Project Summary
Fast-moving wildfires pose significant challenges to evacuation, especially for transportation-insecure households, who are more likely to rely on public transit to meet their daily needs. The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires represent a rare scenario in which large urban areas faced fast-moving wildfire threats. Most existing studies of wildfire evacuations focus on vehicle-owning households and assume that evacuees will use their personal vehicles while evacuating. Despite the critical need to understand the evacuation behaviors of transportation-insecure households, research on this group remains sparse, primarily due to methodological barriers. Recruiting transportation-insecure households and transit riders is challenging in transportation research.
This project leverages recruitment through the Transit App to collect near real-time data on these riders’ evacuation experiences and plans, health exposures, and behavioral adaptations. These data have the opportunity to capture the behaviors and experiences of transit riders affected by the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, which contribute to a needed body of evidence for creating better models and decision-making approaches in future disasters.
