Megan Ryerson on Resilient, Environmentally-efficient Transportation

Megan Ryerson is the UPS Foundation Professor and serves as the Chair of the City and Regional Planning Department at University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design.

Megan Ryerson’s research into transportation systems spans multiple modalities, offering critical insights into the complexities of modern transit infrastructure. Her most extensive body of work is focused on air transportation and aviation systems, starting from her earliest days as a scholar building intercity transportation network models to study the introduction High Speed Rail. Her more recent scholarship examines the interplay between transportation networks, urban development, and energy efficiency.

In her 2023 publication “Complexity of Increasing Knowledge Flows: the 2022 Southwest Airlines Scheduling Crisis,” Ryerson and co-authors Alysha Helmrich and Mikhail Chester analyze the myriad factors that contributed to the meltdown of Southwest Airlines’ scheduling system following the winter storm that interrupted thousands of flights during the holiday travel season. She evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of Southwest’s decentralized “point-to-point” network system, comparing it to the more widely used “hub-and-spoke” system employed by competitor airlines. While many infrastructure experts assert that a point-to-point approach allows for more resiliency in the event of system interruptions, Ryerson uses Southwest’s complications as a case study, offering a counterargument to the belief that decentralization distributes risk more evenly. 

The analysis of the story behind the headlines about Southwest’s failure during the 2022 holiday travel season sheds light on the importance of maintaining effective, up-to-date technology to manage the complex infrastructural network that airlines operate within. The research warns of overreliance on outdated technology, especially when managing decentralized systems, as telecommunications capabilities become even more paramount in these environments. 

These findings build upon Ryerson’s previous research, such as her work analyzing airline operations and hub development, aviation demand forecasting, and airports as drivers of economic growth, all of which provide new insights into interrelated aspects of the aviation industry. Specifically, Ryerson has explored how Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations allowing airports to use funds for economic development initiatives impact urban competition. She has analyzed the effectiveness of airports offering airlines financial incentives—ranging from $75,000 to $1 million in marketing support and waived fees—to establish new routes. While such strategies may be beneficial for already thriving cities, she argues that smaller airports in metro regions with larger, wealthier competitors may be better off investing in local amenities that enhance the overall livability and attractiveness of their cities. These findings contribute to ongoing debates on the best uses of airport resources to stimulate regional economic growth.

Ryerson is currently leading a $6 million NASA-funded research initiative in collaboration with scholars from UC Berkeley, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, and Elizabeth City State University. This project aims to develop strategies for mitigating large-scale disruptions in aviation systems by integrating insights from academia, the private sector, and government agencies. A key component of this initiative is workforce development, fostering engagement from students at all levels to build the next generation of transportation professionals. Along with two other projects funded by the University Leadership Initiative, investigators aim to utilize academic research into aviation systems together with practical industry experience to devise strategies for more modern, less vulnerable air travel in the 21st century. 

Energy-Efficient Transit and the Future Transportation Research 

Beyond aviation, Ryerson has undertaken projects looking at emerging modalities; her work analyzing the embrace of active modes of transportation during the COVID-19 (Davidson et al 2025, forthcoming) provides insight into consumer sentiment and policy incentives that could accelerate the transition to more energy-efficient and healthy transportation options. Ryerson and her team, supported by the National Science Foundation, built new models and methods to measure transportation accessibility (Ryerson et al 2022); this research helps understand those in transit deserts who should be the focus of transportation interventions and would welcome an increase of sustainable transportation alternatives.

Ryerson’s scholarship continues to shape discussions on the intersection of transportation, urbanism, and resilience, providing theoretical insights and offering actionable recommendations for policymakers, urban planners, and industry leaders. By investigating both systemic risks in established transportation networks and the potential of emerging transit technologies, she contributes to a more adaptive and efficient mobility future.

As infrastructure managers and policymakers confront the challenges of an evolving transportation landscape, Ryerson’s research serves as a critical resource for designing resilient, energy-efficient, and equitable mobility systems.
 

Excerpt

Complexity of increasing knowledge flows: the 2022 Southwest Airlines Scheduling Crisis

Southwest Airlines experienced a problem known as ‘technical debt,’ or the implied cost of relying upon outdated digital technologies while not upgrading (Tufecki 2022, Sider 2023). Southwest Airlines had been incrementally updating the Network Crew Optimization software, developed over twenty years ago and adopted when they managed 58 destinations (Southwest 2000, GE 2021, Lin 2023, Sider 2023). However, significant operational system upgrades were overlooked in favor of upgrading customer-facing software (e.g., ticketing systems) as well as staying in compliance with federal safety regulations (Sider 2023). Additionally, previous crises (e.g., Boeing’s 737 MAX Crisis (Bhattacharya and Nisha 2020, Herkert et al 2020)) may have demanded competing resources. This emphasizes the need for holistic sensemaking processes in complex systems so that informed tradeoffs can be made. In this case, Southwest Airlines had been aware of the critical role of technology, publishing to their shareholders in 2022b (pg. 37): 

The Company is increasingly dependent on technology to operate its business and continues to implement substantial changes to its information systems; any failure, disruption, breach, or delay in implementation of the Company’s information systems could materially adversely affect its operations…

Time will tell if the 2022 Southwest Airlines Scheduling Crisis will be the tipping point for Southwest to begin investing in adaptive capacity. Ideally, other infrastructure systems (in and beyond aviation) will learn from this event and begin to build adaptive capacity prior to catastrophic events and subsequent failures within their own organizations. In doing so they must invest in adaptive capacity for surprise events that spans both physical networks and governing institutions. The sensing and anticipating processes that cybertechnology can support within an organization provide a foundation for engaging with adaptation and learning processes. These four reiterative and recursive processes (sensing, anticipating, adapting, and learning) play a critical role in enabling the resilience of socio-technical systems (Thomas et al 2017). The engagement, and even empowerment, of infrastructure managers, operators, and community members can help bring localized expertise to those with decision-making power. It is evident that the change in the environment is outpacing change in infrastructure systems, and infrastructure managers must embrace instability as the new norm.