Coastal flooding increases Bay Area traffic delays and accidents

Latest Stanford Health Alerts on COVID-19 COVID-19 Info for Stanford Earth Traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. (Photo credit; Joshua Sortino / Unsplash) Disruptions from sea level rise and coastal flooding events have significant indirect impacts on urban traffic networks and road safety. Almost half of the world's population currently lives in cities and that number is projected to rise significantly in the near future. This rapid urbanization is contributing to increased flood risk due to the growing concentration of people and resources in cities and the clustering of cities along coastlines. These urban shifts also result in more complex and interconnected systems on which people depend, such as transportation networks. Disruptions to urban traffic networks from flooding or other natural disasters can have serious socioeconomic consequences. In fact, what are defined as indirect impacts from these types of events, such as commute-related employee absences, travel time delays and increase in vehicular accident rates, could ultimately outweigh the more direct physical damage to roads and infrastructure caused by severe flooding.