COVID-19 Addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation

The year 2020’s raging coronavirus pandemic and reckoning with long-standing racial injustice led to widespread disruption and suffering, social unrest, and renewed calls for an accounting of our fragmented public health system and troubled history of racial inequity.

The crises of 2020 transcend transportation yet also raise fundamental questions for it along with other sectors of our society and economy. In this addendum to Critical Issues in Transportation 2019, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Executive Committee updates all of the critical issue topic areas to address the short-term and potential long-term effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on transportation.

An additional addendum will be issued later in 2021 that delves much more deeply into the equity issue to probe and question transportation’s role in contributing to and redressing racial injustice.