The transportation network is a key component to providing a better transport service for both people and goods. Reliability, vulnerability and robustness are the major characteristics that can be used to analyze a transport network. Exploring the reliability of a road network has attracted significant attention due to the increase in natural disasters. Such natural disasters not only damage roadway connections, but also paralyze the transportation system for a remarkable period of time. To overcome this disadvantage, the reliability of a transport network can be maintained by closely monitoring and ensuring the safety of critical paths in the network so that the users can always have a reliable route for their commute.
Critical paths of a transportation network are the most dependable and used paths of that network. Failure of certain paths or sub-networks, which is caused by car accidents, road maintenance, or serious road congestion, has a severe impact on the reliability of the transportation network. Several methods exist to analyze the reliability of the transport network such as the concept of connection reliability, a network reliability technique to monitor the current traffic status.
In this study, a network model is developed to calculate reliability by considering the critical paths of a transportation network using the UCINET simulation tool. The implementation of this network model used two path failure strategies (selective and random) using the Betweenness Centrality as a metric. Our preliminary results show that the UCINET tool can be used to successfully estimate the reliability and to further identify the critical paths of a highway transportation network in California.