Quantifying Road Transport Resilience to Emergencies: Evidence from China

Abstract

Facing the shock of emergencies, how resilient is the road transport system? In this process, how are the system’s absorption capacity, adaptability, and recovery capacity? These are very important for the development of sustainable road transportation. Taking China’s road transport during the COVID-19 pandemic as the research object, this paper introduces an integrated resilience quantification method, draws a road transport resilience curve, and comprehensively and dynamically analyzes and compares the resilience of China’s road transport system at different stages among different regions and under different epidemic waves. The results show that the resilience of road passenger and freight transport differs in the face of external disturbance. Freight transport resilience is better than that of passenger transport. Compared to passenger transport, freight transport is more robust; the impacted speed is slower, the recovery speed is faster, the recovery capacity is stronger, and the affected period is shorter. There is regional heterogeneity in road transport resilience. This heterogeneity is reflected in the whole change process of system performance with external disturbance, including absorption capacity, adaptation capacity, and recovery capacity. The resilience of road transport under different waves of the epidemic is different. Compared to the first wave of the epidemic, the resilience of road transport indicators at all stages has been dramatically improved in the later rebound wave of the epidemic. This can help in the development of evidence-based road transport sustainability strategies.