Climate Brief: Travel Infrastructure Failing in Extreme Heat

When temperatures topped 100 during the UK’s blistering heat wave last month, flights at London’s Luton Airpot were temporarily disrupted when a secction of the asphalt runway melted.

Transportation on the Network Rail between London King’s Cross and York and Leeds was suspended out of caution that the rail lines would expand, warp, and buckle under the extreme heat.

Heat waves have a devastating impact on infrastrucure, which was not designed for extreme high temperatures. Cities are faced with the reality that they will have to redesign and rebuld as global warming impacts threaten transportation worlwide.

As climate change damages streets and highways, the road ahead may be expensive with pavements expanding and cracking during heat waves. According to the NPR article:

Heat-related road failure occurs when moisture-weakened pavement gets hot, expands, buckles and warps — especially if the high temperatures last for several days, according to Charles Marohn, founder and president of the Minnesota-based Strong Towns, a nonprofit that advocates for more resilient and safer urban areas.

When water gets underneath a roadway, “it’ll get a little bit squishy, and instead of being firm, it’ll start to move a little bit,” Marohn says. That weakens the pavement — and when it expands, it breaks.

“You take that prolonged period of just intense heat, a lot of traffic on top of it, and that’s when you have something like this happen,” Charlie Gischlar, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Transportation, says about the I-97 incident in Baltimore.

The roads, so many of which are asphalt, were built for the past and not suitable for our future.

“In many ways, we’ve designed our infrastructures over decades, if not centuries, for temperatures that have been relatively milder,” Mikhail Chester, a professor of engineering at Arizona State University, told NPR’s All Things Considered recently. “Now, as temperatures are hotter, you’re starting to see the dynamics of those extremes take hold, exceeding the design thresholds of those infrastructures and their particular assets.”

The impacts of climate change on our infrasture are numerous.

Extreme heat: High temperatures warp steel rail tracks, soften asphalt roads, and sag overhead electrical wires. Hot air is also less dense, which forces airplanes to require longer runways or lighter loads to take off.
Rising sea levels: Coastal flooding and higher tides submerge low-lying roads, bridges, and shipping ports.
Heavy rain and storms: Severe downpours cause landslides, erode soil foundations under highways, and wash out vital bridges.

Rebuilding travel infrastructure to be resilient and sustainable and equitable calls for significant funding and visionary planning.