Transportation Systems

  • Develop a common framework and methodology for assessing risks related to transportation infrastructure at a regional scale and for all transportation modes and operations.
  • Estimate or rank the probability of occurrence of extreme events.
  • Use maps, historical data, projections, and advice from experts to understand the climate exposure of your transportation systems and identify potential threats. For example, overlay up-to-date floodplain maps with elevation surveys and climate models to identify at-risk facilities and natural features, and establish action priorities with cost estimates. Use these maps to identify critical and vulnerable infrastructure that is susceptible to flooding.

  • Extreme precipitation can inundate low-lying roadways, fill reservoirs beyond capacity, render bridges unusable, and necessitate the closing of floodgates. During floods, it can become increasingly difficult to move people out of harm’s way in a timely fashion or to transport assets to neighborhoods in need. Having a plan ready for these situations can decrease response times and ensure resources reach areas and facilities in need. 

  • Develop contingency transportation plans that can be incorporated into other planning efforts and updated regularly to remain consistent with any changes in utility services or assets. 
  • Implement post-disaster policies to minimize service disruption due to damaged infrastructure.  

  • Adjust budgets and routine operations, maintenance, and inspections to prepare for more frequent and intense storms, floods, landslides, wildfires, and extreme heat events.
  • Bolster contingency plans for critical transportation infrastructure at risk.
  • Identify and protect critical evacuation routes. Coordinate emergency evacuation planning among adjacent cities and counties.
  • Improve systems to provide transportation service providers, including bus drivers, engineers, appropriate public works staff, and maintenance staff with early warnings of problems, engage onsite protections in advance of an emergency, and provide early warning to the public. Revise existing systems—or develop better systems, such as using sensors and smart technologies—for monitoring.

  • Establish regular meetings with transportation officials in other jurisdictions and relevant staff in other departments to share information on what strategies have been effective for protecting transportation systems and what strategies have not.
  • Collaborate with flood risk managers during adaptation strategy development.
  • Collaborate with other agencies within the region to develop a regional transportation plan that addresses climate change adaptation.
  • Coordinate with interstate and intrastate agencies, private companies, and nearby local governments to overcome challenges and obtain new ideas for dealing with the impacts of climate change.
  • Create a list of statewide emergency services contacts and communicate with them to establish protocols and procedures prior to extreme weather events.

  • Develop and adopt policies to protect new transportation infrastructure from the impacts of climate change. 
  • Develop transportation design and engineering guidance to minimize climate change risk. The design guidance should be used when siting and designing new transportation infrastructure and project-related infrastructure, such as stormwater treatment and flow control, wetlands protection and mitigation, and fish passages. The guidance should provide information on techniques and materials resistant to increased heat and other climate impacts.
  • For all new projects, require that roadside stormwater management structures (e.g., pipes, culverts, outfalls) are sized for future storm events. Balance upfront costs of incrementally larger structures today with the future costs of replacing an entire drainage system.
  • Incorporate projected climate change impacts and adaptation actions into long-term planning, policies, and investment decisions.
  • Prohibit new transportation projects in floodplains and return some floodplain areas to natural conditions to limit flooding.
  • Plan new infrastructure using floodplain maps to prevent building in areas that are likely to be flooded.
  • Require consideration of climate risks and response strategies in the site selection, design, and construction of transportation infrastructure projects.

  • Clean out roadside catch basins, ditches, and culverts to restore drainage capacity and help reduce flooding. Removal should occur regularly.
  • Evaluate staff schedules to ensure they are adequate for additional maintenance activities that will be needed due to climate change impacts.
  • Identify and remove hazards on primary evacuation routes that appear to be susceptible to damage from extreme weather events.
  • Implement improvements during routine maintenance and upgrading to simplify workflow and reduce costs.
  • Improve weather and road condition information systems to enable transportation system managers to anticipate and detect problems better and faster. For example, existing models used for snow and ice removal will decrease in reliability with an increase in heavy precipitation and extreme cold events, requiring better monitoring and new models to properly alert motorists and dispatch maintenance and removal crews.
  • Plan nonstructural solutions, such as active traffic management and detour routes, to help reduce impacts during floods.
  • Re-assess existing road repair schedules and acquire sufficient resources to include climate change preparedness measures when repairing roads. The focus should be on repairing and updating the roadways that are most susceptible to climate change impacts.
  • Revisit the road salt policy to adjust applications for projected climate change impacts. Research alternatives to road salt and new techniques to manage and apply road salt.
  • Take advantage of existing funding sources and programs for infrastructure to achieve co-benefits with sustainability, public health, economic development, and disaster preparedness.

  • Collaborate with land use planners to adopt land use strategies that reduce climate change impacts on transportation systems.
  • Establish buffer zone areas and setbacks to avoid risks to roads and other transportation systems within projected flooding inundation zones.
  • Investigate amendments that can be made to existing land use planning and zoning laws, regulations, and building codes to reduce or eliminate expected climate change impacts when designing and constructing new transportation infrastructure, repairing and upgrading existing infrastructure, and evaluating sites and areas suitable for infrastructure development.
  • Study existing land uses and track changing land uses to help foresee how transportation infrastructure may be impacted by climate change.

  • Adopt and implement increased standards for drainage capacity for new transportation infrastructure and major rehabilitation projects. 
  • Ensure asphalt/concrete mixtures and other construction materials are appropriate for anticipated flooding and temperature changes (e.g., increase in potholes). 
  • Ensure pavement grooving and sloping is appropriate for anticipated flooding, among other strategies. 
  • Use heat-tolerant street landscaping to reduce the amount of sun and heat reaching the streets. This prevents potential damage to the materials, reduces the ground level temperature, and protects against the effects of weathering.

  • Design your community’s transportation options, apart from the typical single-occupancy gasoline or diesel fuel vehicles, to include electric public transportation, carpool programs, gasoline or electric car-share, bike-share, a strong sidewalk network, a strong bike lane, and off-road trail network, and robust infrastructure for electric vehicles.
  • Implement transportation demand management strategies that reduce congestion and reduce single-occupancy vehicle travel.
  • Plan for multiple transportation options to function all the time, and especially when extreme weather or other unexpected events or long-term community stressors occur.

  • Clean out any blockages to restore drainage capacity and reduce flooding.
  • Comprehensively assess which bridge openings (the area below a bridge), culverts, and ditches are not prepared for heavier rain events and flooding. Complete retrofits as needed.
  • Fund and implement an increase in bridge opening, culvert, and ditch maintenance.
  • Increase the carrying capacities of culverts, retention basins, and other drainage systems in accordance with future precipitation projections.
  • Inspect bridges every other year. 
  • Plan and identify funding for dealing with bridge scour.   
  • Raise, elevate, modify, or armor infrastructure in floodplains to protect it from flooding.
  • Relocate, decommission, or abandon infrastructure where the costs of protection and maintenance outweigh the benefits.
  • Strengthen infrastructure using materials, design, and construction techniques that can withstand projected climate impacts.

  • Incorporate information about climate impacts into local emergency planning efforts related to transportation infrastructure, including emergency management plans and the Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan.
  • Require long-range transportation plans to address climate impacts and include response strategies.
  • Require transportation planning activities to address the need for greenhouse gas reduction.
  • Require transportation planning processes to consider climate action planning activities going on at the local, regional, and state levels and incorporate them into the planning process.
  • Require transportation plans to connect different transportation systems and consider the impacts of climate change on the connectivity of the systems.

  • Consider installing these practices to manage water runoff from pavement: rain gardens, stormwater ponds, trees, native plants, pervious pavements, green roofs, and native vegetation buffers along roadways. These strategies allow stormwater to be absorbed through natural processes, reducing, or even preventing, flooding of facilities, and bringing multiple co-benefits.
  • Install drought-resistant grasses, shrubs, trees, and other deep-rooted plants to provide shading over pavement, prevent erosion, provide windbreaks, and reduce flooding.
  • Monitor invasive species near roadways to ensure native plants that mitigate climate change impacts can survive.
  • Replace existing vegetation with a plant mix more tolerant of long-term changes in precipitation and temperature to increase water storage capacity.

Learn more about addressing climate impacts on transportation

To learn more about specific transportation strategies, see our other adaptation strategies:

Source Documents

These strategies are adapted from existing federal and other resources. For more information about the strategies on this page, review the context provided by the primary source documents: