Resilient Transportation Investment Under Constrained Budgets A Framework for Prioritizing Vulnerable Corridors

Abstract

Climate change is increasing the probability that transportation corridors will be disrupted by flooding, landslides, extreme heat, wildfire, coastal hazards, and compound events. Yet the agencies responsible for roads, bridges, transit routes, and freight connections rarely possess sufficient capital to eliminate every vulnerability. This article develops a Resilient Corridor Investment Prioritization (RCIP) framework for selecting investments under constrained budgets. The framework integrates hazard exposure, asset condition, network criticality, consequences for essential access, distributional equity, lifecycle value, implementation readiness, and adaptive flexibility. It combines transparent multicriteria assessment with scenario testing, minimum equity and safety thresholds, and portfolio sequencing across low-, moderate-, and high-investment interventions. Illustrative applications in King County, Washington; metropolitan Mumbai, India; and Rotterdam-Rijnmond, the Netherlands, demonstrate how the same decision logic can operate across different governance, climatic, and fiscal contexts. The comparison shows that vulnerability alone is an inadequate basis for capital programming. Corridors become priorities when physical susceptibility intersects with limited redundancy, high social consequence, and feasible interventions that remain useful under multiple futures. The article argues that resilience should be institutionalized as a recurring portfolio-management function linked to asset management, community knowledge, maintenance budgets, and explicit adaptation triggers. RCIP offers a replicable approach for directing scarce resources toward networks whose continued function matters most, while preserving the option to escalate investment as risks and fiscal capacity change.