In this continued research on MTA’s planning under COVID, researchers at C2SMART (Profs. Chow and Ozbay, Ding Wang, and Dr. Jingqin Gao) worked with researchers from Cornell University (Prof. Gao and Dr. Tayarani) and UCLA (Dr. He) to apply the MATSim-NYC simulation to analyze trade-offs between congestion, GHG emissions, and exposure risk to COVID for different transit operating scenarios. Findings encourage some form of telework to continue, and show that the impacts of various strategies can vary for different neighborhoods around NYC, with peak hour subway lines 2, 5, and A having the highest contact exposure which overall remain low with average of 3 passengers per hundred exposed to others longer than 15 minutes.
The research was supported by C2SMART and CTECH centers. The paper can be accessed here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856421002299