August 1 marks the tenth anniversary of the tragic and shocking collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis.

Around the fifth anniversary, I did an 8-part blog series on the subject, which is worth re-upping:

• Part 1 – Introduction,
• Part 2 – Structure,
• Part 3 – Communication,
• Part 4 – Politics,
• Part 5 – Economics,
• Part 6 – Traffic,
• Part 7 – Replacement,
• Part 8 – Policy Implications

Motivated by the collapse, we conducted a number of inter-related studies, powered empirically by traffic and GPS data collected before and after the bridge reopening:

• Danczyk, Adam, Xuan Di, Henry Liu, and David Levinson (2017) Unexpected versus expected network disruption: Effects on travel behavior. Transport Policy. Volume 57, July 2017, Pages 68–78 [doi]
• Di, Xuan, Henry Liu, Shanjiang  Zhu, and David Levinson (2016) Indifference Bands for Route Switching. Transportation. [doi]
• Zhu, Shanjiang, David Levinson, and Henry Liu (2016) Measuring Winners and Losers from the new I-35W Mississippi River Bridge. Transportation. [doi]

• Zhu, Shanjiang and David Levinson (2015) Do People Use the Shortest Path? An Empirical Test of Wardrop’s First Principle. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134322. [doi]
• Zhu, Shanjiang and David Levinson (2013) A Portfolio Theory of Route Choice. Transportation Research part C  35 232–243. [doi]
• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2012) Value of Travel Time Reliability: A review of current evidence. Transportation Research part A 46(4) 720-741. [doi]
• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2011) A Model of Bridge Choice Across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. (115-130) in Network Reliability in Practice (ed. by David Levinson, Henry Liu, and Michael Bell) Springer.

• Zhu, Shanjiang and David Levinson (2011) Disruptions to Transportation Networks: A Review. (5-20) in Network Reliability in Practice (ed. David Levinson, Henry Liu, and Michael Bell) Springer.
• Zhu, Shanjiang, Nebiyou Tilahun, David Levinson, and Xiaozheng He (2011) Travel Impacts and Adjustment Strategies of the Collapse and the Reopening of the I-35W Bridge. (21-36) in Network Reliability in Practice (ed. David Levinson, Henry Liu, and Michael Bell) Springer.
• Jenelius, Erik, Lars-Göran Mattsson,and David Levinson (2011) The traveler costs of unplanned transport network disruptions: An activity-based modeling approach. Transportation Research part B 45(5) 789-807. [doi]
• Zhu, Shanjiang, David Levinson, Henry Liu, and Kathleen Harder (2010) The Traffic and Behavioral Effects of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge collapse. Transportation Research part A 44(10) 771-784. [doi]

• Xie, Feng and David Levinson (2011) Evaluating the Effects of I-35W Bridge Collapse on Road-Users in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region. Transportation Planning and Technology 34(7) 691-703. [doi]

The nice thing from a scientific perspective was the ability to use the GPS data collected before and after the bridge reopening for other studies as well, the data comprised part of four of my student’s dissertations, and several from Henry Liu’s students.

• Huang, Arthur (Yan), and David Levinson (2016) A model of two-destination choice in trip chains with GPS data. Journal of Choice Modeling. [doi]
• Huang, Arthur and David Levinson (2015) Axis of Travel: Modeling non-work destination choice with GPS Data. Transportation Research part C. 58 208-223. [doi]
• Zhu, Shanjiang, Julian Marshall and David Levinson (2016) Population exposure to ultrafine particles: size-resolved and real-time models for highways.    Transportation Research part D: Transport and Environment. 49C 323-336  [doi]
• Parthasarathi, Pavithra, David Levinson, and Hartwig Hochmair (2013) Network Structure and Travel Time Perception.  PLoS One. 8(10) e77718. [doi]

 

Another thing to note, from a career perspective, was that this research agenda was an unanticipated turn. Though I had done some empirical route choice studies before hand, and so was primed to take this direction, I was moving more into the transport and land use and network evolution realm. If you had asked me on July 31, 2007 what I would start working on on August 2, 2007, this was not it.