Indicators of reliability and vulnerability: Similarities and differences in ranking links of a complex road system

•Reliability and vulnerability as distinct attributes of road networks.•Performance indicators are shown based on reliability and vulnerability attributes.•Reliability and vulnerability indicators leads to distinct link rankings. This article investigates two performance attributes of road networks, reliability and vulnerability, analyzing their similarities as well as the differences that justify distinct definitions, based on consolidation of recent studies. We also discuss the indicators found in the literature for these two performance attributes. Since various authors treat vulnerability as an aspect of reliability instead of a specific attribute, we carried out an application to a complex road network representative of the city of Rio de Janeiro to check the suitability of this approach. The results show that the vulnerability indicators are more strongly affected by the characteristics of alternative routes while the reliability metrics are more sensitive to the congestion level. The conclusion is that reliability and vulnerability should be treated distinctly for evaluating the performance of road network links.