Resilience assessment of intercity transport in a two-city system

For resilience analysis, studies in the transport field have focused on the short term, while attention in the spatial and economic field has been paid to the long term. No resilience assessment framework has thus far combined the two fields and investigated the differences between short-term and long-term resilience to support tactical and strategical transport policies. To fill this gap, this study proposes a resilience assessment framework for a multimodal congested intercity transport system between two linear monocentric cities. Based on an extended spatial equilibrium model, the integrated assessment framework considers households’ long-term spatial and economic competitions, short-term travel mode choice behaviors, and their different effects on resilience. Analysis results reveal that (i) long-term capacity constraints and reductions of intercity transport limit intercity mobility, which leads to a decrease in travel costs, incomes, and land rents but has little effect on the overall utility; (ii) intercity railway has better resilience over the intercity roadway under the same capacity reductions in the short term but the difference is negligible in the long term; and (iii) from the perspective of utility, the short-term resilience is much weaker than the long-term counterpart under the same disruptions, while from the perspective of incomes, the long-term disruptions cannot be neglected. The resilience assessment outcomes depend on both the length of time frame and the selected indices, emphasizing the need for differentiated local emergency management tactics and comprehensive farsighted transport strategies.