How rainfalls influence urban traffic congestion and its associated economic losses at present and in future: taking cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, China for example?

Abstract Traffic congestion is one of serious problems in cities; rainfalls would exacerbate traffic congestion, and thus result in huge economic losses. However, limited studies focused on how rainfalls influenced traffic congestion and its associated economic losses. Based on detailed hourly data, we estimated how traffic congestion index (TCI) changed with different rainfall intensities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region, China, and we also explored their economic losses. The results illustrated that all cities presented the similar trend of daily traffic congestion, and morning peak occurred 2 hours later on holidays than workdays. Rainfall had significant impacts on traffic congestion for most time windows, except midnight. Traffic congestion increased with rainfall intensities, but smaller cities were more vulnerable to rainfall intensity than megacities. Rainfalls led to 0.98 billion yuan of extra economic losses in 2019, 38% of which occurred under heavy rainfalls. Traffic congestion in 2019 caused a total economic cost of 31.5 billion yuan in the BTH region (0.4% of its GDP), including the recurrent cost and economic losses due to rainfalls; besides, the social cost and direct cost contributed the same share of 49.4%, with 1.2% from the environmental costs. Considering future urban development and climate change, it is beneficial to establish the climate-resilient transportation system for avoiding future serious traffic congestion as well as huge economic losses in future.