The global COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a plethora of ideas for modifying and redesigning public transportation and shared mobility vehicles to protect workers and riders from contracting the disease while traveling. This research seeks to inventory these strategies, and to organize and distill them in a way that enables researchers, policymakers, and public transport and mobility service operators to more systematically and efficiently evaluate them. Through literature search and analysis, the COVID-19 risk-mitigating vehicle design (CRVD) typology was developed, articulating 12 categories of strategies (e.g., Seating Configuration, Barriers) and 12 mechanisms (e.g., physical distancing, physical separation) by which the strategies may reduce COVID-19 spread. A secondary contribution of this research is to gather opinions of experts in fields related to COVID-19 and its transmission, about the identified CRVD strategies and mitigation mechanisms. The typology and expert opinions serve as a launching point for further innovation and research to evaluate the effectiveness of CRVD strategies and their relationship to user preferences and travel behavior, within and beyond the current context. Public transport and shared mobility service operators can use the CRVD typology as a reference, in conjunction with industry guidance and emerging research on strategy effectiveness, to aid decision-making in their continued response to the pandemic as well as for future planning.

In the absence of a vaccine, nonpharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing and travel reductions were the only strategies for slowing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using survey data from Hawaii (n = 22,200) collected in March through May of 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, the differences between traveler spreaders who brought the disease into the state and community spreaders were investigated. In addition to describing the demographic attributes and comparing them with attributes of those who were vulnerable to COVID-19, logit models explaining travel behaviors were developed and tested. Traveler spreaders were likely to be male, younger, and returning students. Community spreaders were more likely to be male, essential workers, first responders, and medical personnel at the highest risk of exposure. Using spatial statistics, clusters and hotspot locations of high-risk individuals were mapped. As transportation researchers are in a position to combine their critical analytical capabilities and experience with relevant databases on mobility and the spread of infectious diseases, this analysis could support efforts to respond to and slow the spread of the pandemic.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to a nearly world-wide shelter-in-place strategy. This raises several natural concerns about the safe relaxing of current restrictions. This article focuses on the design and operation of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in the context of transportation. Do HVAC systems have a role in limiting viral spread? During shelter-in-place, can the HVAC system in a dwelling or a vehicle help limit spread of the virus? After the shelter-in-place strategy ends, can typical workplace and transportation HVAC systems limit spread of the virus? This article directly addresses these and other questions. In addition, it also summarizes simplifying assumptions needed to make meaningful predictions. This article derives new results using transform methods first given in Ginsberg and Bui. These new results describe viral spread through an HVAC system and estimate the aggregate dose of virus inhaled by an uninfected building or vehicle occupant when an infected occupant is present within the same building or vehicle. Central to these results is the derivation of a quantity called the \"protection factor\"-a term-of-art borrowed from the design of gas masks. Older results that rely on numerical approximations to these differential equations have long been lab validated. This article gives the exact solutions in fixed infrastructure for the first time. These solutions, therefore, retain the same lab validation of the older methods of approximation. Further, these exact solutions yield valuable insights into HVAC systems used in transportation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges but also unprecedented opportunities for transportation researchers and practitioners. In this article, the major lessons and gaps in knowledge for those working in the transportation sector are identified, including the following: (1) integration between public health and transportation; (2) technology to support contact tracing and tracking of travelers; (3) focus on vulnerable, at-risk operators, patrons, and underserved members of society; (4) re-engineering of travel demand models to support social distancing, quarantine, and public health interventions; (5) challenges with Big Data and information technologies; (6) trust relationships between the general public, government, private sector, and others in disaster management; (7) conflict management during disasters; (8) complexities of transdisciplinary knowledge and engagement; (9) demands for training and education; and (10) transformative change to support community resilience. With a focus on transportation planning and community resilience, the lessons from the pandemic need to be shared and customized for different systems, services, modalities, and users. While many of the interventions during the pandemic have been based on public health, the management, response, recovery, adaptation, and transformation of transportation systems resulting from the crisis require multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional communications and coordination, and resource sharing. Further research to support knowledge to action is needed.