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Introduction
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limate change will impact many sectors of the economy, and while required adaptations for some sectors already have been studied in depth, the same cannot be said of transportation infrastructure. Rising sea levels, greater weather variability, and more extreme weather events, like hurricanes, are just some of the important changes that will impact transportation networks and infrastructure. Transportation Research Board (TRB) Special Report 290 concluded that these impacts “will be widespread and costly in both human and economic terms and will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems.” Some important preliminary work has been done to identify the ways in which climate change will impact transportation, notably by the Transportation Research Board and the U.S. Department of Transportation, but less attention has been paid to the potential policy options for enabling transportation to successfully adapt in a timely manner. Yet there will be major costs and damages from these climate changes if policies are not implemented immediately to begin increasing the resilience of the transportation system to climate change. Action now will reduce long-term costs and result in a more resilient transportation system.
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T R A N S P O RTATI O N A DA P TATI O N TO G LO BA L C LI M AT E C H A N G E
