Abstract
Existing network criticality assessments, often biased towards heavily used highways in populous areas by incorporating traffic and sociodemographic attributes, can lead to an underestimation of the vital role of rural infrastructure. Consequently, rural highways, particularly low-volume roads, often receive less consideration despite their critical role in network connectivity and local access to services and economic opportunities. To address this, we develop a criticality framework based on the egalitarian principle, which prioritizes equitable consideration of all network links regardless of traffic volume or population density, comprising two complementary measures. First, the normalized betweenness centrality quantifies a road's relative importance in efficiently connecting the local network by measuring the percentage of origin-destination pairs utilizing it within its neighborhood. Normalized betweenness centrality is employed to capture the essential role of rural roads in local connectivity, even with lower traffic volumes. Second, detour importance, an aggregate metric, assesses a road's contribution to network redundancy by tracking the percentage of trips diverted to it when other critical roads are disrupted. Detour importance further highlights their significance by quantifying their contribution to network resilience when primary routes are unavailable, a crucial aspect often overlooked in assessments focused solely on high-traffic corridors. To ensure accurate calculation of these measures, particularly in capturing the nuances of travel within local and potentially less congested rural networks, we leverage ubiquitous probe vehicle data for real-world travel times, which is central to our shortest-path analysis. The results from a Kentucky case study confirm the effectiveness and practical feasibility of our framework for large-scale applications due to its efficient algorithms and reliance on readily available data. This framework offers a more equitable approach to network criticality assessment, providing valuable insights for transportation planning and investment decisions that better reflect the importance of rural infrastructure for connectivity and community access.
Report Date
3-2025
Report Number
KTC-25-15
Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.13023/ktc.rr.2025.15
Repository Citation
Zhang, Xu and Chen, Mei, "Development of Measures for Highway Criticality Assessment" (2025). Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report. 1814.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ktc_researchreports/1814
