighborhood was impassable. As the wildfire started to spread, the county fire department arrived from a fire station located just two miles from the neighborhood entrance, and the fire was extinguished before it reached her house. While her home still could have been set on fire by traveling embers, even if the fire itself didn’t reach her property, Pat suspected that the home’s construction (stucco with a metal roof, recommended for fire-prone areas) may have saved her house.
While writing these stories, I realized that safety and resiliency are not separate topics at all. In fact, the Safe System Approach—anticipating, preparing for, and adapting to disruptions on our transportation network—is just transportation resiliency for traveling humans! Both concepts basically require preparing in advance for what might go wrong and incorporating back-up plans to help achieve recovery. Q.E.D.
A final note: I’m not at all an expert on every ITE Journal topic, which is why I was initially uncomfortable writing these monthly columns. Rather, my aim is to learn a little more about something each month with the intent of incorporating new ideas into my everyday work. I hope all of you will do the same. Until next month, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get to your next meeting.