About

Professor Megan S. Ryerson is the UPS Foundation Chair of Transportation and a Professor of City and Regional Planning and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research emphasizes transportation engineering and planning, with a focus on intercity transportation planning and urban transportation safety. Dr. Ryerson has written extensively on air transportation, including environmental impacts, economic development, and multimodal planning. In 2024, she was awarded a $6 million NASA University Leadership Initiative award to develop solutions for aviation system resilience. In the area of urban transportation safety, Dr. Ryerson founded the Center for Safe Mobility, where she works on developing human-centered transportation safety metrics and evaluating safety-focused policies. She has published over 65 peer-reviewed articles, received numerous awards for her scholarship and leadership, and has provided counsel to major airlines, cities, universities, airports, port authorities, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Dr. Ryerson served as the first Associate Dean for Research at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design, where she established the Research Support Center, leading to a more than 300% increase in awarded grants during her tenure. She is dedicated to education and advancing women in transportation, recognized as “Woman of the Year” by the Women's Transportation Seminar-Philadelphia Chapter.

Research topics

• Business
• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Transport engineering
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Economics
• Psychology
• Marketing
• Environmental planning
• Geography
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Graduated driver licensing with mandated driver training in Ohio is associated with fewer serious injury and fatal crashes among young novice drivers

  Transport Policy · 2026-04-20

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Identification and Characterization for Disruptions in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS)

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-25

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Disruptions in the National Airspace System (NAS) lead to significant losses to air traffic system participants and raise public concerns. We apply two methods, cluster analysis and anomaly detection models, to identify operational disruptions with geographical patterns in the NAS since 2010. We identify four types and twelve categories of days of operations, distinguished according to air traffic system operational performance and geographical patterns of disruptions. Two clusters--NAS Disruption and East Super Disruption, accounting for 0.8% and 1.2% of the days respectively, represent the most disrupted days of operations in U.S. air traffic system. Another 16.5% of days feature less severe but still significant disruptions focused on certain regions of the NAS, while on the remaining 81.5% of days the NAS operates relatively smoothly. Anomaly detection results show good agreement with cluster results and further distinguish days in the same cluster by severity of disruptions. Results show an increasing trend in frequency of disruptions especially post-COVID. Additionally, disruptions happen most frequently in the summer and winter.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Association between Young New Drivers’ Skills and Driver Training, Home Neighborhood Income Level, and Urbanicity: Evidence from the State of Ohio

  Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board · 2025-09-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The disproportionately high crash rates among young drivers in the U.S. stem from a complex interaction of individual maturity, driving skills, vehicle dynamics, social and financial backgrounds, and environmental factors. Research has found that some of these factors disproportionately affect economically disadvantaged groups in various rural/urban settings. Driver education and training have been employed in many states as mandatory for under-18-years-old drivers to secure junior licenses to equip them with safe driving skills. However, there is a gap in understanding how driver training, economic factors, and urbanicity correlate with developing specific driving skills among young drivers. This study leverages a unique dataset from Ohio, comprising Virtual Driving Assessment (VDA)-measured skills, driver licensing data, and home Census tract characteristics from 2017 to 2019 to analyze 22,490 young drivers aged under 25 years. We analyzed the data using visualization tools and inferential statistics to understand the differences in young drivers’ new skills by three separate variables: their completion of driver training and young driver licensure (DTYL) (licensed before 18 years old), urbanicity of residence, and home neighborhood income level. Results indicated that formal DTYL correlated with better adherence to traffic regulations, consistent braking, and lane position control. Young drivers from lower-income neighborhoods exhibited skill deficiencies in traffic rule compliance, throttle control, and lane management, potentially because of limited access to quality training and vehicle safety features. Conversely, rural young drivers excelled in consistent speed management and traffic rule adherence. These insights underscore the necessity to reevaluate driver education curricula and roadway design to align more closely with comprehensive safety outcomes, and to enhance young drivers’ safety awareness and skill proficiency.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cycling in a Crisis: Employing Quasi-Experimental Designs to Estimate the Effects of Provisional Bicycle Infrastructure

  Journal of Planning Education and Research · 2025-04-24 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  During the Covid-19 pandemic, provisional infrastructure was implemented to support active transportation. However, the planning community still requires deeper understandings of the relationships between provisional infrastructure and mobility. We use the example of a roadway closure in Philadelphia to investigate how one active mode—bikeshare use—changed in response to provisional infrastructure. We employ differences-in-differences models that measure the semi-causal effect of provisional infrastructure on bikeshare trip durations and find that even during the pandemic, when trip durations increased across the bikeshare system, provisional infrastructure had an additive and statistically discernible impact above and beyond the pandemic effect.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>A People’s History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport</i>

  Journal of the American Planning Association · 2024-09-04

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Autonomous vehicle impacts on airport leakage with demand forecasting and environment implications

  Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment · 2024-06-07 · 7 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Development of the Reproductive Healthcare Equity Algorithm (RHEA)

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-06-08

  preprintOpen access

  After the repeal of Roe vs. Wade in June 2022, women face long-distance travel across state lines to access abortion care. For women who also face socioeconomic hardship, travel for abortion care is a significant burden. To ease this burden, abortion access nonprofits are funding and/or supplying transportation to abortion clinics. However, due to the uneven distribution of demand and supply for abortions, these nonprofits do not have efficient logistical operations. As a result, low-income, underserved women may not have access to adequate reproductive healthcare, thus widening healthcare inequity gaps. Nonprofits may also risk not serving the needs of vulnerable women without access to adequate reproductive healthcare, and in doing so, waste resources, money, and volunteer hours. To address these challenges, we create an interactive, web-based planning tool, the Reproductive Healthcare Equity Algorithm (RHEA), to guide nonprofits in strategically allocating resources and serving demand. RHEA leverages an optimization model to determine the maximum flow and minimum transportation cost to route women across a network of counties and abortion clinics, subject to transportation supply, budget, and time constraints for one day of operations for a nonprofit. In doing so, we collaborate with abortion access nonprofits to cater our model design and interface development to their needs and considerations. Ultimately, we seek to optimize resource allocation for nonprofits providing abortion care logistics and improve abortion access for low-income, underserved women.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Adult-supervised practice in learner’s permit phase has a significant but limited ability to improve safe driving skills

  Traffic Injury Prevention · 2024-11-01

  articleSenior author

  OBJECTIVES: Most U.S. states require adult-supervised practice for adolescent learner permit holders intending to obtain a driver's license before 18. However, the effectiveness of adult-supervised practice in imparting safe driving skills had been inconclusive prior to the recent development of consistent measures of adolescent learners' driving performance. We examined the relationship between the number of adult-supervised practice hours and driving performance and skill deficits for 441 learner permit holders ages 16 and 17 in Pennsylvania. METHODS: Data came from a virtual driving assessment (VDA) deployed across Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Primary Care Network and a self-reported survey at the time of the VDA. Based on a previous study, we defined two VDA Driving Classes that describe driving performance: Major Issues or Major Issues with Dangerous Behavior Class, and Minor Issues or No Issues Class. The response options for adult-supervised practice hours were presented to adolescents as categories (none, <15 h, 15-<65 h, 65 h, and >65 h). We grouped those with 65 h with those with >65 h given the low numbers of responses in these categories. The analysis used a Chi-square test and a binomial logit to investigate how adult-supervised practice hours correspond to adolescents' VDA Driving Classes. RESULTS: 65 h). The model found no significant associations between VDA Driving Class and whether adolescent learners reported practicing with a formal instructor. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that under current adult-supervised practice routines, longer practice hours have limited associations with improvements in adolescents' VDA Driving Class. Some adolescents might not be ready to deal with the more dangerous settings the VDA presents even after completing the required hours of adult-supervised practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Role of the Built Environment, Roadway Characteristics, and Socioeconomic Factors in Keeping Teen Drivers Safe: An Investigation of the Factors Most Related to Teen Driver Fatalities

  Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board · 2024-09-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The role of engineering, through infrastructure design, is known to influence safe driving behavior generally, yet the areas of possible intervention that could improve safe outcomes for teens are less understood. It is critical to identify interventions specific to teens, as they have different driving risk factors than more seasoned drivers, and motor vehicle crashes are the second leading cause of death among teens in the United States. We examined 5,210 fatal crashes from 2015 to 2019 in Ohio using Fatality Analysis Reporting System data. We employed multinomial logistic regression to associate the likelihood of fatal crashes involving younger teens (16 to 17 years old) or older teens (18 to 19 years old) relative to adults (20 years and older) with built environment, socioeconomic, and roadway characteristics at crash locations. Separating crashes into the two groups of teens allowed us to distinguish the possible impact of training, as younger teens are mandated to undergo driving education and behind-the-wheel training under Ohio’s graduated driver licensing laws. We found that compared with neighborhood socioeconomics, built environment factors were more significant predictors of the likelihood of fatal crashes involving younger teens compared with adults. Specifically, fatal crashes at locations with lower road density and more diverse land use were more likely to involve younger teens. Although these results could be related to a mix of younger teen driver behavior and exposure factors, the finding highlights that improving the safety of local roads in urban and rural settings could help stem teen driving fatalities.

  PublisherDOI

• A Long Distance from AV-iation: Estimating the Impact of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Adoption on Airport Leakage and Terminal Area Forecasts

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Data-driven and Community Engaged Planning Tools For Addressing Spatial Mismatch

  NSF · $50k · 2021–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Joshua H. Davidson

  University of Derby

  42 shared

• Max Z. Li

  28 shared

• Xiaoxia Dong

  University City Science Center

  22 shared

• Jasmine Siyu Wu

  University City Science Center

  21 shared

• Amber Woodburn

  20 shared

• Ilil Feiglin

  Oberlin College

  18 shared

• Mark Hansen

  18 shared

• Flaura K. Winston

  Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

  16 shared

Awards & honors

• Woman of the Year by the Women's Transportation Seminar-Phil…
• 2024 NASA University Leadership Initiative award